Part 2 (1/2)

I had fully intended at the conclusion of my last chapter to close the curtain on Chopin and his ree with the remark Deppe onceChopin on the shelf for half a century and studying Mozart in the interihness! The type of teacher to which Deppe belonged always proceeded as if a pupil, like a cat, had nine lives

Fifty years of Chopin on the shelf! There's an idea for you At the conclusion of this half century's immurement ould the world say to the Polish composer's music? That is to say, in 1955 the unknown inhabitants of theupon them absolutely new music The excitement would be colossal, colossal, too, would be the advertising And then? And then I fancy a chorus of profoundly disappointed lovers of the tone art Remember that the world er our pianoforte, our keyboard How childish, how simple would sound the timid little Chopin of the far-away nineteenth century

In the turbulent times to come music will have lost its personal flavor

Instead of interpretative artists there will be gigantic machinery capable ofa small coin in a slot will sound the most abstruse scores of Richard Strauss--then the popular and bewhistled music maker And yet it is difficult for us, so wedded are we to that tragic delusion of earthly glory and artistic immortality, to conjure up a day when theFor me the idea is inconceivable Some of his music has lost interest for us, particularly the early works ht that is beginning to steal over certain of the nocturnes, valses, and fantasias Now Hummel is quite perfect in his way To imitate him, as Chopin certainly did, was excellent practice for the younger inality Chopin soon found this out, and dropped both Hummel and Field out of his sche the weaker; _Op 10_ contains all Chopin in its twelve studies

The truth is, that this Chopin, to whoned two or three or four periods and styles andfrorew He lived But the exquisite art was there froround”

I need not tell you

What compositions, then, would ouraround the concert grand piano listening to the old-fashi+oned strains as we listen today when soives a recital of Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau on a clavecin! Still, as Mozart and Bach are endurable now, there is no warrant for any supposition that Chopin would not be tolerated a half century hence Fancy those sprightly, spiritual, and very national dances, thean impression! Or at least two of the ballades! Or three of the nocturnes! Not to mention the polonaises, preludes, scherzos, and etudes Si checkers--I went through allfor trouble I found it when I came across five mazurkas in the key of C-sharp minor I have arrived at the conclusion that this was a favorite tonality of the Pole Let us see

Two studies in _Op 10_ and _25_, respectively; the _Fantaisie-Impromptu_, _Op 66_; five _Mazurkas_, above mentioned; one _Nocturne, Op 27, No 1_; one _Polonaise, Op 26, No 1_; one _Prelude, Op 45_; one _Scherzo, Op 39_; and a short second section, a _cantabile_ in the _E major Scherzo, Op 54_; one _Valse, Op 64, No

2_--are there any more in C-sharp ood showing for one key, and a iac in his tendencies--C-sharp , morbid quality if too much insisted upon

The ift for varying not only a si with a siets he is hearing a three-part coician The first of the _Mazurkas in C-sharp minor_ bears the early _Op 6, No 2_ By noand characteristic That brief introduction with its pedal bass sounds the rhythmic life of the piece I like it; I like the dance proper; I like theaway--and the ending is full of a sad charer in conception, bigger in workmanshi+p It is not so cheerful, perhaps, as its predecessor in the sa in tenths like a contrabasso are intentionally monotone in effect There is defiance and despair in the mood And look at the line before the last--those consecutive fifths and sevenths were not placed there as a whi Here is a mazurka that will be heard later than 1955! By the hile you are loitering through this Op 30 do not neglect No

3, the stunning specimen in D-flat It is my favorite mazurka

Now let us hurry on to _Op 41, No 1_ It well repays careful study

Note the grip our composer has on the the at the close in octave and chordal _unisons_, it rumbles in the bass and is persistently asserted by the soprano voice Its scale is unusual, the atly pessimistic at times _Op 50, No 3_, sho closely the composer studied his Bach It is by all odds the most elaborately worked out of the series, difficult to play, difficult to grasp in its rather disconnected procession ofof exasperation, as if Chopin had lost interest, but perversely deteret it in all its peevish, sardonic humors, especially if the audience, or the weather, or the piano seat does not suit the fat little blackbird from Odessa _Op 63, No 3_, ends this list of mazurkas in C-sharp minor In it Chopin has limbered up, his mood is freer, melancholy as it is Louis Ehlert wrote of this: ”A more perfect canon in the octave could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned arts” Those last few bars prove that Chopin--they once called him amateurish in his harmonies!--could do what he pleased in the contrapuntal line

Shall I continue? Shall I insist on the obvious; hammer in my truisms!

It may be possible that out here on the Wissahickon--where the suet all the news of the rams for such numbers as those C-sharp minor mazurkas, for the _F inal _Ballade Op 38_ which begins in F and ends in A end to the effect that Schumann heard Chopin play his _Ballade_ in private and that there was no storotten the source, possibly one of the greater Chopinist's--or _Chopine_-ists, as they had it in Paris What a stu-block that A minor explosion was to audiences and students and to pianists theuard exclai the three A's with those singing fingers of his, not forgetting the pedals, s up the sixteenth notes, not in phrases, but pages How grandly he rolled out those bass scales, the chords in the treble transformed into a _Cantus Firin to sently and lo!--the tiny, little tune, as if children had unconsciously coe Port Arthur was stormed and captured in every bar What a pianist, what an artist, what a _ination weakens with my years--remember that I read in the daily papers the news of Chopin's death! I do long for a definite program to be appended to the _F-rae? I have also reached the time of life when the _A-flat Ballade_ affects ht for criticism the _G minor Ballade_ Preserve racious, delicate, capricious, one to meet the _D-flat Valse_ and _E-flat Nocturne_--as the obituaries say The fourth, the _Ffor over a half century to Bach so closely, I ieniously spun fabric of this _Ballade_ have made it my pet I do not dwell upon the loveliness of the first theme in F minor, or of thatnow of the composition as a whole Its themes are varied with consummate ease, and you wonder at the corners you so easily turn, bringing into vieer horizons; fresh and striking landscapes When you are once afloat on those D-flat scales, four pages froress Every bar slides nearer and nearer to the clily chaos for the moment After that the air clears and the whole work soars skyward on ree with those who place in the saory the _F minor Fantaisie_ with this _Ballade_ And it is not much played

