This evil is at its worst in piano music. Our famous teachers, like Marmontel and Le Couppey, have published editions of the classics which are full of their own directions. But the player is forewarned; it is the Marmontel or Le Couppey edition and makes no pretence of authenticity. In Germany, however, there are supposedly authentic editions, based on the originals, but which superimpose their own pernicious inventions on the author's text. The touch of the piano used to be different from what it is to-day. The directions in Mozart's and Beethoven's works show that they used the execution of stringed instruments as their model. The touch was lighter and the fingers were raised so that the notes were separated slightly, and not run together except when indicated. The supposition is that this must have led to a dryness of tone. I remember to have heard in my childhood some old people whose playing was singularly hopping. Then, there came a reaction, and with it a passion for slurring the notes. When I was Stamaty's pupil, it was considered most difficult to "tie" the notes; that required, however, only dexterity and suppleness. "When she learns to 'tie,' she will know how to play," said the mother of a young pianist. Nevertheless, the trick of perpetual _legato_ becomes exceedingly monotonous and takes away all character from the pianoforte classics. But it is insisted on everywhere in the modern German editions. Throughout there are connections seemingly interminable in length, and indications of _legato_, _sempre legato_, which the author not only did not indicate, but in places where it is easy to see that he intended the exact opposite. If this is the case, what shall be said of marking the fingering on all the notes--which often makes good playing impossible. Liszt taught hundreds of pupils according to the best principles, yet such erroneous principles have prevailed! Disciples of the ivory keys are numerous in our day. Everybody wants to have a piano, and everybody plays it or thinks he does, which is not always the same thing, and few really understand what the term "to play the piano," so currently used, means.