Piano playing

“ And of a power of magical improvisation, exercised in private such as Beethoven and Liszt so often displayed, we now hear less and less. The recitals, in great part, deal with the interpretation of known works, which often—like Beethoven’s E flat major concerto—are repeated ad nauseam. We have learning, we have playing, but we never see the enthusiasm which can be evoked by the stress of immediate creation. Piano-playing is a universal business even to the extremest limits of an amateurism which cannot strike a single chord instantaneously, nor dot a single note correctly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ XX. ARTHUR HOCHMAN HOW THE PIANIST CAN COLOR TONE WITH ACTION AND EMOTION
"A pianist, like a painter, should have an infinitude of colors on his palette," remarked Arthur Hochman, the young Russian pianist, in a recent chat about piano playing. He should paint pictures at the keyboard, just as the artist depicts them upon the canvas. The piano is capable of a wonderful variety of tonal shading, and its keys will respond most ideally to the true musician who understands how to awaken and bring forth all this tonal beauty from the instrument. ”

“ Sunday afternoon, an English aviator at the piano and a French officer with a violin have fallen into feud over a matter of musical precedence, and within a few feet of each other are playing at the same time entirely different tunes, and that with vehemence and vindictiveness. The pianist, firmly planted on the piano stool, where he has spent most of the day, passes without pause or punctuation from Chopin to ragtime and from ragtime to absolute incoherence. ”

“ The piano is generally supposed to be the fallback classical instrument, but I would not recommend this, we have quite enough piano playing of the second and third and the atrocious order, without violin and 'cello cast-offs trying their hand at it. I do not know of a more pathetic sight, than to see a youth with no musical gifts whatever, wasting the best years of his life, and his—or his parents'—money, in the study of an instrument for which he has no natural capabilities. ”

“ The symphony piano, an invention for making vast numbers of people who can play only a few very poor things play very poorly a great many good ones, is a consummate instance both of the limitation and the value of our contemporary tendency in the arts. The pipe organ, though on a much higher plane, is an equally characteristic contrivance making it possible for a man to be a complete orchestra and a conductor all by himself, playing on a crowd of instruments, to a crowd of people, with two hands and one pair of feet. ”

“ The pianist wields in this regard almost the power of the drummer to stir men to frenzy, a power which is by no means to be despised. In martial music and in other kinds of vigorous music the piano is almost without shortcomings. But inasmuch as a great part of pianoforte music is not in this vigorous vein, but rather in a vein of softer, more imaginative beauty, the pianist must constantly study how to subject these unmusical sounds to the after-sounds which follow them. In this study he will come upon the secret of the legato style of playing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Methinks music ought appeal directly to the heart, and in this no performer on the piano-forte will succeed by merely thumping and drumming, or by continual arpeggio playing. During the last few years my chief endeavor has been to play the piano-forte, in spite of its deficiency in sustaining the sound, so much as possible, in a singing manner, and to compose for it accordingly. ”

“ During the Renaissance the piano was unknown, but every educated woman performed upon the lute, which had the advantage that, in the hands of the lady playing it, it presented an agreeable picture to the eyes, while the piano is only a machine which compels the man or the woman who is playing it to go through motions which are always unpleasant and often ridiculous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The value of the piano as an instrument of musical expression will always be the subject of discussion. It has undoubtedly two great shortcomings, which place the pianist under serious disadvantages. It cannot sustain tone, and the tones which can be produced on it will ever be more or less marred by unmusical noises which cannot often be avoided. But these very shortcomings make possible some peculiar beauties and a peculiar vitality which characterize pianoforte music alone. ”

“ Still unable to shake off the obsession of the intense stillness, she sat down at the piano and began to run over the first act of the Walkure, the last of his roles they had practiced together; playing listlessly and absently at first, but with gradually increasing seriousness. Perhaps it was the still heat of the summer night, perhaps it was the heavy odors from the garden that came in through the open windows; but as she played there grew and grew the feeling that he was there, beside her, standing in his accustomed place. In the duet at the end of the first act she heard him clearly: ”

“ It is in such parlors that the instrument best answers the end of its creation. There is many a piano in the back room of a little store, or in the uncarpeted sitting-room of a farm-house, that yields a larger revenue of delight than the splendid grand of a splendid drawing-room. In these humble abodes of refined intelligence, the piano is a dear and honored member of the family. ”

“ How uncouthly the huge piano that occupies the corner at the left of the door looms out in the uncertain twilight! I neither play nor sing, yet I own a piano. It is a comfort to me to look at it, and to feel that the music is there, although I am not able to break the spell that binds it. ”

“ All beautiful compositions notwithstanding, the piano is no concerto-instrument. In concertos the delicate ear is outraged. The piano will not adapt itself for new ideas in the hall, in the midst of virtuosity, or against the orchestra. It must become chaste; it must turn in faith to Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Klavier, the Old Testament, as Bülow called it, of the musician’s creed, and to Beethoven’s Sonatas, the New. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To me the piano is one of the domestic lares, one of our household gods. It is, thanks to it, and it alone, that we have for ourselves and in our homes the most poetic and the most personal of all the arts—music. What is it that brings into our dwellings an echo of the Conservatory concerts? What is it that gives us the opera at our own firesides? What is it that unites four, five or six harmonious voices in the interpretation of a masterpiece of vocal music, as the trio of Don Juan, the quartet of Moses, or the finale of the Barber of Seville? The piano, and the piano alone. ”

“ It is never literally true that any form is meaningless and "says nothing." Every form in the world says something. But its message often fails to reach us, and even if it does, full understanding is often withheld from us.] and, properly speaking, FORM IS THE OUTWARD EXPRESSION OF THIS INNER MEANING. To use once more the metaphor of the piano—the artist is the hand which, by playing on this or that key (i.e., form) , affects the human soul in this or that way. ”

“ It may perhaps seem strange to characterize as remarkably fine and intimate the music which has been written for an instrument often stigmatized as essentially unmusical. But the piano has attracted nearly all the great composers, many of whom were excellent pianists; and the music which they have written for it is indisputably of the highest and most lasting worth. ”

“ 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. ”