Waste in Technical Study
Geometrically speaking, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Teachers should make every possible effort to find the straight line of technic which will carry the pupil from his first steps to technical proficiency without wandering about through endless lanes and avenues which lead to no particular end. I suppose that all American teachers hear the same complaint that is heard by all European teachers when any attempt is made to insist upon thorough practice and adequate study from the dilettante. As soon as the teacher demands certain indispensable technical studies, certain necessary investigations of the harmonic, æsthetic or historical problems, which contribute so much to the excellence of pianistic interpretations, he hears the following complaint: "I don't want to be a composer" or "I don't want to be a virtuoso—I only want to play just a little for my own amusement." The teacher knows and appreciates the pupil's attitude exactly, and while he realizes that his reasoning is altogether fatuous, it seems well-nigh impossible to explain to the amateur that unless he does his work right he will get very little real pleasure or amusement out of it.
The whole sum and substance of the matter is that a certain amount of technical, theoretical and historical knowledge must be acquired to make the musician, before we can make a player. There is the distinction. Teachers should never fail to remember that their first consideration should be to make a musician. All unmusical playing is insufferable. No amount of technical study will make a musician, and all technical study which simply aims to make the fingers go faster, or play complicated rhythms, is wasted unless there is the foundation and culture of the real musician behind it.
To the sincere student every piece presents technical problems peculiar to itself. The main objection to all technical study is that unless the pupil is vitally interested the work becomes monotonous. The student should constantly strive to avoid monotony in practicing exercises. As soon as the exercises become dull and uninteresting their value immediately depreciates. The only way to avoid this is to seek variety. As I have said in my Methodik des Klavierspiels: "The musical and tonal monotony of technical exercises may be lessened in a measure by progressive modulations, by various rhythmical alterations, and further through frequent changes in contrary motion." Great stress should be laid upon practice in contrary motion. The reason for this is obvious to all students of harmony. When playing in contrary motion all unevenness, all breaks in precision and all unbalanced conditions of touch become much more evident to the ear than if the same exercises were played in parallel motion. Another important reason for the helpfulness of playing in contrary motion is not to be undervalued. It is that a kind of physical 'sympathy' is developed between the fingers and the nerves which operate them in the corresponding hands. For instance, it is much easier to play with the fifth finger of one hand and the fifth finger of the other hand than it is to play with the third finger of one hand and the fifth finger of another."