Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1894-10-04
PIECES AS STUDIES.
the Secret Of Rapid Progress In Pianc
Playing Is Versatility.

the Secret Of Rapid Progress In Piano
Playing Is Versatility.
Experienced teachers agree that tho
playing of pupil accustomed to spend
all or nearly all her time upon exercises
and studies having merely the form of
pieces without their spirit is far less
musical and spontaneous than that of
those accustomed to playing variety
of well written compositions.
Nevertheless the study has certain ad-
vantages which come more easily to it
than to a piece. A study is taken as
duty and practiced as duty. A piece is
primarily pastime, and if practiced as
pastime but little more than pastime
will come out of it. What is the solu-
ton of this difficulty? Is it that we
must go on relying upon studies for all
the serious part of the pupils work.
"Not at all, is the reply of a writer
in The Musical Record, who says:
We must contrive to bring to the &C.
QUESTION of pieces the same qualities of
mental attention and seriousness that
come of their own accord in the case of
studies. When this is done, and when
the subject matter of the lessons is in
telligently diversified for shaping the
playing in order to modify it in this di-
rection or the other, the pieces will be
found to afford much more profitable
material for study than ''Etudes, by
no matter how many eminent writers,
always excepting the Chopin works.
The teacher who undertakes to forward
the student by the use of pieces, with
out other help than the technical exer-
cises, Immediately encounters the diff
Guilty of collecting suitable repertory
of material.
There are pieces which the student
likes on first hearing. These, as rule,
are of but little use to him. There are
other pieces of hidden beauty, snch
as the works of Schumann, Chopin and
the like To expect student of tender
years to like one Of these is wrong.
What we need is to select the piece
with reference to its compatibility with
the Students temperament or POSSIBLE
ties and then assign it as study at the
proper moment. AS study it will hold
the serious attention. Later, when its
inner correspondence of spirit shall have
had time to make itself felt, the student
will find himself liking the piece, which
at first he regarded merely as exercise.
A student unconsciously learns many
points about musical form by memoriz-
ing pieces of different kinds.
All playing and all music writing
may be divided into about three cate
gories-thematic, wherein the discus
sion of theme is the question; lyric
where the proper delivery of melody is
the question, and brilliant, where it is
question of passages of one kind or
another. There might well be still an
other class, which, for want Of better
coloring and keyboard command are the
essential elements. To specify, fugue is
the type of all pieces in which theme
is discussed. A Chopin or Schumann
nocturne or Beethoven cantabile is
the type of all high grade melody play
ing. LISTS concert pieces and those of
Tahlberg are the types of brilliant
pieces for the pianoforte. There are
some of these which turn upon what is
called effect. LISTS "Waldesrauchen
is one of these. To teach music is pri-
marily to familiarize the pupil with the
great types of music mentioned and to
exercise him over and over again in
each one of them until he becomes him
self musical in turn.