Now this list is not bad, but it is nearly twenty-five years since it was made, and in this quintessentializing age, a quarter of a century means many revolutions in taste and technic. Condense, condense is the cry, and thereupon rose Oscar Raif, who might be called the Richard Wagner of piano pedagogues, for with one wave of his wand he would banish all études, substituting in their stead music, and music only. Pick out the difficulties of a composition for slow practice, said Mr. Raif, and you will save time and wear and tear on the nerves.
Raif made a step in piano pedagogy, nihilistic though it seemed, and to-day we have those remarkable daily studies of Isidor Phillip, which are a practical demonstration of Raif’s theory.
Then came forward a few reasoning men who said: “Why not skeletonize the whole system of technic, giving it in pure, powerful but small doses to the student?” With this idea Plaidy, Zwintscher, Mason and Mathews, Germer, Louis Koehler and Riemann have published volumes literally epitomizing the technics of the piano. Dr. William Mason in his Touch and Technic further diversifies this bald material by making the pupil attack it with varying touches, rhythms and velocities. Albert R. Parsons, in his valuable Synthetic Method, makes miracles of music commonplaces for the tender, plastic mind of childhood. But all these, while training the mind and muscles, do not fringe upon the problem the young man attempted to solve. That problem related to studies only. His hand was supposed to be placed—in a word—to be posed.
He incidentally found that Heinrich Germer’s Technics or Mason’s Touch and Technic were sufficient to form the fingers, wrist, forearm and upper arm; that on a Virgil clavier every technical problem of the flat keyboard could be satisfactorily worked out, and then arose the question: What studies are absolutely essential to the pianist who wishes to go to the technical boundaries of the flat keyboard?
Technics alone would not do, for you do not get figures that flow nor the sequence of musical ideas, nor musical endurance, not to mention style and phrasing. No one work on technic blends all these requisites. Piano studies cannot be absolutely discarded without a serious loss; one loses the suavity and simplicity of Cramer, a true pendant of Mozart; the indispensable technics and foundational tone and touch of Clementi, a true forerunner of Beethoven, and then what a loss to piano literature would be the destruction of the studies of Chopin, Liszt and Rubinstein!
No; there lurks an element of truth in the claims of all these worthy thinkers, experimenters and seekers after the truth. Our young man, who was somewhat of an experimental psychologist, knew this, and earnestly sought for the keystone of the arch, the arcanum of the system, and after weary years of travail found it in Bach—great, good, glorious, godlike Johann Sebastian Bach, in whose music floats the past, present and future of the tone art. Mighty Bach, who could fashion a tiny prelude for a child’s sweet fingers, a Leonardo da Vinci among composers, as Beethoven is their Michel Angelo, Mozart their Raphael.
With the starting point of the first preludes and exercises of Bach the young groper found that he had his feet, or rather his hands, on terra firma, and proceeded with the two and three part inventions and the suites, English and French, and the great forty-eight preludes and fugues in the Well Tempered Clavichord, not forgetting the beautiful A minor fugue with its few bars of prelude.
Before the Clavichord is reached the pupil’s hand is ready for Cramer, and some of these beautiful music pieces, many poetical in the extreme, may be given. What could follow Cramer more fitly than Clementi, Tausig’s Clementi? A great teacher as well as a great virtuoso, Tausig pinned his faith to these studies, and so does that other great virtuoso. Bach was also Chopin’s daily bread.
In Clementi one may discern all the seeds of modern piano music, and studying him gives a nobility of tone, freedom of style and a surety of finger that may be found in no other collection. Tausig compressed Clementi into twenty-nine examples, which may with discrimination be reduced to fifteen for practical use. The same may be said of Bülow’s Cramer, not much more than half being really necessary.
Bülow’s trinity of Bs—Bach, Beethoven and Brahms—may be paralleled in the literature of piano studies by a trinity of Cs—Cramer, Clementi and Chopin. And that leads to the great question, How is that ugly gap, that break, to be bridged between Clementi and Chopin? Bülow attempts to supply the bridge by a compound of Moscheles, Henselt and Haberbier, which is obviously tedious, and in one case—Henselt—puts the cart before the horse.