Eminent Pianists (and Others) Plead for a Return to
"Compleat Musicianship at the Piano"
Quotations Supporting a Return to Compleat Musicianship at the Piano &
Encouraging Today's Up-and-Coming Compleat Pianists
Chase |
Dichter |
Haydn |
Hindemith |
Nachmanovitch |
Schoenberg |
Serkin
Dichter, Misha
(from Reflections from the Keyboard: The World of the Concert Pianist, David Dubal)
"I am floored by the piano playing of the late Art Tatum. I just can't get
enough of his records. [Dubal Interjects: "I think Horowitz also admired Tatum."]
How that man could improvise! What harmonic imagination! Classically trained
musicians have almost completely lost the art of improvisation. Ironically, Tatum
may be in a more direct line of descent from Bach than we are. They could both
improvise an eight-part fugue if they had to."
*[Emphasis added - BAS]
Serkin, Peter (son of Rudolf)
(from Reflections from the Keyboard: The World of the Concert Pianist, David Dubal)
Dubal: "Is there a right way of educating a child musically?"
Serkin: "No, I don't think so. But there are certain key elements like analysis,
counterpoint and harmony that seem to be neglected these days. Most often they're
studied only because they're required, and then by rote. In order to get their
degree, students will put up with them. Theory is no longer taught the way it was in
Bach, Mozart or Chopin's day.... [These days] the focus seems to be on the
playing rather than on learning
...about what one's playing."
*[Emphasis added - BAS]
Nachmanovitch, Stephen
(from Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts
"'Composing,' wrote Arnold Schoenberg, 'is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up
with the stream of ideas.'"
"Many musicians are fabulously skilled at playing the black dots on the printed page, but
mystified by how the dots got there in the first place and apprehensive of playing without
dots. Music theory does not help here; it teaches rules of the grammar, but not what to say.
When people ask me how to improvise, only a little of what I can say is about music. The real
story is about spontaneous expression, and it is therefore a spiritual and a psychological
story rather than a story about the technique of one art form or another."
"Improvisation is the most natural and widespread form of music making. Up until the last
century it was integral even to our literate tradition in the West. Leonardo da Vinci was one
of the great pioneers of improvisation on the viola da braccio, and with his friends put on entire
operas in which both the poetry and the music were made up on the spot. In Baroque music, the art
of playing keyboard instruments from a 'figured bass'...resembled the modern jazz musician's
art of playing over themes, motifs, or chord changes. In classical times, the cadenzas of violin,
piano, and other concertos were meant to be improvised - a chance for the player to put his own
creative display into the total artwork. Both Bach and Mozart were renowned as very free, agile,
imaginative improvisers, and many stories, both moving and amusing, are attached to their exploits
in the field. Beethoven, when he first came to Vienna, became known as an outstanding improviser on
the piano, and only later as a composer...." [excellent material follows, esp. reports of Beethoven's
prowess in piano improvisation]
*[Emphasis added - BAS]
Hindemith, Paul
(from The Craft of Musical Composition, Book I: Theory)
"[T]oday, when there is a general lack of skill in the technique of composition,
no composer should withdraw from teaching."
"There are two types of theorists: the teaching composer, and avowed specialist in teaching
music theory. A gifted composer is not always a good teacher.
But his instruction is bound to have a certain creative warmth, even when the composer is
of modest gifts, because he is passing on directly what he himself has experienced. This is not
true of the usual theory instruction, such as is given in most schools. The
specialist who gives such instruction without himself being gifted for composition is in a
difficult position. In the painful early stages of trying to bring dry series of figured
basses and sets of rules to life, he cannot fall back upon his own creative activity.
Thus he is likely to turn this most interesting of fields, which lies directly adjacent to free
composition itself, into a morass of disappointment, instead of exploiting the many stimuli
it offers for the better understanding of past and present styles of composition.
Not every theory teacher can reach that high estate of knowledge and ability attained by the
teachers (and textbook writers) of the last century, for they owed the richness of their harvest
to the fact that composers had left the field of instruction to them. But he can at least prevent
the theory lesson from becoming what students often consider it: a boring, incomprehensible,
and useless burden. And is it really any more than that when it consists in handing out
'music' in the form of dead chord-progressions and monotonous, meaningless melodic lines?"
*[Emphasis added - BAS]
Chase, Mildred Portney (studied with Josef Lhevinne under a 4-yr. Fellowship at Julliard)
(from Improvisation: Music from the Inside Out)
"The only thing that stands in the way of improvising is a reluctance to take the first steps."
"Once a student has begun improvising, and once the barriers of self-doubt and
self-consciousness have been broken down, the gap between the
level of improvising
and that of already acquired playing skills is easily bridged, regardless of the
student's age or degree of experience."
*[Emphasis added - BAS]
Haydn, Joseph
"I would sit down and begin to improvise, whether my spirits were sad or happy, serious or playful.
Once I had captured an idea, I strove with all my might to
develop and sustain it
in conformity with the rules of art." (quoted in Music All Around Me, Hopkins)
*[Emphasis added - BAS]
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