Note 62 — Chapter VII

In the getting-up of Concertos for the annual Concours in Paris, the Violin students exercise a perseverance and length of labour truly surprising; and, in the result, such is the perfect manner in which the same Concerto is executed successively by sometimes a dozen candidates, that it would puzzle the most skilful judges to discriminate the individual to whom the prize should be awarded. In such cases, were it not for the subsequent resource—the safe and certain test of sight-playing, which brings into operation the intellect as well as the hand—it would perhaps be impossible to give a single decision that should not be open to dispute. Thus great is the power of execution which practice confers—and thus rigorous, the need of that practice!