more difficult than the Godowsky arrangements of the Chopin studies. I
fail to see how pianoforte technic can go much beyond these, unless one
gets more fingers or more hands. Godowsky's treatment of these studies
is marvelous not only from a technical standpoint, but from a musical
standpoint as well. He has added a new flavor to the individual
masterpieces of Chopin. He has made them wonderfully clever and really
very interesting studies in harmony and counterpoint, so that one
forgets their technical intricacies in the beauty of the compositions.
One cannot say that their original beauty has been enhanced, but he has
made them wonderfully fascinating compositions despite their aggravating
complications for the student.
MERE DIFFICULTY NO LONGER ASTOUNDS
"The day when the show of startling technical skill was sufficient to
make a reputation for a pianist is, fortunately, past. The mechanical
playing devices have possibly been responsible for this. The public
refuses to admire anything that can be done by a machine, and longs for
something finer, more subtle, more closely allied to the soul of the
artist. This does not mean, however, that the necessity for a
comprehensive technic is depreciated. Quite the contrary is true. The
need for an all-comprehensive technic is greater than ever before. But
the public demand for the purely musical, the purely artistic, is being
continually manifested.
"Modern composers are writing with this in view rather than huge
technical combinations. The giant of to-day, to my mind, is indisputably
Rachmaninoff. He is writing the greatest original music for piano of any
living composer. All of his compositions are pianistic and he does not
condescend to pander to a trifling public taste. He is a man with a
great mind, and, in addition to this, he has a delightful sense of
proportion and a feeling for the beautiful, all of which makes him a
composer of the master mould. His compositions will endure as long as
music.
MODERN COMPOSITIONS
"For others of the type of Scriabine I care less, although I am sensible
to the beauty of many of their compositions. They have not, however,
the splendid mould of Rachmaninoff, nor have they his vigorous
originality. Doubtless some of these men will produce great original
compositions in the future. Compositions that are simply not bad are
hardly worth the paper they are written upon, for they will not last as
long. The composition that will last is a great, new, original thought,
inspired, noble and elemental, but worked out with the distinctive
craftsmanship of the great master.
"I am very partial to Debussy. He has an extraordinary atmosphere, and,
after one has formed a taste for him, his compositions are alluring,
particularly his _Homage à Rameau_, _Jardins sous la pluie_ and _D'un
cahier d'esquisses_, which I have been playing upon my American tour.
THE MOST DIFFICULT COMPOSITIONS
"I have continually been asked, 'What is the most difficult
composition?' The question always amuses me, but I suppose it is very
human and in line with the desire to measure the highest building, the
tallest mountain, the longest river or the oldest castle. Why is such a
premium put upon mere difficulty? Strange to say, no one ever seems to
think it necessary to inquire, 'What is the most beautiful piece?'
"Difficulty in music should by no means be estimated by technical
complications. To play a Mozart concerto well is a colossally difficult
undertaking. The pianist who has worked for hours to get such a
composition as near as possible to his conception of perfection is never
given the credit for his work, except by a few connoisseurs, many of
whom have been through a similarly exacting experience. Months may be
spent upon comparatively simple compositions, such as the Haydn Sonatas
or the Mozart Sonatas, and the musical public is blind to the additional
finish or polish so evident to the virtuoso.
PRAISE THAT IRRITATES
"The opposite of this is also true. A little show of bravura, possibly
in a passage which has not cost the pianist more than ten minutes of
frivolous practice, will turn many of the unthinking auditors into a
roaring mob. This is, of course, very distressing to the sincere artist
who strives to establish himself by his real worth.
"Of course, there are some compositions which present difficulties which
few work hard enough to surmount. Among these might be mentioned the
Godowsky-Chopin _études_ (particularly the _étude_ in A flat, Opus 25,
No. 1, which is always especially exasperating for the student
sufficiently advanced to approach it); the _Don Juan Fantasie_ of Liszt;
the Brahms-Paganini _variations_ and the Beethoven, Opus 106, which,
when properly played, demands enormous technical skill. One certainly
saves a lot of bother when one discards it from one's repertoire. If
these four pieces are not the most difficult pieces, they are certainly
among the most difficult.
