MUSIC NOTER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1079, 25 March 1913, Page 4

MUSIC NOTER.

A HARD WORKER

At present the Tivoli Theatre contains a- lady who is probably the hardest-working musician in the world (says a Sydney paper). Every musician is, of course, perpetually industrious ; that is to say, the instrumental musician. Everybody who has lived next door to a cornet player knows the truth of this assertion. A singer cannot practice all day long; but an instrumentalist must, and does so. Fortunately Providence has usually endowed the musician with such a love of the work that it does not seem like drudgery. A ’cellist is happiest with his ’cello '; a pianist at the piano ; and so on. Even the mouth-organ devotee never wearies of his mouth-organ. But Mdlle. Renee, of the Tivoli, is about the most industrious of them all, for she has to keep proficient on seven or eight different instruments, and she spends many hours every day renewing her acquaintance with each instrument played for a few minutes the night before. “As everybody knows,’’ she says, “Paderewski spends hours a day in exercises at the piano. So do I, and then I spend some more hours, too. From childhood I was trained as a musician, and from the time I was six years old I have never ceased diligent work at music. When I was nine, I was practising for six hours a day, and while I was at scUool my allowance was at least four or five hours. One can never afford to grow lazy in music. Whatever degree of excellence a musician is capable of reaching, he (or she) cannot maintain it without incessant trying or incessant work. The simplest exercises can never be wholly abandoned. - “In many families there are children, especially girls, who have real talent in music, though it.may not be genius; but they are never developed into the capable musicians they might be, because they are hurried forward in slipshod work without ever coming to the best standard which they could certainly be trained to. To get a child to ‘play a piece’ is the first ambition of most parents, and bad teachers gratify this. So do some teachers who ought to know better. They violate their musical consciences with most of their pupils, and concentrate their attention and their severe methods on only the very best of them. If it is to be successful musical training has to be severe. The average girl who, as the phrase goes, ‘plays nicely,’ would not be so , mournful to listen to if she had been more sternly taught by teachers who understood and did not neglect their duty. Some people, of course, are born to be better musicians than others. But anybody with a grain of musical talent will be twice as excellent by hard work and constant practice as she or he will be by idle and careless methods. More potential musicians are ruined by negligent teaching than by anything else..F