Piano Playing Part 23

Compelled to study without a teacher for two years before I can go to a conservatory, what method should I study for my technique and what pieces?

You fail to say whether you are a beginner or already somewhat advanced.

Still, I think it safe to recommend Mason's "Touch and Technique,"

Sternberg's Etudes, opus 66; and select your pieces from the graded catalogues which any publisher will be glad to send you.

[Sidenote: _Music as a Profession or as an Avocation_]

Would you advise a young man with a good foundation to choose music--that is, concertizing--as a career, or should he keep his music as an accomplishment and avocation?

Your distinguishing between music and concertizing gives direction to my reply; that the question was not answered by your own heart before you asked it prompts me to advise music for you as an avocation. The artist's career nowadays is not so simple as it appears to be. Of a thousand capable musicians there is, perhaps, one who attains to a general reputation and fortune. The rest of them, after spending money, time, and toil, give up in despair, and with an embittered disposition take up some other occupation. If you do not depend upon public music-making for a living; if your natural endowments are not of a very unusually high order, and if your entire personality does not imply the exercise of authority over a.s.semblages of people--spiritual authority, I mean--it were better to enjoy your music in the circle of your friends.

It is less risky and will, in all probability, give you much greater satisfaction.

[Sidenote: _How Much You Can Get From Music_]

When I hear a concert pianist I want to get more from his playing than aesthetic ear enjoyment. Can you give me a little outline of points for which to look that may help me in my piano study?

There is no pleasure or enjoyment from which we can derive more than we bring with us in the way of receptiveness. As you deepen your study of music and gain insight into its forms, contrapuntal work and harmonic beauties you will derive more and more pleasure from listening to a good pianist the deeper your studies go. What their playing reflects of emotional life you will perceive in the exact measure of your own grasp upon life. Art is a medium connecting, like a telegraph, two stations: the sender of a message and the receiver. Both must be pitched equally high to make the communication perfect.

[Sidenote: "_It is So Much Easier to Read Flats Than Sharps!_"]

You would confer a favour upon a teacher by solving a problem for her that has puzzled her all her life; why do all pupils prefer flats to sharps? I am not at all sure that I do not, in some degree, share this preference. Is it a fault of training, or has it any other cause?

Your question is both original and well justified by frequent observation, for it is quite true that people prefer to read flats to sharps. But note it well that the aversion to sharps refers only to the reading, not to the playing. If any one should find it harder to _play_ in sharps, say, after knowing the notes well, it would be a purely subjective deception, due to a mental a.s.sociation of the note-picture with the respective sounds. My personal belief is that the aversion to the _reading_ of sharps is caused by the comparative complexity of the sign itself, and this leads me to think that the whole matter belongs rather to ophthalmology than to either acoustics or music.

[Sidenote: _Rubinstein or Liszt--Which the Greater?_]

As between Liszt and Rubinstein, whom do you consider the greater?

Rubinstein I knew very well (I was his pupil), and have heard him play a great many times. Liszt, who died when I was sixteen years old and had not appeared in public for some twenty years previously, I never met and never heard. Still, from the descriptions which many of my friends gave me of him, and from the study of his works, I have been able to form a fair idea of his playing and his personality. As a virtuoso I think Liszt stood above Rubinstein, for his playing must have possessed amazing, dazzling qualities. Rubinstein excelled by his sincerity, by his demoniacal, Heaven-storming power of great impa.s.sionedness, qualities which with Liszt had pa.s.sed through the sieve of a superior education and--if you understand how I mean that term--gentlemanly elegance. He was, in the highest meaning of the word, a man of the world; Rubinstein, a world-stormer, with a sovereign disregard for conventionality and for Mrs. Grundy. The princ.i.p.al difference lay in the characters of the two. As musicians, with regard to their natural endowments and ability, they were probably of the same gigantic calibre, such as we would seek in vain at the present time.

