At your lessons you will have to read aloud
to me. But when you are reading to yourself, never pass over a bar that
you don't understand. It has got to sound in your head, just as the
words you read in a printed book really sound in your head if you read
carefully and listen for them. You know exactly what they would be like
if you said them aloud. Can you read, by the way? Have a try."
Falbe got down a volume of Bach and opened it at random.
"There," he said, "begin at the top of the page."
"But I can't," said Michael. "I shall have to spell it out."
"That's just what you mustn't do. Go ahead, and don't pause till you get
to the bottom of the page. Count; start each bar when it comes to its
turn, and play as many notes as you can in it."
This was a dismal experience. Michael hitherto had gone on the
painstaking and thorough plan of spelling out his notes with laborious
care. Now Falbe's inexorable voice counted for him, until it was lost in
inextinguishable laughter.
"Go on, go on!" he shouted. "I thought it was Bach, and it is clearly
Strauss's Don Quixote."
Michael, flushed and determined, with grave, set mouth, ploughed his way
through amazing dissonances, and at the end joined Falbe's laughter.
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