There are, roughly speaking, three classes of interpreters in Music: performers or executants, composers, and teachers. The function of each of these is, by a special sensitiveness, to apprehend the message of spirit, and then, by their own technique and in their own particular way, to pass it on for the benefit of others. In the body the nervous system, which is the link between spirit and matter, serves somewhat the same purpose. Spirit is too tenuous to be able to act directly upon the comparatively inert matter of the body, but through the medium of the brain and nervous system it makes contact with spirit at the one end, and at the other the nerves control the muscular system, which effects the necessary and desired movements. Thus the spirit in music is sensed by the artist in solitude and communion, and is given out by him to the multitude in public. The artist thus necessarily has two sides to his work, the inner and the outer, the artistic and the technical. No amount of technique alone will ever make an artist, nor will artistic or spiritual perception by itself enable the message to secure adequate treatment. Both sides are indispensable. But there has been far too much worship of mere technique in Music, until at times even the fact that there has been any message at all has been overlooked. In times, happily now gone by, a simple melody which perhaps by itself might have conveyed a homely message, has been smothered under showers of variations, decked out in wearisome arpeggios, and entangled in meaningless scales, until it has reminded one of nothing so much as a vulgar and greatly over-dressed woman: and yet this has been looked upon as music. Technique is indeed necessary, but only as a means to an end. Directly it begins to obscure the meaning, or is developed for its own sake without reference to its task, it is missing the mark. It puts itself on a par with the stupidity that leads a man to undertake to play the piano for twenty-four hours without stopping.