A musical composition is never thoroughly understood until it has
been intelligently memorized. One who can play or sing without notes is
as free as a bird to soar aloft in the blue ether of musical
imagination.
[Illustration: FRANZ LISZT]
Every interpreter of music longs for appreciative listeners, and young
musicians, in especial, often lament the lack of these. It is well to
remember that the genuine musical artist is able to create an atmosphere
whose influences may compel an average audience to sympathetic
listening. A good plan for the artist is to be surrounded in fancy with
an audience having sensitively attuned ears, intellectual minds, and
warm, throbbing hearts. Music played in private before such an imaginary
audience will gain in quality, and when repeated before an actual public
will hold that public captive.
We have it from Ruskin that all fatal faults in art that might otherwise
be good arise from one or other of three things: either from the
pretence to feel what we do not; the indolence in exercise necessary to
obtain the power of expressing the Truth; or the presumptuous insistence
upon, or indulgence in, our own powers and delights, with no care or
wish that they should be useful to other people, so only they should be
admired by them.
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