Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-04-05
A MUSICAL PRODIGY

zone of the members of the sedate and
highly respectable family that lives in the
fiat right beneath mine," said the man
with the haunted, worried look and the ner-
vous, jerky manner. is little girl about
twelve years Of age. She is nice, tidy,
pleasant-mannered little girl too-but
wish, sometimes that her father hadn't
secured the government job that brought
him to Washington. Otherwise, he would
probably have remained in northern Mis-
souri, with his family, including that nice,
tidy, pleasant-mannered little girl.
Why? Well, the little girl r. taking les
sons as they say, on the pianoforte. She
goes to school, of course, and therefore she
has to do lot OF her practicing in the
morning. She begins about o'clock in the
morning, an hour at which before that
family moved into their fat I was usually
employed in dreaming of money and gilt
edged securities and other glorious, if i'm
possible, things. The little girl has
rived at that stage of her musical instruc-
ton at which she Is permitted by her
teacher to take up pieces She has quite
list of pieces on her little list now, and
the things that she does to 'em during the
early morning hour or so would never,
never do to print.
She begins the morning with about ten
minutes of Duvernay scales. She always
whacks two side-by-side keys with each fin
ger III uollS lnlS, out tnat QOeSn seem TO
bother her at all, her main idea being, it
would seem, to get through with the scale
business just as quickly as possible, in or
der to reach her pieceplaying perform
ance.
"Duvernay having been butchered, quar-
tered, sliced into sections, sailed and put
away, this nice little girl with the pleasant
manners puts 'Silvery Waves on the rack
In more ways than one-and proceeds to
make that fmmemorialb bore Of composition
sound like-wen, like as if a mule were play
ing a xylophone solo on a pair of Venetian
blinds, If such thing could be. 1t is in
the variations that the nice little girl
makes every moment of 'Silvery Waves
an incredibly long-drawn-out agony.
'Silvery Waves having been played off
the boards, to employ a slangism of the
race course, the nice little girl gets the
thumbscrews on Verdis immortal Mise
rere from IL Trovatore.' Now, I don't
yield to anybody in my reverence for the
'Mlserere.' l don't suppose there could be
a more noble and inspiring melody than
that. But 1t was assuredly never designed
to be played as rag-time composition.
That's how the nice little girl below me
plays 1t. She works in all the syncopa-
tlon or rag time very skillfully. She
makes the 'Mserere' sound like SOM thing
that ought to have words fitted to it about
NAH coal-tar lady or NAH crap-shootin
papy, and am always, oh, so glad when
she gets through executing that compost
t1on-yes, executing is the word
Being by this time in a lightsome, frol-
icsome mood. the nice little girl hungecs
for something light and airy. SO she takes
down The Frolic Of the Frogs Waltz
She's got this one down so pat, It having
been her first piece that she can play
the whole thing from beginning to end
IN something less than forty-two seconds,
ana that's the way she plays it. If f|rass-
hoppers could waltz to the dead gallon
that she makes of that three-quarter time
composition, they'd never get caught by
small boys and be made to spit tobacco
juice
''she follows this up with 1.-THE Little
Fisher Maiden which by some strange
trick Of fancy she seems to imagine Is a
rollicking Jig or buck dance. She seems
to entertain the same notion with respect
to My Queen Waltz which is her next
performance. 1t takes her all of seventy
four seconds-I timed her-to play NV
Queen Waltz from beginning to end, and,
at that. she appears to think she has
wasted time, for she scarcely gets through
with that before she sprints into Pure AS
Snow which she renders as If it were a
dance for marionettes. Then she gets back
to the waves mood by going at Waves OF
the Ocean, which she performs as if it had
performed 'Everybody's Darling with great
slowness and elaboration, exactly the way
1t hadn't ought to be played, she launches
into The Maidens Prayer which sounds
like a runaway monograph If any maiden
ever tried to pray to the pace set by this
little girl she'd establish a worlds record
for the greatest number Of uttered words
within the space of one minute
She is just winding up gloriously with
her first old love, the vindictive and devil
ish 'chopsticks,' when her mother calls her
to breakfast Along about 6 o'clock In the
evening. when I'm just settling down to
read my Star paper, she goes through the
whole thing again. only doing Il backward
this time, winding up with the maddening
Duvernay.
shes a nice. tidy. pleasant hammered
little girl. as 1 say. but. oh. If her father
had only failed to pass his civil service
examination