Piano lesson

“ When the voice rests that waltz is still going on, throbbing, monotonous. Now, any indifferent pianist will make a sorry affair of this accompaniment. It demands the most delicate and exact finger work, the nicest regard for rhythm, the most delicate modulating of tone power. It must be played almost without pedal, and it reveals instantly any slip in the pianist’s technique. It might almost be published independently as a piano étude. The singer must deliver his part with great delicacy of diction and achieve expression on the most limited scale. ”

“ This mode of instruction I find always successful; but I do not put the cart before the horse, and, without previous technical instruction, begin my piano lessons with the extremely difficult acquirement of the treble and bass notes. In a word, I have striven, as a psychologist and thinker, as a man and teacher, for a many-sided culture. I have also paid great attention to the art of singing, as a necessary foundation for piano-playing. I have devoted some talent, and at least an enthusiastic, unwearied love to the subject. I have never stood still ”

“ If he could do so it was because he had harkened to the voice of the violin and resolved to show that the piano, too, could produce thrilling effects. In the same way he had listened to the human voice, and determined that the song of his own instrument should be heard. Those who give ear to the piano alone will never learn the secret of calling forth its supreme eloquence.
We can see and hear this "Raphael of Music" at the piano, so many and so eloquent have been the descriptions given of his playing. ”

“ Pianos are become articles of furniture to be met with in almost every other genteel house; Miss and her sisters sit down by turns, and screw themselves up to Ah vous dirai, or "I'd be a butterfly"—till some handsome young fellow who has stood behind her chair for six months, turned over her music, or accompanied her through a few liquorish airs, vows his tender passion, brings her the last new song, and at length swears to be her accompaniment throughout life. The piano is then locked up, the music sent to Bath or Canterbury, and the lady is married and cannot sing. ”

“ At my grand piano I sing, dream, rejoice, and it excels in its rapidity the nimblest bows. Like the orchestra, it has its whispering flutes and pealing horns, and without any preparation can, like that, breathe the evening breeze from its silvery clouds of magic chords and tender melodies. It requires no scenes, no decorations, no spacious stage; I need not weary myself with tedious rehearsals; I want neither a hundred, nor fifty, nor twenty assistants; I need not one, and can even do without music. A large hall, a grand piano, and I am master of a whole audience. ”

“ Pianos too must not be played after ten of the clock, so that often a little musical which is very much at home, will witness strange conversations. Let us imagine a room lighted by many candles, a bright red flame of fire leaping in the grate, a table bearing ornament of many bottles and spirit decanters, a group of men gathered about a piano, their occupation that of shrieking with resonant voices the sweet old song, "And her golden hair was hanging down her back!" To this room enters Hawks, the servant of the dean. ”

“ Every one will pause to admire the hammers of the piano, so light, yet so capable of giving a telling blow, which evoke all the music of the strings, but mingle with that music no click, nor thud, nor thump, of their own. ”

“ In households where there is no piano we seem to breathe a foreign atmosphere. To-day we need no longer explain the piano from the church or the theatre, from the ballet or the volkslied, from the artistic song or the violin; it has on the contrary become an active centre, which has given its form to our whole musical culture; nay, more, which has even given the stamp to our whole conception of music, not only in the minds of all amateurs, but in the minds of many professionals. ”

“ As to the aim and purpose, we may happily dismiss, once and for all, the old and imbecile notion of the piano as a conventional “accomplishment”; in more accurate language an instrument of unintelligent and repulsive mechanical drudgery, calculated to eradicate from the pupil whatever modicum of music Nature might have bestowed on her. The cultivation of the piano for the sake of vain display is not yet obsolete. But though this unacknowledged object must inevitably continue to actuate many pupils and many parents, the teacher, so far from indulging it, should set his face sternly against it. ”

“ So, without meaning any disparagement to the splendid masters to whom I owe all my previous musical culture, I cannot help feeling that I have at last got into the hands not of a mere piano virtuoso, however great, but, rather, of a profound musical savant—a man who has been a violinist, as well as a director, and who, without being a player himself, has made such a study of the piano, that probably all pianists except Liszt might learn something from him. ”

“ When three years old, to play the piano was her chief delight, and soon she could play at sight any music that her hands could grasp. At the age of four years she played many tunes by ear. She improvised much and composed several little pieces. Among her earliest musical recollections is that of associating color with sound, the key of C suggesting white, A flat, blue, and soon. The exact pitch of sounds, single or in combination, produced by voice, violin, piano, bells, w histles or birds' songs, has always been perfectly clear to her, making it possible for her to name the notes at once. ”

“ In 1839 he ventured on the first pure piano recital ever given in the concert hall. His series of performances in this line, covering the entire range of piano literature, in addition to his own compositions, given entirely without notes, led the public to expect playing by heart from all other artists.
As a great pianist, a composer of original conceptions, a magnetic conductor, an influential teacher, an intelligent writer on musical subjects and a devoted promoter of the interests of art, he stands out in bold relief, one of the grand figures in the history of music. ”

“ Every journey that takes him away from the instrument for some time excites a home-sickness for his piano, and when he returns he longingly caresses the keys to ease himself of the burden of the tone experiences that have mounted up in him, giving them utterance in improvisations. ”

