Friedrich Wieck

“ Is your beautiful voice and your talent to disappear like a meteor, as others have done? or do you hope that the soft air of Italy will in time restore a voice once ruined? I fall into a rage when I think of the many beautiful voices which have been spoiled, and have dwindled away without leaving a trace during the last forty years; and I vent my overflowing heart in a brief notice of the many singing-teachers, whose rise and influence I have watched for twenty years past. ”

“ Are you not aware that a light and agreeable, but at the same time firm and decided, accompaniment encourages and sustains the singer, and also assists and inspires her? You ought, in every way, to seek to cultivate in your pupil the feeling for the right, the true, and the beautiful; but what is the girl of eighteen to think of your culture and your sentiment, if you pound the keys as if you were one of the "piano-furies"? ”

“ My dear Miss ——, —You are endowed with an admirable gift for singing, and your agreeable though not naturally powerful voice has vivacity and youthful charm, as well as a fine tone: you also possess much talent in execution; yet you nevertheless share the lot of almost all your sisters in art, who, whether in Vienna, Paris, or Italy, find only teachers who are rapidly helping to annihilate the opera throughout Europe, and are ruling out of court the simple, noble, refined, and true art of singing. ”

“ I here present to the musical public a book written in a style of my own, not a scientific and systematically well-arranged treatise. This no reasonable man would expect of an old music-master, who, in his long practice in the realm of tones, could not arrive at learned and too often fruitless deductions. Nature made me susceptible to that which is good and beautiful; a correct instinct and a tolerable understanding have taught me to avoid the false and the vicious; a desire for increased knowledge has led me to observe carefully whatever I met with in my path in life ”

“ Of what importance is the musical value of a composition, if it can only be sung with doubtful success, and if the voice is obliged to struggle with it, instead of having it under control? You attach less importance to the free, agreeable exercise of the voice than does the unanimous public. I do not wish to excite compassion, but to give pleasure by a beautifully developed style of singing. You pay some attention to adaptability to the piano or the violin: why are you usually regardless of fitness for the voice? ”

“ In reply to these and similar questions, I will ask, Why does she wish always to remain Jenny Lind? why does she endeavor to preserve her voice as long as possible? why does she select operas in which she may use her pure, artistic, refined mode of singing, which permits no mannerism, no hypocritical sentiment, and which possesses an ideal beauty? why does she choose operas in which she can give the most perfect possible image of her own personality? ”

“ Many performers, seized with a piano madness, play a grand bravoura piece, excite themselves fearfully, clatter up and down through seven octaves of runs, with the pedal constantly raised,—bang away, put the best piano out of tune in the first twenty bars,—snap the strings, knock the hammers off their bearings, perspire, stroke the hair out of their eyes, ogle [66] the audience, and make love to themselves. Suddenly they are seized with a sentiment! They come to a piano or pianissimo, and, no longer content with one pedal, they take the soft pedal while the loud pedal is still resounding. ”

“ Even the greatest beauties in art can lead to mannerism, and this again to one-sidedness. Art should be many-sided, and you must never produce the impression that you are inclined to make the means an end. I beg you to reflect that too much practice of very wide stretches enfeebles the muscles and the power of the hand and fingers, endangers an even, sound touch, and makes the best style of playing a doubtful acquisition. ”

“ Our piano performers must have lost their sense of hearing! What is all this growling and buzzing? Alas, it is only the groaning of the [60] wretched piano-forte, upon which one of the modern virtuosos, with a heavy beard and long hanging locks, whose hearing has deserted him, is blustering away on a bravoura piece, with the pedal incessantly raised,—with inward satisfaction and vain self-assertion! Truly time brings into use a great deal that is far from beautiful: does, then, this raging piano revolutionist think it beautiful to bring the pedal into use at every bar? ”

“ Should this senseless raging and storming upon the piano, where not one idea can be intelligently expressed in a half-hour, this abhorrent and rude treatment of a grand concert piano, combined with frightful misuse of both pedals, which puts the hearer into agonies of horror and spasms of terror, ever be regarded as any thing but a return to barbarism, devoid of feeling and reason? ”

“ I am more and more convinced that a style of instruction which is illogical, intermittent, superficial, and without method, can lead to no good result, or at least to nothing satisfactory, even with extraordinary talents; and that the unsound and eccentric manifestations and caricatures of art, which cause the present false and deplorable condition of piano-playing, are the consequence of such a prevalent mode of instruction. ”

“ I implore you to abandon the concert platform, your battle-field! Hack at the piano no longer! Find positions on a railroad or in a factory. There you may perhaps make yourselves useful; while by the lessons you give (for it usually comes to that, after you have travelled all over the world) you will only ruin our young people, now growing up with promising talent for piano-playing, and will produce successors like yourselves, but not artists. ”

“ Who finds fault now with their musical culture, with their sound taste, or their want of love for classical music? What a long road a [139] child has to travel through Etudes of Cramer, Moscheles, and Chopin, before he comes to Bach's Well-tempered Clavichord, or before he is able, or ought even, to study Beethoven's Sonate Pathétique! It is not well, though quite in the spirit of the times, to condemn without experience, from one's own prejudiced point of view, the methods which those skilled in their business have for years successfully tried and practised. ”

