Piano Playing, with Piano Questions Answered

by Josef Hofmann

There are, in addition to the questions presented and answered, one or two points about piano-playing that would naturally not occur to the average student. The opportunity to discuss those here is too favourable to be allowed to pass, and as they hardly admit of precise classification, I venture to offer them here as a brief foreword.

To the hundreds of students who at various times have asked me: What is the quickest way to become a great piano-player? I will say that such a thing as a royal road, a secret trick, or a patent method to quickly become a great artist, does not exist. As the world consists of atoms; as it is the infinitely small things that have forced the microscope into the scientist's hand, so does art contain numberless small, seemingly insignificant things which, if neglected entirely, visit dire vengeance upon the student. Instead of prematurely concerning himself with his inspiration, spirituality, genius, fancy, etc., and neglecting on their account the material side of piano study, the student should be willing to progress from atom to atom, slowly, deliberately, but with absolute certainty that each problem has been completely solved, each difficulty fully overcome, before he faces the next one. Leaps, there are none!

Unquestionably it does sometimes happen that an artist suddenly acquires a wide renown. In such a case his leap was not into greatness, but merely into the public's recognition of it; the greatness must have been in him for some time before the public became aware of it. If there was any leaping, it was not the artist, but the public that did it.

Let us not close our eyes to the fact that there have been—and probably always will be—artists that gain a wide renown without being great; puffery, aided by some personal eccentricity, is quite able to mislead the public, but these will, at best, do it only for a short time, and the collapse of such a reputation, as collapse there must be, is always sure, and sad to behold.

The buoyancy of mind, its ability to soar, so necessary for both creative and interpretative art, these are never impaired by close attention to detail. If they should be destroyed by attention to detail, it would not matter, for they cannot have been genuine; they can have been but sentimental imaginings. Details are the very steps which, one by one, lead to the summit of art; we should be careful not to lift one foot before the other one rests quite securely upon its step. One should—to illustrate—not be satisfied with the ability of "getting through" some difficult passage "by the skin of the teeth" or "without breaking down," but should strive to be able to play with it, to toy with it, in order to have it at one's beck and call in any variation of mood, so as to play it as it pleases the mind and not only the fingers. One should acquire sovereignty over it.

This sovereignty is technique. But—technique is not art. It is only a means to achieve art, a paver of the path toward it. The danger of confounding technique with art itself is not inconsiderable, since it takes a long time to develop a trustworthy technique; and this prolonged association with one subject is apt to give it supremacy over all others in one's mind. To guard against this serious danger the student should, above all, never lose sight of the fact that music, as does any other art, springs from our innate craving for individual expression. As word-thought is transmitted from man to man by verbal language so are feelings, emotions, moods—crystallized into tone-thought—conveyed by music. The effects of music may, therefore, be ennobling and refining; but they can as easily be degrading and demoralizing. For the saints and sinners among music-makers are probably in the same proportion as among the followers of other professions. The ethical value of music depends, therefore, not upon the musician's technique, but solely upon his moral tendencies. The student should never strive to dazzle his auditor's ear with mere technical brilliancy, but should endeavour to gladden his heart, to refine his feelings and sensibilities, by transmitting noble musical thoughts to his mind. He should scorn all unnecessary, charlatanish externalities and strive ever for the inwardness of the composition he interprets; for, in being honest to the composition he will also be honest to himself and thus, consciously or not, express his own best self. If all musicians were sincere in this endeavour there could be neither envy nor jealousy among them; advancing hand in hand toward their common ideal they could not help being of mutual assistance to each other.

Art, not unlike religion, needs an altar around which its devotees may congregate. Liszt, in his day, had erected such an altar in Weimar, and as its high priest he stood, himself, before it—a luminous example of devotion to art. Rubinstein did the same in St. Petersburg. Out of these atmospheres, thanks to the inspiring influences of Liszt's and Rubinstein's wonderful personalities, there have emerged a large number of highly meritorious and some eminent artists. That many of them have lacked the power in their later life to withstand the temptations of quick material gain by descending to a lower plane is to be regretted, but—such is life. Many are called, but few are chosen. Since those days several of these "many" have attempted to create similar centres in Europe. They failed, because they were not serving art, but rather made art serve their own worldly purposes.

The artists of talent no longer group themselves around the man of genius. Perhaps he is not to be found just now. Each little celebrity among the pianists keeps nowadays a shop of his own and all to himself. Many of these shops are "mints," and some of them produce counterfeits. As a matter of course, this separative system precludes all unification of artistic principles and is, therefore, very harmful to the present generation of students. The honest student who will discriminate between these, sometimes cleverly masked, counterfeit mints, and a real art altar must be of a character in which high principles are natively ingrained. It might help him somewhat to remember that when there is no good to choose we can always reject the bad.

What is true of teachers is just as true of compositions. The student should not listen to—should not, at least, repeat the hearing of—bad compositions, though they may be called symphonies or operas. And he can, in a considerable measure, rely upon his own instincts in this matter. He may not—and probably will not—fully fathom the depths of a new symphony at its first hearing, but he must have received general impressions of sufficient power and clearness to make him wish for another hearing. When this wish is absent he should not hear the work again from a mere sense of duty; it were far wiser to avoid another hearing, for habit is a strong factor, and if we accustom our ear to hear cacophonous music we are apt to lose our aversion to it, which is tantamount to a loss of good, natural taste. It is with much of modern music as it is with opium, morphine, and other deadly drugs. We should shun their very touch. These musical opiates are sometimes manufactured by persons of considerable renown; of such quickly gained renown as may be acquired nowadays by the employment of commercialistic methods; a possibility for which the venal portion of the public press must bear part of the blame. The student should not be deceived by names of which the general familiarity is of too recent a date. I repeat that he should rather consult his own feelings and by following them contribute his modest share toward sending some of the present "moderns" back into their deserved obscurity and insignificance.

I use the term "moderns" advisedly, for the true masters—some of whom died but recently—have never stooped to those methods of self-aggrandisement at which I hinted. Their places of honour were accorded to them by the world because they were theirs, by right of their artistic power, their genius and the purity of their art. My advice to the students and to all lovers of music is: Hold on with all your might to the school of sincerity and chastity in music! It is saner and, morally and æsthetically, safer than the entire pack of our present nerve-tickling, aye, and nerve-racking "modernists." Music should always elevate; it should always call forth what, according to the demands of time and place, is best in us. When, instead of serving this divine mission, it speculates upon, and arouses, our lowest instincts for no better purpose than to fill the pockets of its perpetrator, it should receive neither the help nor the encouraging attention of any noble-thinking and clean-minded man or woman. Passive resistance can do a good deal on these premises.