http://scriabin.com/etude/ en-us Copyright 2012 Tue, 01 Feb 1938 14:26:48 -0500 The statement that but few, if any, effective art works for the piano are produced in the busy present has been heard quite frequently of late, and the wail is ever increasing in monotony. It is said that the modern composers, in the search for orchestral color, are treating the piano in a decidedly exaggerated style; that the reaches are impossible for normal hands, and that the dissonances hold out so long that when they do resolve the effect is lost--especially on thin-toned pianos. As is usual in sweeping assertions, there is a shadow of fact for a base. In this case it is but the merest shadow, and it is almost impossible for those who know the truth to stand by in passive abeyance. http://scriabin.com/etude/1893/07/notes-on-the-works-of-some-living-composers.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1893/07/notes-on-the-works-of-some-living-composers.html Composers http://scriabin.com/etude/1901/12/a-newly-discovered-portrait-of-mozart.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1901/12/a-newly-discovered-portrait-of-mozart.html Composers It is useless to say that nothing aroused his wrath so much as the receipt of an invitation to play the piano at some festival concert by a "friendly" committee which tactlessly ignored the fact that he was a composer as well as a pianist. Though he was the most genial of men, I suspect that he had said to himself: "If they will not listen to my compositions, they shall not hear me play either." http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/victorious-liszt.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/victorious-liszt.html Composers Liszt's effect upon the music of the last half of the nineteenth century is by no means to be meas­ured by his own work in composition or by his great abilities as a pianist. His power as a composer was scarcely understood during his life-time, although Wagner ranked him as among the very highest in this field, and his abilities as a performer were veiled from all but a select few by his early retirement from the concert-platform. http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/liszt-as-a-musical-influence.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/liszt-as-a-musical-influence.html Composers It may help the reader to form an estimate of one of Liszt's chief characteristics if I say that he was the most loved man in history. He was loved by more people than any man I ever heard of, and I think I have not overlooked anybody of consequence in history; he was loved more devotedly, more affection­ately, demonstratively, and more enduringly. http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/liszt-the-musical-liberal.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/liszt-the-musical-liberal.html Composers From the material of his playing it seems quite certain that the early distinctions of Liszt were due to his captivating manner, which as a boy was seri­ous, charming, and full of sensibility, and as yet without the circumambient "atmosphere" of the suc­cessful virtuoso. http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/liszt-as-pianist-and-piano-composer.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/liszt-as-pianist-and-piano-composer.html Composers I am sometimes questioned as to Liszt's "method." He had none that I am aware of, although he doubtless served his time when he was a pupil of Czerny, who must have been one of the best teachers who ever lived. Probably it was to the faithful prac­tice of Czerny's etudes (from which he, in vain, prayed his father to be delivered) in his youth that Liszt owed those fine-spun fingers of his, for his finger-technic was something marvelous, and made everybody else's seem coarse and heavy in compari­son. http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/liszt-as-a-teacher-by-amy-fay.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/liszt-as-a-teacher-by-amy-fay.html Composers Whatever may be thought or said of Liszt as an original composer, in his piano-transcriptions he has never had an equal, scarcely even a would-be com­petitor. His work in this line is of inestimable im­portance to the pianist, both as student and public performer, and forms a rich and extensive depart­ment of piano-literature. http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/transcriptions-for-the-piano-by-franz-liszt.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/transcriptions-for-the-piano-by-franz-liszt.html Composers http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/robert-schumann-on-liszts-playing.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1902/05/robert-schumann-on-liszts-playing.html Composers It is not necessary for me to advise America as to the matter of musical ideals. There are horrible perver­sions in all parts of the world. One of the greatest abuses I have observed since my visit to this country has been the deliberate pilfering of the great musical masters of the past to make some popular tune. If there must be prohibition, why not make a law to prevent such desecration. The other night I heard in a hotel in Pittsburgh the lovely Blue Danube Waltz of Johann Strauss murdered in some popular tune in which it appeared in four quarter time. I am told that this is not only common but that popular publishers in keeping with the banditry of the times are making a continual practice of it. The bad effect upon the art and upon the student of the art is that it belittles the need for creating original melodies. When it is so easy to steal, why produce? http://scriabin.com/etude/1922/01/dr-richard-strauss---new-paths-and-visions-in-musical-progress.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1922/01/dr-richard-strauss---new-paths-and-visions-in-musical-progress.html Composers Allowing that Wagner Operas could be given in the English language in America, without rendering personal assistance to dangerous alien enemies, should they be debarred from our stage at the present time? http://scriabin.com/etude/1918/02/the-case-of-richard-wagner-vs-democracy.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1918/02/the-case-of-richard-wagner-vs-democracy.html Composers Americans and British are to my mind intensely musical races, especially from a creative (compositional) standpoint, but we are musically primitive races when viewed in the aggregate; at bottom closer allied to the musical instincts of South Sea Island Polynesians and African Negroes than to those of Hollanders, Frenchmen and Germans, for instance. http://scriabin.com/etude/1918/02/the-two-fold-vitality-of-anglo-saxon-music.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1918/02/the-two-fold-vitality-of-anglo-saxon-music.html Composers In his day, people regarded Tom merely as a great freak, as he indeed was. Nowadays, people realize that his case was principally interesting because it was a marvelous manifestation of the sub-conscious or dream mind as differentiated from the conscious mind. Tom's mind, that is, his conscious mind, was just about sufficient to remove him one step from the helpless imbecile who has to be fed and cared for. http://scriabin.com/etude/1918/02/the-phenomenon-of-blind-tom.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1918/02/the-phenomenon-of-blind-tom.html Pianists The creating or composing by a musician is the greatest puzzle to the layman. How often the question was asked of me, "How do you manage to hold on to a musical thought and to put it on paper so anybody can play or sing it just as you had thought it out? How, where, and when comes to you a musical impression--a melody? How is it possible with one thought to encompass all the instruments of an orchestra and to make note of it all? Do you have first the musical idea, and then look up a text or poetry for it, or is it vice versa?" http://scriabin.com/etude/1895/10/how-composers-are-inspired.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1895/10/how-composers-are-inspired.html Composers The Romance of the Chopin Preludes By MRS. BURTON CHANCE With Fanciful Illustrations by the Noted German Impressionist, Robert Spies http://scriabin.com/etude/1913/08/the-romance-of-the-chopin-preludes---by-mrs-burton-chance.html http://scriabin.com/etude/1913/08/the-romance-of-the-chopin-preludes---by-mrs-burton-chance.html Composers