Great Pianists on Piano Playing Part 17

MASTERING ARTISTIC DETAILS

"Each note in a composition should be polished until it is as perfect as a jewel--as perfect as an Indian diamond--those wonderful scintillating, ever-changing orbs of light. In a really great masterpiece each note has its place just as the stars, the jewels of heaven, have their places in their constellations. When a star moves it moves in an orbit that was created by nature.

"Great musical masterpieces owe their existence to mental forces quite as miraculous as those which put the heavens into being. The notes in compositions of this kind are not there by any rule of man. They come through the ever mystifying source which we call inspiration. Each note must bear a distinct relation to the whole.

"An artist in jewels in making a wonderful work of art does not toss his jewels together in any haphazard way. He often has to wait for months to get the right ruby, or the right pearl, or the right diamond to fit in the right place. Those who do not know might think one gem just like another, but the artist knows. He has been looking at gems, examining them under the microscope. There is a meaning in every facet, in every shade of color. He sees blemishes which the ordinary eye would never detect.

"Finally he secures his jewels and arranges them in some artistic form, which results in a masterpiece. The public does not know the reason why, but it will instantly realize that the work of the artist is in some mysterious way superior to the work of the bungler. Thus it is that the mind of the composer works spontaneously in selecting the musical jewels for the diadem which is to crown him with fame. During the process of inspiration he does not realize that he is selecting his jewels with lightning rapidity, but with a highly cultivated artistic judgment. When the musical jewels are collected and a.s.sembled he regards the work as a whole as the work of another. He does not realize that he has been going through the process of collecting them. Schubert failed to recollect some of his own compositions only a few days after he had written them.

SOMETHING NO ONE CAN TEACH

"Now the difficulty with students is that they do not take time to polish the jewels which the composers have selected with such keen aesthetic discernment. They think it enough if they merely succeed in playing the note. How horrible! A machine can play the notes, but there is only one machine with a soul and that is the artist. To think that an artist should play only the notes and forget the glories of the inspiration which came in the composer's mind during the moment of creation.

"Let me play the D flat Chopin Nocturne for you. Please notice how the notes all bear a relation to each other, how everything is in right proportion. Do you think that came in a day? Ah, my friend, the polishing of those jewels took far longer than the polishing of the Kohinoor. Yet I have heard young girls attempt to play this piece for me--expecting approbation, of course, and I am certain that they could not have practiced upon it more than a year or so. They evidently think that musical masterpieces can be brought into being like the cobwebs which rise during the night to be torn down by the weight of the dew of the following morning. _Imbecillita!_

THE BEST TEACHER

"They play just as their teachers have told them to play, which is of course good as far as it goes. But they stop at that, and no worthy teacher expects his pupil to stop with his instruction. The best teacher is the one who incites his pupil to penetrate deeper and learn new beauties by himself. A teacher in the highest sense of the word is not a mint, coining pupils as it were and putting the same stamp of worth upon each pupil.

"The great teacher is an artist who works in men and women. Every pupil is different, and he must be very quick to recognize these differences.

He should first of all teach the pupil that there are hundreds of things which no teacher can ever hope to teach. He must make his pupil keenly alert to this. There are hundreds of things about my own playing which are virtually impossible to teach. I would not know how to convey them to others so that they might be intelligently learned. Such things I have found out for myself by long and laborious experimentation. The control of my fifth finger in certain fingerings presented endless problems which could only be worked out at the keyboard. Such things give an individuality to the pianist's art, something which cannot be copied.

"Have you ever been in a foreign art gallery and watched the copyists trying to reproduce the works of the masters? Have you ever noticed that though they get the form, the design, and even the colors and also that with all these resemblances there is something which distinguishes the work of the master from the work of the copyist, something so wonderful that even a child can see it? You wonder at this? _Pourquoi?_ No one can learn by copying the secret the master has learned in creating.

THE BASIS OF GREATNESS

"Here we have a figure which brings out very clearly the real meaning of originality in piano playing and at the same time indicates how every pupil with or without a teacher should work for himself. Why was the great Liszt greater than any pianist of his time? Simply because he found out certain pianistic secrets which Czerny or any of Liszt's teachers and contemporaries had failed to discover.

"Why has G.o.dowsky--_Ach! G.o.dowsky, der ist wirklich ein grosser Talent_--how has he attained his wonderful rank? Because he has worked out certain contrapuntal and technical problems which place him in a cla.s.s all by himself. I consider him the greatest master of the mysteries of counterpoint since the heyday of cla.s.sical polyphony. Why does Busoni produce inimitable results at the keyboard? Simply because he was not satisfied to remain content with the knowledge he had obtained from others.

