you that it is to youprecisely what a book or a newspaper is, so that whether you read italoud--which is playing--or sit in your arm-chair with your feet on thefender, reading it not aloud on the piano, but to yourself, it conveysits definite meaning to you. At your lessons you will have to read aloudto me. But when you are reading to yourself, never pass over a bar thatyou don't understand. It has got to sound in your head, just as thewords you read in a printed book really sound in your head if you readcarefully and listen for them. You know exactly what they would be likeif you said them aloud. Can you read, by the way? Have a try."
Falbe got down a volume of Bach and opened it at random.
"There," he said, "begin at the top of the page."
"But I can't," said Michael. "I shall have to spell it out."
"That's just what you mustn't do. Go ahead, and don't pause till you getto the bottom of the page. Count; start each bar when it comes to itsturn, and play as many notes as you can in it."
This was a dismal experience. Michael hitherto had gone on thepainstaking and thorough plan of spelling out his notes with laboriouscare. Now Falbe's inexorable voice counted for him, until it was lost ininextinguishable laughter.
"Go on, go on!" he shouted. "I thought it was Bach, and it is clearlyStrauss's Don Quixote."
Michael, flushed and determined, with grave, set mouth, ploughed his waythrough amazing dissonances, and at the end joined Falbe's laughter.
"Oh dear," he said. "Very funny. But don't laugh so at me, Hermann."
Falbe dried his eyes.
"And what was it?" he said. "I declare it was the fourth fugue. Anentirely different conception of it! A thoroughly original view! Now,what you've got to do, is to repeat that--not the same murder I mean,but other murders--for a couple of hours a day. . . . By degrees--youwon't believe it--you will find you are not murdering any longer, butonly mortally wounding. After six months I dare say you won't even behurting your victims. All the same, you can begin with less muscularones."
In this way Michael's musical horizons were infinitely extended. Notonly did this system of Falbe's of flying at new music, and goingrecklessly and regardlessly on, give quickness to his brain and finger,make his wits alert to pick up the new language he was learning, butit gloriously extended his vision and his range of country. He ranjoyfully, though with a thousand falls and tumbles, through these newand wonderful vistas; he worshipped at the grave, Gothic sanctuaries ofBeethoven, he roamed through the enchanted garden of Chopin, he felt theicy and eternal frosts of Russia, and saw in the northern sky the greatauroras spread themselves in spear and sword of fire; he listened to thewisdom of Brahms, and passed through the noble and smiling countryof Bach. All this, so to speak, was holiday travel, and between hisjourneys he applied himself with the same eager industry to the learningof his art, so that he might reproduce for himself and others truepictures of the scenes through which he scampered. Here Falbe was not soeasily moved to laughter; he was as severe with Michael as he was withhimself, when it was the question of learning some piece with a viewto really playing it. There was no light-hearted hurrying on throughblurred runs and false notes, slurred phrases and incomplete chords.Among these pieces which had to be properly learned was the 17th Preludeof Chopin, on hearing which at Baireuth on the tuneless and catarrhedpiano Falbe had agreed to take Michael as a pupil. But when it wasplayed again on Falbe's great Steinway, as a professed performance, avery different standard was required.
Falbe stopped him at the end of the first two lines.
"This won't do, Michael," he said. "You played it before for me to seewhether you could play. You can. But it won't do to sketch it. Everynote has got to be there; Chopin didn't write them by accident. He knewquite well what he was about. Begin again, please."
This time Michael got not quite so far, when he was stopped again. Hewas playing without notes, and Falbe got up from his chair where he hadthe book open, and put it on the piano.
"Do you find difficulty in memorising?" he asked.
This was discouraging; Michael believed that he remembered easily; healso believed that he had long known this by heart.
"No; I thought I knew it," he said.
"Try again."
This time Falbe stood by him, and suddenly put his finger down into themiddle of Michael's hands, striking a note.
"You left out that F sharp," he said. "Go on. . . . Now you are leavingout that E natural. Try to get it better by Thursday, and remember this,that playing, and all that differentiates playing from strumming, onlybegins when you can play all the notes that are put down for you toplay without fail. You're beginning at the wrong end; you have admirablefeeling about that prelude, but you needn't think about feeling tillyou've got all the notes at your fingers' ends. Then and not till then,you may begin to remember that you want to be a pianist. Now, what's thenext thing?"
Michael felt somewhat squashed and discouraged. He had thought he hadreally worked successfully at the thing he knew so well by sight. Hisheavy eyebrows drew together.
"You told me to harmonise that Christmas carol," he remarked, rathershortly.
Falbe put his hand on his shoulder.
"Look here, Michael," he said, "you're vexed with me. Now, there'snothing to be vexed at. You know quite well you were leaving out lots ofnotes from those jolly fat chords, and that you weren't playing cleanly.Now I'm taking you seriously, and I won't have from you anything butthe best you can do. You're not doing your best when you don't even playwhat is written. You can't begin to work at this till you do that."
Michael had a moment's severe tussle with his temper. He felt vexed anddisappointed that Hermann should have sent him back like a schoolboywith his exercise torn over. Not immediately did he confess to himselfthat he was completely in the wrong.
"I'm doing the best I can," he said. "It's rather discouraging."
He moved his big shoulders slightly, as if to indicate that Hermann'shand was not wanted there. Hermann kept it there.
"It might be discouraging," he said, "if you were doing your best."
Michael's ill-temper oozed from him.
"I'm wrong," he said, turning round with the smile that made his uglyface so pleasant. "And I'm sorry both that I have been slack and thatI've been sulky. Will that do?"
Falbe laughed.
"Very well indeed," he said. "Now for 'Good King Wenceslas.' Wasn'tit--"
"Yes; I got awfully interested over it, Hermann. I thought I would tryand work it up into a few variations."
"Let's hear," said Falbe.
This was a vastly different affair. Michael had shown both ingenuity anda great sense of harmonic beauty in the arrangement of the very simplelittle tune that Falbe had made him exercise his ear over, and thehalf-dozen variations that followed showed a wonderfully maturehandling. The air which he dealt with haunted them as a sort of unseenpresence. It moved in a tiny gavotte, or looked on at a minuet measure;it wailed, yet without being positively heard, in a little dirge ofitself; it broadened into a march, it shouted in a bravura of rapidoctaves, and finally asserted itself, heard once more, over a greatscale base of bells.
Falbe, as was his habit when interested, sat absolutely still, butreceptive and alert, instead of jerking and fidgeting as he had doneover Michael's fiasco in the Chopin prelude, and at the end he jumped upwith a certain excitement.
"Do you know what you've done?" he said. "You've done something that'sreally good. Faults? Yes, millions; but there's a first-rate imaginationat the bottom of it. How did it happen?"
Michael flushed with pleasure.
"Oh, they sang themselves," he said, "and I learned them. But will itreally do? Is there anything in it?"
"Yes, old boy, there's King Wenceslas in it, and you've dressed him upwell. Play that last one again."
The last one was taxing to the fingers, but Michael's big hands bangedout the octave scale in the bass with wonderful ease, and Falbe gave agreat guffaw of pleasure at the rollicking conclusion.
"Write them all do
wn," he said, "and try if you can hear it singing halfa dozen more. If you can, write them down also, and give me leave toplay the lot at my concert in January."
Michael gasped.
"You don't mean that?" he said.
"Certainly I do. It's a fine bit of stuff."
It was with these variations, now on the point of completion thatMichael meant to spend his solitary and rapturous evening. The spiritsof the air--whatever those melodious sprites may be--had for the lastmonth made themselves very audible to him, and the half-dozen