Piano Playing, with Piano Questions Answered

E-text prepared by Colin Bell, Johanna, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Copyright © 1909 by Doubleday, Page and Company; renewed 1937 by J. Hofmann.
© 1908 by McClure Company; renewed 1936 by J. Hofmann.
© 1920 by Theodore Presser Company; renewed 1947 by Josef Hofmann.

This little book purposes to present a general view of artistic piano-playing and to offer to young students the results of such observations as I have made in the years of my own studies, as well as of the experiences which my public activity has brought me.
It is, of course, only the concrete, the material side of piano-playing that can be dealt with here—that part of it which aims to reproduce in tones what is plainly stated in the printed lines of a composition. The other, very much subtler part of piano-playing, draws upon and, indeed, depends upon imagination, refinement of sensibility, and spiritual vision, and endeavours to convey to an audience what the composer has, consciously or unconsciously, hidden between the lines. That almost entirely psychic side of piano-playing eludes treatment in literary form and must, therefore, not be looked for in this little volume. It may not be amiss, however, to dwell a moment upon these elusive matters of æsthetics and conception, though it be only to show how far apart they are from technic.
When the material part, the technic, has been completely acquired by the piano student, he will see a limitless vista opening up before him, disclosing the vast field of artistic interpretation. In this field the work is largely of an analytical nature and requires that intelligence, spirit, and sentiment, supported by knowledge and æsthetic perception, form a felicitous union to produce results of value and dignity. It is in this field that the student must learn to perceive the invisible something which unifies the seemingly separate notes, groups, periods, sections, and parts into an organic whole. The spiritual eye for this invisible something is what musicians have in mind when they speak of reading between the lines —which is at once the most fascinating and most difficult task of the interpretative artist; for, it is just between the lines where, in literature as in music, the soul of a work of art lies hid den. To play its notes, even to play them correctly, is still very far from doing justice to the life and soul of an artistic composition.