Although the motion is slight, the contrast between
that and a pianist stiff and rigid with superfluous tension is, very
marked, and the difference in touch when one relaxes to the music
with free channels has been very clearly proved. Beside this, the
freedom in mechanism which follows the exercises for arms and hands
is strikingly noticeable.
With the violin, the same physical equilibrium of motion must be
gained; in fact it is equally necessary in all musical performance,
as the perfect freedom of the body is always necessary before it can
reach its highest power in the use of any secondary instrument.
In painting, the freer a body is the more perfectly the mind can
direct it. How often we can see clearly in our minds a straight line
or a curve or a combination of both, but our hands will not obey the
brain, and the picture fails. It does not by any means follow that
with free bodies we can direct the hand at once to whatever the
brain desires, but simply that by making the body free, and so a
perfect servant of the mind, it can be brought to obey the mind in a
much shorter time and more directly, and so become a truer channel
for whatever the mind wishes to accomplish.
In the highest art, whatever form it may take, the law of simplicity
is perfectly illustrated.
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