WHY NOT SEEK THE BEAUTIFUL?
"But why seek difficulty when there is so much that is quite as
beautiful and yet not difficult? Why try to make a bouquet of oak trees
when the ground is covered with exquisite flowers? The piano is a solo
instrument and has its limitations. Some piano music is said to sound
orchestral. As a matter of fact, a great deal of it would sound better
with the orchestra.
"Real piano music is rare. The piano appears to be too small for some of
our modern Titans among the composers. When they write for the piano
they seem to be exhibiting a concealed longing for the one hundred or
more men of the modern orchestra. One of the reasons why the works of
Debussy appeal to me is that he manages to put so much color into his
piano pieces without suggesting the orchestra. Much of his music is
wonderful in this respect, and, moreover, the musicians of the future
will appreciate this fact more and more.
EXERCISES THAT GIVE IMMEDIATE HELP
"No one exercise can be depended upon to meet all the varied conditions
which arise in the practice of the day, but I have frequently employed a
simple exercise which seems to 'coax' the hand into muscular activity in
a very short time. It is so simple that I am diffident about suggesting
it. However, elemental processes lead to large structures sometimes.
The Egyptian pyramids were built ages before the age of steam and
electricity, and scientists are still wondering how those massive stones
were ever put in place.
"The exercise I use most, apart from scales, is really based upon a
principle which is constantly employed in all scale playing and in all
piano playing, that of putting the thumb over and under the fingers. Did
you ever stop to think how continually this is employed? One hardly goes
one step beyond the elemental grades before one encounters it. It
demands a muscular action entirely different from that of pressing down
the keys either with the finger, forearm or arm motion.
"Starting with the above-named principle and devising new exercises to
meet the very human need for variety, I play something like this:
[Illustration]
"The next form would employ another fingering--
[Illustration]
"The next form might be--
[Illustration]
"These I transpose through several keys, for instance--
[Illustration]
"Note that I am not giving an arbitrary exercise, but simply suggesting
the plan upon which the student may work. There is a great deal of fun
in devising new exercises. It assists in helping the student to
concentrate. Of course, these exercises are only attempted after all the
standard exercises found in books have been exhausted.
AVOID TOO COMPLICATED EXERCISES
"I often think that teachers make a great mistake by giving too
complicated exercises. A complicated exercise leads away from clear
thinking and concentration. The simple exercise will never seem dull or
dry if the pupil's ambition is right. After all, it is not so much what
is done as how it is done. Give less thought to the material and more to
the correction of the means with which one plays. There should be
unceasing variety in studies. A change at every practice period is
advisable, as it gives the pupil new material for thought. There are
hundreds of different exercises in the different books, and the student
has no reason for suffering for want of variety."
QUESTIONS IN STYLE, INTERPRETATION, EXPRESSION
AND TECHNIC OF PIANOFORTE PLAYING
SERIES II
WILHELM BACHAUS
1. Does the technical material of to-day differ greatly from that of
forty or fifty years ago?
2. State something of the efficacy of scales.
3. State three sources of technical material sure to interest the
student.
4. Do celebrated virtuosos use scales regularly?
5. State what else besides technical skill is required in these days to
gain recognition as a virtuoso pianist.
6. Why does Rachmaninoff excel as a composer for pianoforte?
7. State what may be considered the most difficult of piano
compositions.
8. Wherein does the appeal of Debussy lie?
9. Give some simple exercises suitable for daily practice.
10. Why are too complicated exercises undesirable?
[Illustration: HAROLD BAUER]
HAROLD BAUER
BIOGRAPHICAL
Harold Bauer was born in London, England, April 28, 1875. His father was
an accomplished amateur violinist. Through him, the future virtuoso was
enabled to gain an excellent idea of the beautiful literature of chamber
music. When a boy Mr. Bauer studied privately with the celebrated violin
teacher, Politzer. At the age of ten he became so proficient that he
made his _début_ as a violinist in London. Thereafter in his tours of
England he met with great success everywhere.
