Because Ernst Bacon was not only a composer and pianist, but also a teacher,
conductor, writer, artist, and student of history, his 1963 book
Notes on the Piano speaks not only to pianists but to all
musicians, as well as those interested in the creative process and
the arts world in general. The diverse subject matter ranges from
finer points of piano technique and study to such broad topics as
the artist's place in society. The book is divided into 14 chapters
under 5 main sections - The Performer, Technically Speaking, The
Learner, The Player and Writer, and The Observer.
Below are excerpts.
How you begin a piece is everything. it is in the first bar that you establish your art with the listener.
Some there are who arrive at their tempo and tone level only after some desultory bars have passed.
Such vacillation proves to be costly. There remains more to recover than has been lost; like reestablishing a
good name after a misdeed.
As between melody and accompaniment, it is better to exaggerate their difference than to minimize it.
However, the restraint of the introvert, often described as a failure of power of "projection," sometimes
bespeaks a sensitivity that is preferable to the overemphasis of the extrovert.
Much nonsense is said about "good" and "bad" form. A form is good if it serves its purpose, if it awakens
and keeps alive interest, if it proportions its materials, shapes them to the contours of human
psychology; if it satisfies the expectations it arouses, even to the point of surprise.
The good "piano hand" belongs to the person of good musical mind.
It is a good study at times to practice all scales with a c major fingering, wherein the thumb must also
play on the black keys. This calls for a limp and supple hand, and prepares the playing of sequential
patterns with unchanging fingerings, at such moments where immediate adjustment to each separate scale
fingering would hinder continuity, and cause confusion. More time is often lost in changing to the best
pattern, than in pursuing the pattern already established.
Like the vibrato with the violinist, nothing so much reveals a pianist's capacity to hear himself as his
pedaling. One could almost say that pedaling is tone.
The study of a work should begin like an oil portrait. You sketch in the main outlines; you add then certain
tones perhaps; then comes the laying on of paint, the large labor; and finally there is the critical
appraisal with last modifications. The important thing is to progress from the general to the particular,
returning finally to the general again.
Gratitude in teaching is best when mutual. He is commonly paid the best who has already been fully rewarded
by the privilege of instructing others. It is a fair balance: the student's trust and labor as against
the teacher's generous formulation of experience.
This is the dilemma of most music schools. They began as a need and have become a burden. The more they have
become entangled with the self-perpetuating business of teaching only teachers, the less well they teach. The
more smoothly they run, the less room is there for that quality of genius without which their very existence
loses meaning. Equability is not music.
Public performance pulls at the weakest link, at the same time that it tempers the strongest link, in the
chain of experience. A mishap in performance can usually be traced to some "Schlamperei", some moment of
"I-guess-that's-good-enoughedness."
Sight-reading is encouraged most of all through accompanying and ensemble-playing whereby the compulsion
to continue playing without interruption overcomes the common habit of pausing before each new musical hurdle.
There is also a spirit generated between two or more players, as in conversation, that promotes
continuity and dislikes vacillation.
There are limestone caves that seem to have no end. You venture first into their known passages, then detect
a hitherto undiscovered opening, which again reveals a whole new network of caves. In time you make a new
map including all known explorations, and settle down, content with what you have. But another person
comes along, looking for new openings where you perceived none, and in time enlarges your map, relegating
your considerable findings into the large body of the past. An era lies just behind us when the dogma of
the exhaustion of musical invention was current.
An artist should be seen as well as heard. A record may reinforce our impressions of him, but it will
never establish him as a personality.
The realest playing is often pure illusion. This is shown by the player who, when contending with a
defective or untuned instrument, succeeds nevertheless in imagining ideal sounds, and transporting
his hearers out of all awareness of the piano's blemishes. He compels them to hear imaginarily
along with himself.
Comments on the book —
Shining Out by Basil Ramsey
Where to find the book —
Although Notes on the Piano is currently out of print, you can still order a copy online through amazon.com or barnesnoble.com top of page |