Nor can thepathos and passion I see the musical mob of 1955 deeply interested when the Paderewski of those days puts it on his prograantic novelty!

You see, here I have been blazing away at the sareed to drop Chopin last month I can't help it I felt choked off in h I hope not the reader's! While I think of it, so if Chopin's first _Sonata in C h it is as dry as a Kalkbrenner Sonata for Sixteen Pianos and forty-five hands The fors are worthy of notice in es choked with notes: there is a raceful, artificial forhetto is in 5/4 tirateful How Chopin reveled when he reached the _B-flat minor_ and _B s! I had intended devoting a portion of this chapter to the difference of old-ti Alas! my unruly pen ran aith me!

VII

PIANO PLAYING TODAY AND YESTERDAY

How to listen to a teacher! How to profit by his precepts! Better still--How to practice after he has left the house! There are three titles for essays, pedagogic and otherwise, which ht be supplemented by a fourth: How to pay pro in any such generalities this beautiful day in late winter First, let er a piano teacher, nor do I give lessons by , fond of reminiscences; with the latter I bore my listeners, I am sure Nevertheless, I am not old in spirit, and I feel the liveliest curiosity in matters pianistic, matters musical

Hence, this month I will make a hasty co the pianoforte If you have patience withof i down your way don't

Do they teach the piano better in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth? Yes, absolutely yes When a young y” methods of the fifties, sixties and seventies of the past century, he was, it cannot be gainsaid, an excellent artist But he was, as a rule, the survival of the fittest For one of hi hands, untiring patience and a deeply musical tempera of the fingers Unduly prolonged, the iard of fore-arm and upper-arm and the comparatively restricted repertory--well, it was a stout body and a robust ogy

And then, too, the ideals of the pianist were quite different It is only in recent years that tone has become an i and Liszt In the early sixties we believed in velocity and clearness and brilliancy Kalkbrenner, Herz, Dreyschock, Dohler, Thalberg--those were the lively boys who patrolled the keyboard like the north wind--brisk but chilly Itone I ever heard on the piano was produced by Thalberg and after him Henselt Today Paderewski is the best exponent of their school; of course, modified by modern ideas and a Slavic teer counts Be ye as fleet as Rosenthal and as pure as Pachmann--in a tonal sense--ye will not escape co accuracy that extorted froen d'Albert a confession made to a friend of mine just before he sailed to this country last er bother hiame What he must excel in is--interpretation and tone”

Rosenthal, angry that a mere contrivance manipulated by a salesman could beat his speed, has taken the slopes of Parnassus by storm He can play the Liszt _Don Juan_ paraphrase _faster_ than any , naturally) But ho of us have attained such transcendental technic? None except Rosenthal, for I really believe if Karl Tausig would return to earth he would be dazzled by Rosenthal's perforanini _Studies_ and, Liszt, in his pal's; while the latter was far more musical and intellectual than Rosenthal Other days, other ways!

So tone, not technic alone, is our shi+bboleth How many teachers realize this? Howtheir pupils intomuscle at the expense of music! To be sure, some of the old teachers considered the second F hest peak of execution and confined the Mozart and Field, Cra--the latter to please the proud papa after dessert Schumann was not understood; Chopin was misunderstood; and Liszt was _anathe tone, even if the mechanism was not above the nor to William Mason will recall the exquisite purity of his tone, the li Old style, I hear you say! Yes, old and ever new, because approaching , fly-by-night, hysterical, smash-the-ivories school of these latter days Music, not noise--that's e are after in piano playing, the _higher_ piano playing All the rest is pianola-istic!

Singularly enough, with the shi+fting of technical standards,at this very moment The reason is that so much more is expected in variety of technic; therefore, no unnecessary time can be spared If a modern pianist has not at _fifteen_ er, wrist, fore-ar or the noble art of football Immense are the deues, sonatas of Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and the newnotes, in the esti with the music on the piano desk And then to top all these terrible things, you must have the physique of a sailor, the nerves of a wohter, and the humility of an innocent child Is it any wonder that, paradoxical as it reat pianists today in public than there were fifty years ago, yet ten ti, then, in the pianistic curriculuive hiely ini the first to boil down the number of etudes He did this in his famous preface to the Cra by half Who plays Moscheles? Who cares for more than four or six of the Clementi, for a half dozen of the Cra certain teachers when Deppe and Raif, with his duers, abolished _all_ the classic piano studies Teachers like Constantine von Sternberg do the saures of compositions all the technic necessary Thisto the teacher than the old-fashi+oned, easy-going ways ”Play me No 22 for next time!” was the order, and in a soporific h all the studies of all the _Technikers_ Now the teacher must invent a new study for every new piece--with Bach on the side Always Bach! Please remember that