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in the true sense is impossible. He even found difficulty in starting at a given tempo; nay, he even sometimes shrank from giving any initial beat, so that some energetic pioneer would begin without waiting for the signal, and without incurring Schumann's wrath! Besides this, any thorough practice, bit by bit, with his orchestra, with instructive remarks by the way as to the mode of execution, was impossible to this great artist, who in this respect was a striking contrast to Mendelssohn. He would have a piece played through, and if it did not answer to his wishes, have it repeated. If it went no better the second or perhaps third time, he would be extremely angry at what he considered the clumsiness, or even the ill-will of the players; but detailed remarks he never made.

This estimate of Schumann's work as a conductor demonstrates unmistakably that he failed in this particular field, not because his musical scholarship was not adequate, but because he did not have that peculiar ability which enables one man to dominate others; viz., a sense of leadership, or personal magnetism, as it is often called. Seidl asserts^[1] that Berlioz, Massenet, and Saint-Saëns likewise failed as conductors, in spite of recognized musicianship; and it is of course well known that even Beethoven and Brahms could not conduct their own works as well as some of their contemporaries whose names are now almost forgotten.

The feeling that one has the power to cause others to do one's will seems in most cases to be inborn, at least certain children display it at a very early age; and it is usually the boys and girls who decide on the playground what games shall be played next, or what mischief shall now be entered upon, who later on become leaders in their several fields of activity. And yet this sense of leadership, or something closely approximating it, may also be acquired, at least to a certain extent, by almost any one who makes a consistent and intelligent attempt in this direction. It is this latter fact which may encourage those of us who are not naturally as gifted along these lines as we should like to be, and it is because of this possibility of acquiring what in conducting amounts

1. Seidl, The Music of the Modern World, Vol. 1, p. 106.