In the artistic circles of London Mr. Bauer met a musician named Graham
Moore, who gave him some idea upon the details of the technic of
pianoforte playing, which Mr. Bauer had studied or rather "picked up" by
himself, without any thought of ever abandoning his career as a
violinist. Mr. Moore had expected to rehearse some orchestral
accompaniments on a second piano with Paderewski, who was then preparing
some concertos for public performance. Mr. Moore was taken ill and sent
his talented musical friend, Mr. Bauer, in his place. Paderewski
immediately took an interest in his talented accompanist and advised him
to go to Paris to continue his studies with Gorski.
After many privations in Paris Mr. Bauer, unable to secure engagements
as a violinist, went on a tour of Russia as an accompanist of a singer.
In some of the smaller towns Bauer played an occasional piano solo.
Returning to Paris, he found that he was still unable to secure
engagements as a violinist. His pianistic opportunity came when a
celebrated virtuoso who was to play at a concert was taken ill and Bauer
was asked to substitute. He gradually gave more attention to the piano
and rose to a very high position in the tone world.
V
ARTISTIC ASPECTS OF PIANO STUDY
HAROLD BAUER
THE IMMEDIATE RELATION OF TECHNIC TO MUSIC
"While it gives me great pleasure to talk to the great number of
students studying the piano, I can assure you that it is with no little
diffidence that I venture to approach these very subjects about which
they are probably most anxious to learn. In the first place, words tell
very little, and in the second place, my whole career has been so
different from the orthodox methods that I have been constantly
compelled to contrive means of my own to meet the myriads of artistic
contingencies as they have arisen in my work. It is largely for this
reason that I felt compelled recently to refuse a very flattering offer
to write a book on piano playing. My whole life experience makes me
incapable of perceiving what the normal methods of pianistic study
should be. As a result of this I am obliged with my own pupils to invent
continually new means and new plans for work with each student.
"Without the conventional technical basis to work upon, this has
necessarily resulted in several aspects of pianoforte study which are
naturally somewhat different from the commonly accepted ideas of the
technicians. In the first place, the only technical study of any kind I
have ever done has been that technic which has had an immediate relation
to the musical message of the piece I have been studying. In other
words, I have never studied technic independently of music. I do not
condemn the ordinary technical methods for those who desire to use them
and see good in them. I fear, however, that I am unable to discuss them
adequately, as they are outside of my personal experience.
THE AIM OF TECHNIC
"When, as a result of circumstances entirely beyond my control, I
abandoned the study of the violin in order to become a pianist, I was
forced to realize, in view of my very imperfect technical equipment,
that in order to take advantage of the opportunities that offered for
public performance it would be necessary for me to find some means of
making my playing acceptable without spending months and probably years
in acquiring mechanical proficiency. The only way of overcoming the
difficulty seemed to be to devote myself entirely to the musical
essentials of the composition I was interpreting in the hope that the
purely technical deficiencies which I had neither time nor knowledge to
enable me to correct would pass comparatively unnoticed, provided I was
able to give sufficient interest and compel sufficient attention to the
emotional values of the work. This kind of study, forced upon me in the
first instance through reasons of expediency, became a habit, and
gradually grew into a conviction that it was a mistake to practice
technic at all unless such practice should conduce to some definite,
specific and immediate musical result.
"I do not wish to be misunderstood in making this statement, containing,
as it does, an expression of opinion that was formed in early years of
study, but which, nevertheless, I have never since felt any reason to
change. It is not my intention to imply that technical study is
unnecessary, or that purely muscular training is to be neglected. I mean
simply to say that in every detail of technical work the germ of musical
expression must be discovered and cultivated, and that in muscular
training for force and independence the simplest possible forms of
physical exercises are all that is necessary.