"This then is my life secret--work, unending work. I have no other secrets. I have developed myself along the lines revealed to me by my inner voice. I have studied myself as well as my art. I have learned to study mankind through the sciences and through the great literary treasures, you see; I speak many languages fluently, I have stepped apace with the crowd, I have drunk the bitter and the sweet from the chalices of life, but remember, I have never stopped, and to-day I am just as keenly interested in my progress as I was many years ago as a youth. The new repertoire of the works of Liszt and Brahms and other composers demanded a different technic, a bigger technic. What exquisite joy it was to work for it. Yes, _mio amico_, work is the greatest intoxication, the greatest blessing, the greatest solace we can know.

Therefore work, work, work. But of all things, my good musical friends in America, remember the old German proverb:

"'_Das mag die beste Musik sein Wenn Herz und Mund stimmt uberein._'"

("Music is best when the heart and lips (mouth) speak together.")

QUESTIONS IN STYLE, INTERPRETATION, EXPRESSION AND TECHNIC OF PIANOFORTE PLAYING

SERIES XII

VLADIMIR DE PACHMANN

1. What does originality in pianoforte playing really mean?

2. State something of the evils of the forcing methods of training applied to young children.

3. Have the compositions of the most original composers been the most enduring?

4. Name seven of the most original composers for the pianoforte.

5. Must the pupil continually help himself?

6. What is considered the most difficult scale to learn?

7. Is a great virtuoso obliged to practice years in order to secure results?

8. How may piano study be compared with the polishing of beautiful jewels?

9. Tell what characteristics a great teacher must have.

10. What lies at the foundation of pianistic greatness?

MAX PAUER

BIOGRAPHICAL

Prof. Max Pauer was born in London, England, October 31, 1866, and is the son of the eminent musical educator, Ernst Pauer, who settled in England in 1851, and aside from filling many of the foremost positions in British musical life, also produced a great number of instructive works, which have been of immeasurable value in disseminating musical education in England. His work on _Musical Forms_ is known to most all music students. Prof. Max Pauer studied with his father at the same time his parent was instructing another famous British-born pianist, Eugen d'Albert. At the age of fifteen he went to Karlsruhe, where he came under the instruction of V. Lachner. In 1885 he returned to London and continued to advance through self-study. In 1887 he received the appointment at the head of the piano department in the Cologne Conservatory. This position he retained for ten years, until his appointment at Stuttgart, first as head teacher in the piano department and later as director of the School. During this period the organization of the famous old conservatory has changed totally. The building occupied was very old and unfit for modern needs. The new conservatory building is a splendid structure located in one of the most attractive parts of the city. The old methods, old equipment, old ideas have been abandoned, and a wholly different atmosphere is said to pervade the inst.i.tution, while all that was best in the old _regime_ has been retained. Prof. Pauer made his _debut_ as a virtuoso pianist in London.

Since then he has toured all Europe except the Latin countries. He has published several compositions for the piano. His present tour of America is his first in the New World.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAX PAUER]

XV

MODERN PIANISTIC PROBLEMS

MAX PAUER

ACQUIRING THE REQUISITE TECHNIC

"The preservation of one's individuality in playing is perhaps one of the most difficult, and at the same time one of the most essential tasks in the study of the pianoforte. The kind of technical study that pa.s.ses the student through a certain process, apparently destined to make him as much like his predecessors as possible, is hardly the kind of technic needed to make a great artist. Technical ability, after all is said and done, depends upon nothing more than physiologically correct motion applied to the artistic needs of the masterpiece to be performed. It implies a clear understanding of the essentials in bringing out the composer's idea. The pupil must not be confused with inaccurate thinking. For instance, we commonly hear of the 'wrist touch.' More pupils have been hindered through this clumsy terminology than I should care to estimate. There cannot be a wrist touch since the wrist is nothing more than a wonderful natural hinge of bone and muscle. With the pupil's mind centered upon his wrist he is more than likely to stiffen it and form habits which can only be removed with much difficulty by the teacher. This is only an instance of one of the loose expressions with which the terminology of technic is enc.u.mbered. When the pupil comes to recognize the wrist as a _condition_ rather than a thing he will find that the matter of the tight, cramped wrist will cease to have its terrors. In fact, as far as touch itself is concerned, the motion of the arm as a whole is vastly more important than that of the wrist. The wrist is merely part of the apparatus which communicates the weight of the arm to the keyboard.

INNOVATORS SHOULD BE PIANISTS