[Sidenote: _As to One Composer--Excluding All Others_]

If I am deeply interested in Beethoven's music can I not find in him all that there is in music, in both an aesthetic and a technical sense? Is any one's music more profound?

You imagine yourself in an impenetrable stronghold whence, safe from all attacks, you may look upon all composers (except Beethoven) with a patronizing, condescending smile. But you are gravely in error. Life is too rich in experience, too many-sided in its manifestations, to permit any one master, however great, to exhaust its interpretation through his art. If you base your preference for Beethoven upon your sympathies, and if, for this reason, his music satisfies you better than that of any other composer, you are to be complimented upon your good taste. But that gives you no right to contest, for instance, the profoundness of Bach, the aesthetic charm of Chopin, the wonders of Mozart's art, nor the many and various merits of your contemporary composers. The least that one can be charged with who finds the whole of life expressed in any one composer is one-sidedness, not to speak of the fact that the understanding cannot be very deep for one master if it is closed to all others. One of the chief requirements for true connoisseurship is catholicity of taste.

[Sidenote: _A Sensible Scheme of Playing for Pleasure_]

I am fifty-six years old, live in the mountains sixty-five miles from any railroad, alone with my husband, and I have not taken lessons in thirty-five years. Do you think "Pischna" would help me much to regain my former ability to play? If not, what would you advise me to do?

Refrain from all especially technical work. Since your love of music is strong enough to cause you to resume your playing you should take as much pleasure in it as possible and work technically only in the pieces you play--that is, in those places which offer you difficulties. Decide upon a comfortable fingering first, and practise the difficult places separately and slowly until you feel that you can venture to play them in their appropriate speed.

[Sidenote: _First Learn to Play Simple Things Well_]

What pieces would you advise me to memorize after Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor and Chopin's A-flat Ballade? These pieces do not appeal to the majority of people, but I enjoy them.

If such a work as Chopin's Ballade in A-flat does not "appeal to the majority"--as you say--the fault cannot lie in the composition, but must be sought in the interpretation. Why not try a few pieces of lesser complexity and play them so perfectly that they do appeal to the majority. Try Chopin's Nocturne, opus 27, No. 2; Schumann's Romanza, opus. 28, No. 2; or his "Traumerei," or some of the more pretentious "Songs Without Words" by Mendelssohn.

[Sidenote: _About Starting on a Concert Career_]

I am twenty-four, have had four years' rigorous work in a conservatory and a partial college training. My technique is adequate for Brahms's Rhapsody in G minor and McDowell's Sonatas. I have good health and am determined not to grow self-satisfied. Is there a place on the concert stage--even if only as an accompanist--for a woman thus equipped?

Any public career must begin by earning the good opinion of others.

One's own opinion, however just, is never a criterion. My advice is that you speak to some of the prominent concert agents, whose names and addresses you find in every well-accredited music paper. Play for them.

They are usually not connoisseurs by actual knowledge, but they have developed a fine instinct for that which is of use to them, and you are, of course, aware that we must be of use to others before we can be of use to ourselves. If the right "stuff" is in you you will make your way.

People of ability always do. That there is room for women on the concert stage is proved by the great array of meritorious women pianists.

Especially for accompanying women are in demand--that is, for _good_ accompanying. But I would not start out with the idea of accompanying.

It seems like going to a commercial school to study be to an "a.s.sistant"

bookkeeper. Become a fine, all-round musician, a fine pianist, and see what the tide of affairs will bring you. The proper level for your ability is bound to disclose itself to you.

[Sidenote: _Accompanist Usually Precedes Soloist at Entering_]

Should an accompanist precede or follow the soloist on the stage in a concert or recital, and should s.e.x be considered in the matter?

If the soloist be a man the accompanist should precede him on the stage in order to arrange his music, the height of his seat or whatever may be necessary, during which time the soloist salutes the audience. For these reasons it should be the same when the soloist is a woman, but as women are of the feminine persuasion it will, perhaps, look better if the accompanist yields precedence to her.