"The singer and the violinist are always studying _music_, even when
they practice a succession of single notes. Not so with the pianist,
however, for an isolated note on the piano, whether played by the most
accomplished artist or the man in the street, means nothing, absolutely
nothing.
SEEKING INDIVIDUAL EXPRESSION
"At the time of which I speak, my greatest difficulty was naturally to
give a constant and definite direction to my work and in my efforts to
obtain a suitable muscular training which should enable me to produce
expressive sounds, while I neglected no opportunity of closely observing
the work of pianoforte teachers and students around me. I found that
most of the technical work which was being done with infinite pains and
a vast expenditure of time was not only non-productive of expressive
sounds, but actually harmful and misleading as regards the development
of the musical sense. I could see no object in practicing evenness in
scales, considering that a perfectly even scale is essentially devoid of
emotional (musical) significance. I could see no reason for limiting
tone production to a certain kind of sound that was called 'a good
tone,' since the expression of feeling necessarily demands in many cases
the use of relatively harsh sounds. Moreover, I could see no reason for
trying to overcome what are generally called natural defects, such as
the comparative weakness of the fourth finger for example, as it seemed
to me rather a good thing than otherwise that each finger should
naturally and normally possess a characteristic motion of its own.
"It is _differences_ that count in art, not similarities. Every
individual expression is a form of art; why not, then, make an artist of
each finger by cultivating its special aptitudes instead of adapting a
system of training deliberately calculated to destroy these individual
characteristics in bringing _all_ the fingers to a common level of
lifeless machines?
"These and similar reflections, I discovered, were carrying me
continually farther away from the ideals of most of the pianists,
students and teachers with whom I was in contact, and it was not long
before I definitely abandoned all hope of obtaining, by any of the means
I found in use, the results for which I was striving. Consequently,
from that time to the present my work has necessarily been more or less
independent and empirical in its nature, and, while I trust I am neither
prejudiced nor intolerant in my attitude towards pianoforte education in
its general aspect, I cannot help feeling that a great deal of natural
taste is stifled and a great deal of mediocrity created by the
persistent and unintelligent study of such things as an 'even scale' or
a 'good tone.'
"Lastly, it is quite incomprehensible to me why any one method of
technic should be superior to any other, considering that as far as I
was able to judge, no teacher or pupil ever claimed more for any
technical system than that it gave more technical ability than some
other technical system. I have never been able to convince myself, as a
matter of fact, that one system does give more ability than another; but
even if there were one infinitely superior to all the rest, it would
still fail to satisfy me unless its whole aim and object were to
facilitate musical expression.
"Naturally, studying in this way required my powers of concentration to
be trained to the very highest point. This matter of concentration is
far more important than most teachers imagine, and the perusal of some
standard work on psychology will reveal things which should help the
student greatly. Many pupils make the mistake of thinking that only a
certain kind of music demands concentration, whereas it is quite as
necessary to concentrate the mind upon the playing of a simple scale as
for the study of a Beethoven sonata.
THE RESISTANCE OF THE MEDIUM
"In every form of art the medium that is employed offers a certain
resistance to perfect freedom of expression, and the nature of this
resistance must be fully understood before it can be overcome. The poet,
the painter, the sculptor and the musician each has his own problem to
solve, and the pianist in particular is frequently brought to the verge
of despair through the fact that the instrument, in requiring the
expenditure of physical and nervous energy, absorbs, so to speak, a
large proportion of the intensity which the music demands.
"With many students the piano is only a barrier--a wall between them and
music. Their thoughts never seem to penetrate farther than the keys.
They plod along for years apparently striving to make piano-playing
machines of themselves, and in the end result in becoming something
rather inferior.
