Lanterna Rally

Author: Bettina Walker

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-12-24

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9781541288157

From the PREFACE. When the first edition of the book called 'My Musical Experiences' had gone into the press and was about to be published, I could but little have anticipated that it would have met with so favourable a reception. Not only from various parts of Great Britain and the Continent, but even from the shores of the far Pacific, I have received letters expressive of hearty sympathy and grateful thanks from both amateur and professional musicians. These letters have been to me at once a source of mingled pleasure and perplexity. In their pathetic confessions of failure, their allusions to foiled aspirations and chilled enthusiasm, they have helped me to realize, as I had, perhaps, never done before to the same degree, that in the difficulties which so often impede our upward progress, the cross currents in struggling against which so many of us lose much of our primal native power and elasticity, there is not a single individual who stands so entirely by himself as he is so often apt to imagine. The perplexity which these letters have occasioned me has been caused by the many appeals made to me for counsel and guidance-appeals that have laid on me the burthen of a responsibility which I never could have foreseen and still less desired, since they contained such questions as could never be adequately dealt with by any amount of correspondence. Among the questions which have been put to me, there is, however, one which I have no difficulty in answering, and the appearance of this second edition seems to offer a very suitable opportunity for doing so. That question is, 'What is the Henselt method?' To this I reply that it is a method of pianoforte study which may be divided into two heads-considered under two aspects. I. The purely technical or physical-a preparatory drill which, according as it may be more or less completely carried out, is intended to fit the hand for approaching and mastering every imaginable difficulty presented to us in the works of pianoforte composers. II. The mental, or that method of studying pianoforte pieces which has for its aim an intelligent appreciation of the composer's intentions, and a thorough carrying out of the same....