The standing of my first music school and the level of the instruction I must have received there can best be conveyed by a few words about the owner-director, a rotund Swabian with the German name of Schoeller or Schnoeller. This purveyor of music instruction, a somewhat grotesque combination of crank and charlatan, fancied himself in the role of inventor of new-fangled mechanical musical instruments. The monstrosity he demonstrated one evening at a pupils’ concert, where he was assured of a docile and long-suffering audience made up of parents, aunts, and governesses, was typical of him: a frightening contraption of steel, horsehair, and rubber – a cross between a Swiss music-box, a hurdy-gurdy, and a violin-playing robot called the Violonola which Leipzig tried to inflict on the pre-radio and pre-juke-box world. The weird, whining sounds it gave out still haunt me. << less