Harriette Brower

“ If a pupil comes to me who has played a great deal but with no idea of the principles of piano playing, who does not know how to handle herself or the keyboard, it is absolutely necessary to stop everything and get ready to play. If you attempt even a simple sonata with no legato touch, no idea of chord or scale playing, you can not make the piece sound like anything. It is like a painter trying to paint without brushes, or an artist attempting to make a pen and ink drawing with a blunt lead pencil; to do good work you must have the tools to work with. ”

“ The vital thing in piano playing is to bring out the composer's meaning, plus your own inspiration and feeling. You must study deeply into the composer's idea, but you must also put your own feeling, intensity and emotion into the piece. And not only must you feel the meaning yourself, but you must play it in a way to touch others. There are many pianists who are not cultured musicians; who think they know their Beethoven because they can play a few sonatas. In music 'knowledge is power.' We need all possible knowledge, but we also need to feel the inspiration. ”

“ The mistake made by many teachers is to give far too difficult music. Why should I teach an old war-horse which the pupil has to struggle over for six months without being really able to master, and which he will thoroughly hate at the end of that time? The Scherzo Op. 31, of Chopin, and the Liszt Rhapsodies he can hear in the concert room, where he can become familiar with most of the famous piano compositions. Why should he not learn to know many less hackneyed pieces, which do not so frequently appear on concert programs? ”

“ The surest way to learn a difficult composition, is to write it out from memory. There is a great deal of benefit in that. If you want to remember the name of a person or a place, you write it down. When the eye sees it, the mind retains a much more vivid impression. This is visual memory. When I play with orchestra, I of course know every note the orchestra has to play as well as my own part. It is a much greater task to write out a score from memory than a piano solo, yet it is the surest way to fix the composition in mind. ”

“ One of the greatest teachers of our time holds that personal inspiration is not necessary; for the feeling is all in the music itself. All we have to do is to play with such and such a dynamic quality of tone. Like a country doctor measuring out his drugs, this master apportions so many grains of power for forte, for mezzo, for piano, and so on. This plan puts a damper on individuality and enthusiasm, for it means that everything must be coldly calculated. Such playing does not really warm the heart.
"I believe in teaching tonal contrasts and tone color even to a beginner. ”

“ Relaxation is a hobby with me; I believe in absolute freedom in every part of the arm anatomy, from the shoulder down to the finger-tips. Stiffness seems to me the most reprehensible thing in piano playing, as well as the most common fault with all kinds of players. When people come to play for me, that is the thing I see first in them, the stiffness. While living in Berlin, I saw much of Mme. Teresa Carreño, and she feels the same as I do about relaxation, not only at the keyboard, but when sitting, moving about or walking. ”

“ If a pupil comes to me whose powers of concentration have not been awakened or developed, I sometimes give him music to read over very slowly, so slowly that every note, phrase and finger mark can be distinctly seen. Not being used to thinking intently, mistakes occur, in one hand or the other, showing that the mind was not sufficiently concentrated. It is the mind every time that wins. Without using our mental powers to their fullest extent we fail of the best that is in us. ”

“ I do not believe in spending a lot of time in such practise, for I feel it is time wasted and leads nowhere. I do not believe, for instance, in the struggle to play a perfectly even scale. A scale should never be 'even,' for it must be full of variety and life. A perfectly even scale is on a dead level; it has no life; it is machine-made. The only sense in which the word 'even' may be applied to a scale is for its rhythmic quality; but even in this sense a beautiful scale has slight variations, so that it is never absolutely regular, either in tone or rhythm. ”

“ The time has gone by when the musician and composer was considered a sort of freak, knowing music and nothing else. We know the great composers were men of the highest intelligence and learning, men whose aim was to work out their genius to the utmost perfection. Nothing less than the highest would satisfy them. As George Eliot said, 'Genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains.' Think of the care Beethoven took with every phrase, how many times he did it over, never leaving it till he was satisfied. ”

“ The piano is such a revealer of character; I need only to hear a person play to know what sort of character he has. If one is inclined to much careful detail in everything, it comes out in the playing. If one is indolent and indifferent, it is seen the moment one touches the keys; or if one is built on broad, generous lines, and sees the dramatic point in life and things, all this is revealed at the piano. ”

“ When one has frequently listened to a favorite pianist in the concert room, and has studied impersonally, so to speak, the effects of touch, tone and interpretation produced during a recital, it is a satisfaction and delight to come into personal touch with the artist in the inner circle of the home; to be able to speak face to face with one who has charmed thousands from the platform, and to discuss freely the points which impress one when listening to a public performance. ”

“ To render the playing expressive by the contrast of light and shade, by tonal gradations, by all varieties of touch, by all the subtleties of nuance, is a great art, and only the most gifted ever master it in its perfection. These are the things that enchant us in Paderewski's performance, and in the tonal coloring of Gabrilowitsch. Hofmann's playing is a marvel of atmosphere and color; such playing is an object lesson to students, a lesson in variety of light and shade, the shifting of exquisite tonal tints. ”

“ To be a true teacher of the piano is a high calling indeed; for there are many pedagogues but comparatively few real teachers. I make a distinction between the two. A pedagogue is one who, filled with many rules and much learning, endeavors to pour his knowledge into the pupil; whereas the true teacher seeks to draw out what is in the pupil. He strives to find what the pupil has aptitude for, what he likes to do and can do best. The teacher must be something of a psychologist, or how can he correctly judge of the pupil's temperament, his tastes, his mentality, and what to do for him? ”

