From the very first she will be taught to analyse a piece before she
begins to play it--she will find out the key, time, cadences, sequences,
passages of imitation, modulations, &c. If the melody be within the
range of the child's voice she will then sing it, beating time as she
does so. After these preliminaries it is only a question of technique to
learn to play it. The last stage will consist in learning the piece by
heart. The day has long gone by when it was considered a sign of
exceptional musical gift to be able to do this. All experienced teachers
know that, provided a child is having its ear trained by some such
method as that suggested above, it can learn a piece of music by heart
almost entirely away from the piano. That is to say, instead of the
wearisome repetitions which were formerly necessary before a piece could
be played by heart, it is possible, directly the technique is mastered,
and in many cases before this is done, to learn the piece away from the
piano.
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