“ He sets his toothache and his heartache to music, putting those sufferings into the music without remembering that sounds have their own agonies which alone they can express in a perfect manner.” This is where the “lions and panthers of the piano” have failed most: they have not loved the sounds enough. They have not allowed each sound its full life. This is the real reason why the piano has stopped short of itself. They might almost as well have played bells. You can strike bells which will bring out any number of tunes, loud or soft, with every possible variety of phrasing. ”

“ It is very funny that there should be so wide a difference necessary between the composition of music for the voice and music for the piano. For the first there must be a little something to catch the ear, a little swing in the refrain, a something to make the head wag to and fro; the words may be ever so silly if they are only bordering on the pathetic, and if the catch in the refrain is taking enough the rest of the song may be as silly as the words, and still it will be a success. ”

“ Nothing that has been arranged for the piano or that can be played in some sort of fashion on the instrument comes amiss if it has once aroused our enthusiasm; symphonies, operas, tone-poems, string-quartets are all welcome. Nay, we often prefer the arrangements of orchestral things, for we do not think of the piano merely as a solo instrument; to us it is the shining ivory and ebony gateway to the land of music. As our fingers wander over the keys our great dream-orchestras waken to life. ”

“ We are awkward, making many unnecessary movements, and the work is tiresome and fatiguing. After long practice, the speed with which we can manipulate the keys in playing the piano is wonderful. Our playing becomes accurate, perfect. We do it with ease, with no unnecessary movements. We can play the piano, after we become skilled, without paying attention to the actual movements of our hands. We can play the piano while concentrating upon the meaning of the music, or while carrying on a conversation, or while thinking about something else. As a rule, pleasure and confidence come with skill. ”

“ But when he seats himself at the piano, then one can only yield one's self unresistingly to the caprices of his will. The keys, touched by his fingers, produce melodies so sparkling, so joyous, that the soul is filled with gayety; but suddenly he changes to another key and the piano moans and sighs like a human voice, and the heart is moved and the eyes fill with tears. ”

“ The peculiar aptitude required for successfully rewriting a song or orchestral composition for the piano, so that it shall become, not a mere bald, literal reproduction of the melodies and harmonies, as in most of the piano-scores of the opera, interesting only to students, but a complete and effective art-work for this instrument, may be a lower order of genius than the original creative faculty, but is certainly more rare and almost as valuable to the musical world. ”

“ Field’s fingers the piano is no longer a mere piece of mechanism; it sings, and seems as competent to produce sustained tones, as though it were played with a bow. Touched by this exquisite performer, it is a real musical instrument, and no longer a mere theatre for the exhibition of tours de force, the use to which the kind of talent possessed by a majority of what are called the greatest artists of the present day nearly confines it. ”

“ Music, which their teachers formerly proscribed as a diabolical art, begins to make part of their education. In some houses you hear the forte-piano. This art, it is true, is still in its infancy; but the young novices who exercise it are so gentle, so complaisant and so modest, that the proud perfection of art gives no pleasure equal to what they afford.'
There were at that time very few pianos in New England and we find from the newspaper advertisements that the teacher usually lent his own piano to his pupils for practice. ”

“ Music is, after all, only another kind of poetry, and if we get poetical ideas from books we become more poetical, and our music becomes more beautiful. The student who thinks only of hammering down keys at the piano cannot play in a manner in which people will take pleasure. Piano playing is so much more than merely pressing down keys. One has to tell people things that cannot be told in words—that is what music is. ”

“ While music is my very life, I nevertheless hate the piano. I play because I can't help playing and because there is no other instrument which can come as near imitating the melodies and the harmonies of the music I feel. ”

“ With the musical sound given out by these vibrating strings must inevitably be mixed the dull and unmusical sound of the blow that set them vibrating. The trained ear will detect not only the thud of the hammer against the string, but that of the finger against the key, and that of the key itself upon its base. The study of touch and tone upon the piano is the study of the combination and the control of these two elements of sound, the one musical, the other unmusical. ”

“ In such all-embracing power the piano is in the twilight chamber a strange and dear tale-teller, a Rhapsode for the intimate spirit, which can express itself in it by improvisation, and an archive for the historian to whom it unrolls the whole life of modern music in its universal speech from a point of view which gives us the whole in the average. ”

“ It will come about in three ways: through the mechanical development of the piano, through a new type of music, and chiefly through the new type of pianist.
You will have your Mason and Hamlin— (this is not advertising; it is merely a conviction) —you will have that great dark-winged-victory standing alone on a stage; you will care a great deal about the color of the light around and above it—the tones of the walls within which your beautiful sounds are to live; you will touch that ivory and ebony—oh, there are no words! You will see those sounds against the color.... ”

“ There is a universe of the arts in the piano. But it is not a universe now. It is a stunt. The piano has been used for stunts for years and years and years. It will go on being used that way for years. Well, I am the last one to deprecate the art of these stunts. I think they are beautiful—some of them. I think they have their place. But they have served it too well. I love them more than I love all the opals and rubies and sapphires and emeralds and topaz and amethyst and pearl a jeweller can dip his fingers into and spread out for your dazzled senses. But I love poetry more than jewels. ”

“ The more he can do so, the smoother and pleasanter his playing will become. In so far as the tone of the pianoforte can be sensuous and warm, he can make it so in the measure in which he avoids giving prominence to the blows and thuds which ever threaten it perilously. The player who pounds is the player whose ear has not taken into account this harsh and unmusical accompaniment of noises. The player who can make the piano sing is he who, in listening to the mysterious vibrations of its after-sounds, has come to recognize and subdue those noises which too often interrupt and obscure them. ”