"Conditions are doubtless better now than in former years. Teachers give
studies with some musical value, and the months, even years, of keyboard
grind without the least suggestion of anything musical or gratifying to
the natural sense of the beautiful are very probably a thing of the
past. But here again I fear the teachers in many cases make a perverted
use of studies and pieces for technical purposes. If we practice a piece
of real music with no other idea than that of developing some technical
point it often ceases to become a piece of music and results in being a
kind of technical machinery. Once a piece is mechanical it is difficult
to make it otherwise. All the cogs, wheels, bolts and screws which an
overzealous ambition to become perfect technically has built up are made
so evident that only the most patient and enduring kind of an audience
can tolerate them.
THE PERVERSION OF STUDIES
"People talk about 'using the music of Bach' to accomplish some
technical purpose in a perfectly heart-breaking manner. They never seem
to think of interpreting Bach, but, rather, make of him a kind of
technical elevator by means of which they hope to reach some marvelous
musical heights. We even hear of the studies of Chopin being perverted
in a similarly vicious manner, but Bach, the master of masters, is the
greatest sufferer.
"It has become a truism to say that technic is only a means to an end,
but I very much doubt if this assertion should be accepted without
question, suggesting as it does the advisability of studying something
that is not music and which is believed at some future time to be
capable of being marvelously transformed into an artistic expression.
Properly understood, _technic is art_, and must be studied as such.
There should be no technic in music which is not music _in itself_.
THE UNIT OF MUSICAL EXPRESSION
"The piano is, of all instruments, the least expressive naturally, and
it is of the greatest importance that the student should realize the
nature of its resistance. The action of a piano is purely a piece of
machinery where the individual note has no meaning. When the key is once
struck and the note sounded there is a completed action and the note
cannot then be modified nor changed in the least. The only thing over
which the pianist has any control is the length of the tone, and this
again may not last any longer than the natural vibrations of the
strings, although it may be shortened by relinquishing the keys. It
makes no difference whether the individual note is struck by a child or
by Paderewski--it has in itself no expressive value. In the case of the
violin, the voice and all other instruments except the organ, the
individual note may be modified after it is emitted or struck, and in
this modification is contained the possibility of a whole world of
emotional expression.
"Our sole means of expression, then, in piano playing lies in the
relation of one note to the other notes in a series or in a chord.
Herein lies the difficulty, the resistance to perfect freedom of which I
have spoken before, the principal subject for intelligence and careful
study, and yet so few students appear to understand it. Their great
effort seems to be to make all the noise in a given series as much alike
as coins from a mint. They come to the piano as their only instrument,
and never seek to take a lesson from the voice or from the other
instruments which have expressive resources infinitely superior to those
possessed by the piano. The principal charm of the piano lies in the
command which the player has over many voices singing together. But
until the pianist has a regard for the individual voice in its relation
to the ensemble he has no means with which to make his work really
beautiful.
"There is a great need for more breadth in music study. This, as I know,
has been said very often, but it does not hurt to say it again. The more
a man knows, the more he has experienced, the wider his mental vision in
all branches of human information, the more he will have to say. We need
men in music with big minds, wide grasp and definite aims. Musicians are
far too prone to become overspecialized. They seem to have an
unquenchable thirst to master the jargon and the infinite variety of
methods which are thrust upon us in these days rather than a genuine
desire to develop their musical aims. Music is acquiring a technology as
confusing and as extensive as bacteriology. There seems to be no end to
the new kinds of methods in the minds of furtive and fertile inventors.
Each new method in turn seems to breed another, and so on _ad nauseam_.
"Among other things I would suggest the advisability for pianists to
cultivate some knowledge of the construction of their instrument.
Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless a fact that the average
pianist knows practically nothing of a piano, being in many cases
entirely unaware of such simple things as how the tone is produced. The
function of the pedals is as unknown to them as geology is to the coal
heaver. This ignorance leads frequently to the employment of motions and
methods that can only be characterized as ridiculous in the extreme.
MUSIC FIRST, THE INSTRUMENT AFTERWARDS