Great Pianists on Piano Playing / Study Talks with Foremost Virtuosos. A Series of Personal Educational Conferences with Renowned Masters of the Keyboard, Presenting the Most Modern Ideas upon the Subjects of Technic, Interpretation, Style and Expression

by James Francis Cooke

The training of the ear is of great importance, and if teachers would only make sure that their pupils studied music with their sense of hearing as well as with their fingers, much time would be saved in later work. Young pupils should be taught to listen by permitting them to hear good music, which is at the same time sufficiently simple to insure comprehension. Early musical education is altogether too one-sided. The child is taken to the piano and a peculiar set of hieroglyphics known as notation is displayed to him. He is given a few weeks to comprehend that these signs refer to certain keys on the keyboard. He commences to push down these keys faithfully and patiently and his musical education is thus launched in what many consider the approved manner. Nothing is said about the meaning of the piece, its rhythm, its harmonies, its æsthetic beauties. Nothing is told of the composer, or of the period in which the piece was written. It would be just about as sensible to teach a pupil to repeat the sounds of the Chinese language by reading the Chinese word-signs, but without comprehending the meaning of the sounds and signs. Is it any wonder that beginners lose interest in their work, and refuse to practise except when compelled to do so?

I am most emphatically in favor of a more rational, a more broad, and a more thorough training of the beginner. Time taken from that ordinarily given to the senseless, brainless working up and down of the fingers at the keyboard, and devoted to those studies such as harmony, musical history, form, and in fact, any study which will tend to widen the pupil's knowledge and increase his interest, will save much time in later work.

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."

Waste in Unimportant Subjects

There is a general impression among teachers to-day that much time might be saved by a more careful selection of studies, and by a better adaptation of the studies to particular pupils. For instance, Carl Czerny wrote over one thousand opus numbers. He wrote some of the most valuable studies ever written, but no one would think of demanding a pupil to play all of the Czerny studies, any more than the student should be compelled to play everything that Loeschhorn, Cramer and Clementi ever wrote. Studies must be selected with great care and adapted to particular cases, and if the young teacher feels himself incapable of doing this, he should either use selections or collections of studies edited by able authorities or he should place himself under the advice of some mature and experienced teacher until the right experience has been obtained. It would not be a bad plan to demand that all young teachers be apprenticed to an older teacher until the right amount of experience has been obtained. The completion of a course in music does not imply that the student is able to teach. Teaching and the matter of musical proficiency are two very different things. Many conservatories now conduct classes for teachers, which are excellent in their way. In the olden days a mechanic had to work side by side with his master before he was considered proficient to do his work by himself. How much more important is it that our educators should be competently trained. They do not have to deal with machinery, but they do have to deal with the most wonderful of all machines—the human brain.

Some studies in use by teachers are undeserving of their popularity, according to my way of thinking. Some studies are altogether trivial and quite dispensable. I have never held any particular fondness for Heller for instance. His studies are tuneful, but they seem to me, in many cases, weak imitations of the style of some masters such as Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., who may be studied with more profit. I believe that the studies of Loeschhorn possess great pedagogical value. Loeschhorn was a born teacher: he knew how to collect and present technical difficulties in a manner designed to be of real assistance to the student. The studies of Kullak are also extremely fine.

This is a subject which is far more significant than it may at first appear. Whatever the student may choose to study after he leaves the teacher, his work while under the teacher's direction should be focused upon just those pieces which will be of most value to him. The teacher should see that the course he prescribes is unified. There should be no waste material. Some teachers are inclined to teach pieces of a worthless order to gain the fickle interest of some pupils. They feel that it is better to teach an operatic arrangement, no matter how superficial, and retain the interest of the pupil, than to insist upon what they know is really best for the pupil, and run the risk of having the pupil go to another teacher less conscientious about making compromises of this sort. When the teacher has come to a position where he is obliged to permit the pupil to select his own pieces or dictate the kind of pieces he is to be taught in order to retain his interest, the teacher will find that he has very little influence over the pupil. Pupils who insist upon mapping out their own careers are always stumbling-blocks. It is far better to make it very clear to the pupil in the first place that interference of this kind is never desirable, and that unless the pupil has implicit confidence in the teacher's judgment it is better to discontinue.