“ Sweet melodies on those instruments may afford an agreeable companionship for the painter in his rambles through the woods and over the hills; but piano-playing should be the friend of a life-time, ennobled by the elevating enjoyment of lofty master-works. Therefore, I beg you, do not dissipate your powers too much. Leave the art of painting to your friends, who are either without talent for music, or who have no opportunity to study it. Our short lives do not allow the successful practice of several arts. Of what advantage to our higher culture is it to be able to do ten things tolerably well ”

“ Your influence, and more especially your ideas about singing, belong only to a past age. They date from the last century. You will be derided with your Jenny Lind and Henrietta Sontag. They are lifeless images of singers, to be kept in a glass case. Are you willing to remain ignorant of the magnificent modern style of voice? Can you not go forward with the advancing age? Progressive philosophers will rap you over the knuckles. ”

“ In many respects, the piano and singing should explain and supplement each other. They should mutually assist in expressing the sublime and the noble, in forms of unclouded beauty. My book will make this evident to many; but whether it will succeed with all, I doubt. Not a few will even be found who will lay aside my book with contempt, and who will scorn the zeal of the "man of the past age." ”

“ It is possible to make pupils musical in the above way, but they will be only dull, clumsy bunglers on the piano; not fine artists, who alone can give a worthy and noble interpretation of classical music. I desire that my daughters may never forget my well-considered instructions, sustained by the experience of many years; and that they may, in grateful remembrance of their father and teacher, repay to their pupils what they owe to him. ”

“ A piano-player, with a rigid, strained, and vicious touch, proceeding from the arm, may play a great deal, but his playing is thoroughly vulgar and without beauty. He feels this himself, and the playing of my pupils pleases him better. He wishes me to change his style to their better manner; but he still continues to pound, to bang, to exaggerate, and to play in his own way, and only wishes his style to be improved, and his power of execution to be increased. ”

“ How can you educate artists and virtuosos, when you yourself are so little a virtuoso? You are not even a composer or learned contrapuntist. A teacher of music wins much greater consideration, if he himself plays concertos and composes pretty things, and if he can calculate and give vent to his genius in double and triple fugues, and in inverse and retrograde canons. You cannot even accompany your pupils with the violin or flute, which is certainly very useful and improving. ”

“ You may as well ask whether our great literary men and artists always like to go to school, or whether they did not delight in a holiday. Let this be the answer to the strange question, Do your daughters like to play? Good heavens! After they are able to play, and that without much effort, and a little at sight; when they can master, with a musical appreciation, easy, graceful salon music, or even the easier compositions of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Hummel, Moscheles, &c.,—then they take pleasure in playing, and they play a great deal, and with enthusiasm. ”

“ The finest voices are obliged to practise with full breath until they shriek, and the result is mere sobbing, and the heavy drawing of the breath, just at the time when the tone should still be heard. ”

“ There are, also, even in the provincial cities, teachers who are not only musical, but who also possess so much zeal and talent for teaching that many of their pupils are able to play tolerably well. I will add further, that the taste for music is much more cultivated and improved, even in small places, by singing-societies and by public and private concerts, than was formerly the case. We also have much better aids in instruction books, études, and suitable piano pieces; but still we find everywhere "jingling" and "piano-banging," as you express it, and yet no piano-playing. ”

“ If they do not take pains in the right way, or at the right time and place, it is all labor in vain. Of what use is mere unskilful, stupid industry? For instance, when a teacher, in order to correct a stiff use of the fingers and wrist, and the general faulty touch [39] of his pupil, gives some wonderful étude or a piece with great stretches and arpeggios for the left hand, and gives himself unwearied trouble over it, it is a proof of abundant painstaking; but it is labor thrown away, and only makes the imperfect mode of performance the worse. ”

“ Alas, all those who do not understand me, or who choose to misunderstand me, those are the worst!—especially the ill-natured people, the classical people who bray about music, stride straight to the notes, and have no patience till they come to Beethoven; who foolishly prate and fume about my unclassical management, but at bottom only wish to conceal their own unskilfulness, their want of culture and of disinterestedness, or to excuse their habitual drudgery. Lazy [16] people without talent I cannot undertake to inspirit, to teach, and to cultivate. ”

“ I have always been something new and different, in every lesson and with every child; I have always kept up a cheerful, joyous courage, and this has usually kindled the same in my pupil, because it came from the heart. Moreover, I have never been a man of routine, have never shown myself a pedant, who is obliged to hold fast to certain ideas and views. ”

“ My daughters play the music of all the principal composers, and also the best salon music. Limited views of any kind are injurious to art. It is as great a mistake to play only Beethoven's music as to play none of it, or to play either classical or salon music solely. If a teacher confines himself to the study of the first, a good technique, a tolerably sound style of playing, intelligence, and knowledge are generally sufficient to produce an interpretation in most respects satisfactory. ”

“ Could not you cultivate the mechanical powers of your pupil, and combine an understanding of the musical construction of the piece, with her "playing at sight"? The young lady, not to speak of other faults, has no tone on the piano.
Mr. Feeble. She can use the pedal for that, and, when she is older, she will acquire more strength; her touch is a little too weak at present. And, besides, she is not to play in public for money, but only in company, and because it is the fashion. Indeed, my dear sir, if I insisted on scales and exercises, I should have very few lessons in this city. ”