nounced that he was appointed a teacher in the institution. By this time he had married a Polish girl, and when he was only nineteen, the great tragedy of his life came with the death of his wife, leaving him with a son bright in mind but paralyzed in body. To this son Paderewski became the most devoted of fathers and although the boy died in youth, the great pianist was wrapped up in his life as in his own.

One has but to imagine what the effect of the routine life of the Conservatory was upon so sensitive a nature as that of the young Paderewski. From early morning to late at night he taught with little intermission. This was a kind of serfdom to a man with Paderewski's temperament. His great desire was still that of devoting himself to musical composition. It was then that he resolved to become a virtuoso in order that he might later have the leisure to become a composer. He determined to go to Leschetizky at Vienna, but stopped on the way in order to study composition with Kiel and Urban at Berlin. Kiel was one of the most renowned teachers of counterpoint of his day and was professor of composition at the Royal High School of Music. Heinrich Urban was the teacher of composition at Kullak's famous Academy. At the age of twenty-three Paderewski received the appointment of pianoforte teacher at the Strasburg Convervatory where his monthly income was so insignificant that

most American teachers would have turned up their noses at it.

It was while he was at Strasburg that Paderewski met his famous compatriot, Mme. Modjeska (Mme. Modrejewska). This distinguished artist's father had been a musician and she immediately took an interest in the artistic career of the young man with such great ambition and high ideals. Herself one of the greatest of Shakesperian actresses of the time, she was able to give the young man advice of a practical nature which he was only too glad to accept. She found in him a "polished and genial companion; a man of wide culture; of witty and sometimes biting tongue; brilliant in table talk; a man wide awake in all matters of personal interest, who knew and understood the world, but whose intimacy she and her husband especially prized for the elevation of his character and refinement of his mind."

When he was twenty-six years of age, Paderewski, encouraged by Mme. Modjeska, found himself in Vienna under the guidance of Prof. Theodore Leschetizky and his equally renowned wife, Mme. Annette Essipoff (Essipova). This was in 1886 when Leschetizky was then fifty-six years of age and had been teaching for forty years, as he began when he was only fifteen years of age. Leschetizky was what can only be described as a natural teacher. Where Pade.

rewski had found teaching in a conservatory galling to him, Leschetizky found it his life work. Indeed he taught in the St. Petersburg Conservatory for over

twenty-five years.

Leschetizky's wide experience extended from the day of his own teacher Czerny through that of his contemporaries up to the present. Naturally he took an immense interest in his fellow countryman, Paderewski, who remained his pupil for the better part of four years.

Paderewski, it should be remembered, was an accomplished musician when he went to Leschetizky. He had already made a tour of part of Russia and had been engaged in teaching advanced pupils for several years. It was this spirit of ambition to do better and still better which led the brilliant young musician to a realization of his shortcomings and the necessity for more study.

At the end of his first year with Leschetizky, Paderewski appeared in concert in Vienna and caused an immediate sensation. At the time the tendency was to attribute his great success to the special methods of Leschetizky. As a matter of fact, Leschetizky has often denied that he has any method except that employed by his Vorbereiter in removing the technical shortcomings of mature pianists whose previous training has been more or less irregular. Leschetizky him

demn any attempt to avoid the stereotyped in technical methods. Indeed, when Paderewski played in Berlin, he followed the performance of his own remarkable concerto by an encore from Chopin. Von Bülow, it is said, was so disgruntled at the ovation given to the Polish pianist that he showed his feeling by sneezing violently during the encore. The unsympathetic attitude of a few carping critics of the "Vaterland" affected the pianist so greatly that he refused to appear in Germany for some years. When he did appear, however, the public ovation given to him was exceptional in every way.

If one were asked to define Paderewski's greatness as a pianist, the best phrase to employ would doubtless be, "It is because his grasp of his art is all-comprehensive." One does not speak of "the technic of Paderewski," the "pedaling of Paderewski," the "bravoura of Paderewski," as all these and other characteristics are merged into his art so that no one feature of his work at the keyboard outshadows any other. Perhaps one of the most intelligent of all appreciations is that of Dr. William Mason, who knew the pianist intimately, and was in turn greatly admired by Paderewski. Dr. Mason writes: "The heartfelt sincerity of the man is noticeable in all that he does, and his intensity of utterance easily accounts for the strong hold he has over his audiences. Paderewski's playing

presents the beautiful contour of a living vital organism. It possesses that subtle quality expressed in some measure by the German word Sehnsucht and in English as intensity of aspiration. This quality Chopin had and Liszt frequently spoke of it. It is the undefinable poetic haze with which Paderewski invests and surrounds all that he plays that renders him so unique.'

Mr. Henry T. Finck, an intimate of Paderewski, in his excellent brochure Paderewski and His Art (now unfortunately out of print), makes the following statement: "Of Paderewski it must be said as of Chopin, Liszt and Rubinstein, that great as is his skill as a pianist, his creative power is even more remarkable. Although he is a Pole and Chopin his idol, yet his music is not an echo of Chopin's." It has been noted that Paderewski's first ambition was to become a composer; his whole life work has in fact been focused upon this firm desire. He became a pianist in order that he might purchase the leisure for composition. However, there can be no doubt that his epoch-making success as a virtuoso has so colored the public mind that it refuses to consider the master works of Paderewski while it readily admits those of less worthy composers not afflicted with a great reputation as a performer. Serious-minded musicians who have become intimately acquainted with Paderewski's compo