ABSTRACT
First-hand account of a voice student in Naples offers a reality check for readers contemplating music study abroad.
Answers to Correspondents (Music heading) p. 15 Maria L. (piano, practising, terms), Mary (music history and appreciation), Nil Desperandum (terms, guitar), Viola (terms), Nora (music history and appreciation)
Number 406 (8 October 1887) One Little Vein of Dross (Ruth Lamb) Ch. 1 pp. 17-19
Musical Mrs Beauchamp asks her prospective daughter-in-law, Olive Stafford, if she, too, is musical. Olive describes herself as loving and appreciating good music but lacking talent for it. ‘I am not even an average player’, she says. ‘I suppose, then, you play a little. Most young ladies say that, in these music-murdering days’, responds Mrs. Beauchamp, in a tone that Olive thinks unnecessarily sarcastic. ‘I do not even profess so much’, Olive replies. ‘I thought it would be waste of time to attempt what I was never likely to do well’ (p. 43). Her frankness pleases Mrs Beauchamp.
