"Too many Americans who take up the violin professionally," Maud Powell
told the writer, "do not realize that the mastery of the instrument is
a life study, that without hard, concentrated work they cannot reach the
higher levels of their art. Then, too, they are too often inclined to
think that if they have a good tone and technic that this is all they
need. They forget that the musical instinct must be cultivated; they do
not attach enough importance to musical surroundings: to hearing and
understanding music of every kind, not only that written for the violin.
They do not realize the value of _ensemble_ work and its influence as an
educational factor of the greatest artistic value. I remember when I was
a girl of eight, my mother used to play the Mozart violin sonatas with
me; I heard all the music I possibly could hear; I was taught harmony
and musical form in direct connection with my practical work, so that
theory was a living thing to me and no abstraction. In my home town I
played in an orchestra of twenty pieces--Oh, no, not a 'ladies
orchestra'--the other members were men grown! I played chamber music as
well as solos whenever the opportunity offered, at home and in public.
In fact music was part of my life.
[Illustration: MAUD POWELL, with hand-written note]
"No student who looks on music primarily as a thing apart in his
existence, as a bread-winning tool, as a craft rather than an art,
can ever mount to the high places. So often girls [who sometimes lack
the practical vision of boys], although having studied but a few years,
come to me and say: 'My one ambition is to become a great _virtuoso_ on
the violin! I want to begin to study the great concertos!' And I have to
tell them that their first ambition should be to become musicians--to
study, to know, to understand music before they venture on its
interpretation. Virtuosity without musicianship will not carry one far
these days. In many cases these students come from small inland towns,
far from any music center, and have a wrong attitude of mind. They crave
the glamor of footlights, flowers and applause, not realizing that music
is a speech, an idiom, which they must master in order to interpret the
works of the great composers.