[Illustration: JACQUES THIBAUD, with signature]
"Marsick was a teacher of this type. At each of the lessons I took from him at the _Conservatoire_ (we went to him three days a week), he would give me a new _étude_--Gavinies, Rode, Fiorillo, Dont--to prepare for the next lesson. We also studied all of Paganini, and works by Ernst and Spohr. For our bow technic he employed difficult passages made into _études_. Scales--the violinist's daily bread--we practiced day in, day out. Marsick played the piano well, and could improvise marvelous accompaniments on his violin when his pupils played. I continued my studies with Marsick even after I left the _Conservatoire_. With him I believe that three essentials--absolute purity of pitch, equality of tone and sonority of tone, in connection with the bow--are the base on which everything else rests.
THE MECHANICAL VERSUS THE NATURAL IN VIOLIN PLAYING
"Sevčik's purely soulless and mechanical system has undoubtedly produced a number of excellent mechanicians of the violin. But it has just as unquestionably killed real talent. Kubelik--there was a genuinely talented violinist! If he had had another teacher instead of Sevčik he would have been great, for he had great gifts. Even as it was he played well, but I consider him one of Sevčik's victims. As an illustration of how the technical point of view is thrust to the fore by this system I remember some fifteen years ago Kubelik and I were staying at the same villa in Monte-Carlo, where we were to play the Beethoven concerto, each of us, in concert, two days apart. Kubelik spent the live-long day before the concert practicing Sevčik exercises. I read and studied Beethoven's score, but did not touch my violin. I went to hear Kubelik play the concerto, and he played it well; but then, so did I, when my turn came. And I feel sure I got more out of it musically and spiritually, than I would have if instead of concentrating on its meaning, its musical message, I had prepared the concerto as a problem in violin mechanics whose key was contained in a number of dry technical exercises arbitrarily laid down.
"Technic, in the case of the more advanced violinist, should not have a place in the foreground of his consciousness. I heard Rubinstein play when a boy--what did his false notes amount to compared with his wonderful manner of disclosing the spirit of the things he played! Planté, the Parisian pianist, a kind of keyboard cyclone, once expressed the idea admirably to an English society lady. She had told him he was a greater pianist than Rubinstein, because the latter played so many wrong notes. 'Ah, Madame,' answered Planté, 'I would rather be able to play Rubinstein's wrong notes than all my own correct ones.' A violinist's natural manner of playing is the one he should cultivate; since it is individual, it really represents him. And a teacher or a colleague of greater fame does him no kindness if he encourages him to distrust his own powers by too good naturedly 'showing' him how to do this, that or the other. I mean, when the student can work out his problem himself at the expense of a little initiative.