“ Let us use the word technic in its large sense, the sense which includes all that pertains to the executive side of piano playing. It is in this significance that Harold Bauer calls technic "an art in itself." Mme. Bloomfield Zeisler says: "Piano technic includes so much! Everything goes into it: arithmetic, grammar, diction, language study, poetry, history and painting. In the first stages there are rules to be learned, just as in any other study. I must know the laws of rhythm and meter to be able to punctuate musical phrases and periods. ”

“ Some one has said that the factors in playing are a trinity of H's—head, hand and heart. I try at once to awaken thought, to give a wider outlook, to show that piano playing is the expression, through the medium of tone, of all that the poet, painter and philosopher are endeavoring to show through other means: to this end I endeavor to stimulate interest in the wonders of the visible universe, the intellectual achievements of men and the deep things of spiritual discernment. ”

“ In short the pianist draws from many sources the experience, the feeling and emotion with which he strives to inspire the tones he evokes from his instrument. The keener his perceptions, the more he labors, suffers, and lives, the more he will be able to express through his chosen medium—the piano! ”

“ He attends a piano recital and acquires many ideas of touch, tone, phrasing and interpretation; he hears a great singer or violinist and absorbs a wholly new set of thoughts, or he listens to a grand orchestra, and gains more than from all the others. Then there is life to study from: experience—living—loving: all go into the work of the musician. A musical career is indeed the most exacting one that can be chosen.
"I have been asked whether I prefer to play for an audience of 'music-lovers' or one of 'music knowers.' Perhaps an equal mixture is the happy medium. ”

“ The Melody Hand is weighty and 'dead,' so to speak. The touch is made with flat fingers; the ball of the finger comes in contact with the key, the whole arm, hand and fingers are relaxed—as loose as possible. You caress the keys as though you loved them, as though they were a very part of you; you cling to them as to something soft, velvety or downy—with pressure, pressure, pressure, always. ”

“ There must be a firm and rock-like basis for piano playing; such a foundation can only be laid by patient and persevering slow practise. If the player has not the control over his fingers to play a piece slowly, he certainly cannot play it fast. Slow practise—one difficulty at a time—one hand at a time; Napoleon's tactics, 'one division at a time,' applies to music study. Above all do not hurry in fugue playing, a universal fault. Bach needs a slower trill than modern music. Chords are not to be played with percussion but with pressure. The main things in piano playing are tone and sentiment. ”

“ Edwin Hughes, the American pianist and teacher in Munich, remarks: "Technic is the mechanical part of music making; to keep it in running order one must be constantly tinkering with it, just as the engine driver with his locomotive or the chauffeur with his automobile. Every intelligent player recognizes certain exercises as especially beneficial to the mechanical well-being of his playing; from these he will plan his daily schedule of technical practise." ”

“ How shall two such opposites as rhythm and tone color be connected, even in name, some will ask. One belongs to the mechanical side of piano playing, while the other appertains to the ideal, the poetic, the soulful. The two subjects, however, are not so wide apart as might at first appear; for the beauty and variety of the second depends largely upon the mastery of the first. You must play rhythmically before you can play soulfully; you must first be able to keep time before you can attempt to express color and emotion through any fluctuation of rhythm. ”

“ The true artist will never give a mechanical performance. At one time he may be in a tender, melting mood; at another in a daring or exalted one. He must be free to play as he feels, and he will be artist enough never to overstep bounds. The pianist who plays with true feeling and 'heart' can never play the same composition twice exactly alike, for he can never feel precisely the same twice. This, of course, applies more especially to public performance and playing for others. ”

“ The house is large and comfortable—built over a hundred years ago; its rooms are spacious, and the drawing-room and library, which lead one into the other, form a fine music salon. Surely, amid such surroundings, with priceless pictures and objets d'art all about, with exquisite colors, with space and quiet, an artist must find an ideal spot for both work and play. ”

“ Let us take, for instance, one who has had lessons for years but is in ignorance of first principles. Arms and wrists are stiff, hands and fingers held in cramped position; no freedom anywhere. My first move is to have the pupil stand and learn to relax arms, shoulders and body; then learn to breathe. But relaxation, even at first, is not the only thing; after devitalization comes organization, firmness and solidity—in the right places. It must be understood at the very beginning that piano playing is far more than sitting before the instrument working the fingers six or seven hours a day. ”

“ To take a pupil at his present point, and carry him along was also Liszt's idea. He did not like to change a hand position to which the player has grown accustomed for one which seems unnatural, and which the pianist has to work a long time to acquire. He felt that one's time could be spent to more advantage. There are so many legitimate positions, each hand is a separate study, and is apt to take the position most natural to itself. ”

“ My master took more and more interest in my progress and career: he was at pains to explain the meaning of music to me—the ideas of the composers. Many fashionable people took lessons of him, for to study with Pugno had become a fad; but he called me his only pupil, saying that I alone understood him. I can truly say he was my musical father; to him I owe everything. We were neighbors in a suburb of Paris, as my parents' home adjoined his; we saw a great deal of him and we made music together part of every day. When he toured in America and other countries, he wrote me frequently ”

“ They are not inclined to say, 'I don't like such or such a player'; for the music-knower understands the vast amount of time and energy, labor and talent that go to make a pianist. He rather says, 'I prefer the playing of such or such an artist.' The word 'like' in connection with a great artist seems almost an affront. What does it matter if his work is not 'liked' by some? He knows it can stand for what it is—the utmost perfection of his powers—of himself. And after all the audience is the greatest teacher an artist can have ”