What could have been the result of such a titanic struggle with such wildernesses of notes? What could have been the result upon the cerebral powers of the young man after such a Brobdingnagian warfare against muscles and marks?
Alas, there was no result. How could there have been?
And music, what became of music in all this turmoil of technics? Naturally it went begging, and in after years the young man, observing how many young people, ambitious and talented, were pursuing the same false track, determined to think the thing out, and first went about it by asking well-known authorities, and finally formulated the question this way: What études are absolutely necessary for a mastery of the keyboard?
Since the days of Carl Czerny—God bless his old toccata in C!—instruction books, commonly known as methods, began to appear. How many I do not propose to tell you. You all know Moscheles and Fétis, the Kalkbrenner, the Henri Herz, Lebert and Stark and Richardson (founded on Dreyschock). That they have fallen into disuse is only natural. They were for the most part bulky, contained a large amount of useless material, and did not cover the ground; often being reflections of a one-sided virtuosity. Then up sprang an army of études. Countless hosts of notes, marshalled into the most fantastic figures, hurled themselves at varying velocities and rhythms on the piano studying world. Dire were the results. Schools arose and camps within camps. There were those in the land that developed the left hand at the expense of the right and the other way about. Trill and double-note specialists abounded, and one could study octaves here and ornaments there, stiffness at Stuttgart, flabbiness with Deppe, and yet no man could truthfully swear that his was the rightful, the unique method.
Suddenly in this quagmire of doubt and dumb keyboards arose a still small voice, but the voice of a mighty man. This is what the voice said:
“There is but one god in technic, Bach, and Clementi is his prophet.”
Thus spake Carl Tausig, and left behind him an imperishable edition of Clementi!
It was Tausig’s opinion that Clementi and Chopin alone have provided studies that perfectly fulfil their intention. It was Tausig’s habit to make use of them before all others, in the school for the higher development of piano playing of which he was the head. He also used them himself. Furthermore he asserted that by means of those studies Clementi made known and accessible the entire piano literature from Bach, who requires special study, to Beethoven, just as Chopin and Liszt completed the scale of dazzling virtuosity.
The Gradus was one great barrier—a mighty one, indeed—against the influx of barren, mechanical or nonsensical études for the piano. Just read the incomplete list above, and does not your head wither as a fired scroll at the prospect of studying such a vast array of notes? Then came Von Bülow with his Cramer edition, and another step was taken in the boiling down movement. Moreover the clever Hans took the reins in his hands, and practically said in his preface to the Cramer edition: “Here is my list; take and study it. You will then become a pianist—if you have talent.” Here is his list:
Lebert and Stark—abomination of angular desolation; Aloys Schmitt exercises, with a touch of Heller to give flavor and flesh to the old dry bones; Cramer (Bülow), St. Heller, op. 46 and 47; Czerny daily exercises, and the school of legato and staccato; Tausig’s Clementi; Moscheles, op. 70; Henselt, op. 2 and 5, and as a bridge Haberbier’s Études Poésies; Moscheles, op. 95, characteristic studies; Chopin, ops. 10 and 25, glorious music; Liszt studies, Rubinstein studies, and finally, as a “topper,” C. V. Alkan with Theodor Kullak’s octave studies on the side.