The written language of music must become so familiar to you that it is to you precisely what a book or a newspaper is, so that whether you read it aloud--which is playing--or sit in your arm-chair with your feet on the fender, reading it not aloud on the piano, but to yourself, it conveys its definite meaning to you.

At your lessons you will have to read aloud to me.

But when you are reading to yourself, never pass over a bar that you don't understand.

It has got to sound in your head, just as the words you read in a printed book really sound in your head if you read carefully and listen for them.

You know exactly what they would be like if you said them aloud.