OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES ON " PIANO POUNDING."

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1883, 3 July 1888, Page 3

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES ON " PIANO POUNDING."

I don't like your chopped music anyway. That woman— she bad more sense m her head than forty musical societies — Florence Nightingale, says the musio yon pour out is good for sick folk, but the music you pound out isn't. Not that exactly but something like it. I have been to hear some musio pound* lnp, Ik was a young woman, with as many while muslin flounces round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it, I She gave the music stool a twirl or two, [ and fluffed down on lt like a whirl of soap suda m a band basin. ! Then she pulled np her cuffa ss If Bhe was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked her limba and hands — to limber them, f suppose— and spread out her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the keys from tbe growing end to the squeaky one. Then ttoie two hands of hers made a jump at the keys as If they were a couple of tiger coming down on a flock of black and white sheep, and the piano gave a great howl as if It's tail had been trod on ; Dead ■ op— bo still you could haar yonr hair growing. Then another jump and another howl as if the piano bad two tails and you had trod on both of tbem at onco ; and then a grand scramble and string of jumps, up and dowo, backward and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats and mice more than like anythlug I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like Ito hear a fiddle slag ; but these noises they hammer out of their wood and ivory anvils — don't talk to. ms. I know the difference between a bull-frog and a thrush.