The Great Pianists
Photo by Amir Doreh on Unsplash
As I was reading through Celebrate Theory / History 9 in preparation for teaching the course, I came across this suggestion in a text box: “To learn more about Chopin and his contemporaries, we recommend you read chapters eight and nine from The Great Pianists by Harold Schonberg...This entertaining and informative book is a must read for any serious piano student.”
Some years ago I read Harold Schonberg's book The Lives of the Great Composers and really enjoyed it, so I was confident that I would like The Great Pianists. I purchased a copy and read it earlier this year. It was indeed entertaining and informative. I would recommend reading the whole book, not just a couple of chapters! The book is full of interesting anecdotes, biographical details, and descriptions of piano technique and repertoire.
The piano was invented in 1709 by Bartolommeo Cristofori, a harpsichord maker in Padua. He called it “gravicembalo col piano e forte”. By the 1730s, Gottfried Silbermann was building pianos in Germany; these are the instruments that Johann Sebastian Bach tried and found wanting. It was the next generation of composers, Bach's sons and their contemporaries, who wrote music in the new style galant for the piano.
Most great pianists of the past were also composers. Schonberg's book discusses several of the composers/pianists whom we study in RCM history courses: W.A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, and Claude Debussy. You'll also find lots of information about composers such as Muzio Clementi and Carl Czerny, whose piano sonatinas and studies are so ubiquitous in graded piano repertoire books.
Speaking of Carl Czerny, I was amused to read that he had cats. Lots of them. Schonberg refers to Czerny as “one of the greatest pianists who never played in public” (page 100): he didn't like travelling or the stress of performing; he preferred teaching and composing. He never married and had no close family, but he always had at least seven cats in his house. Czerny spent a lot of time trying to find good homes for the many litters of kittens produced by his cats.
How did the pianists of the late 17th and the 18th centuries play? We know what late Romantic and 20th-century pianists sounded like from their recordings. Camille Saint-Saëns, the first major pianist to record, was born in 1835. For the pianists who lived and died before recording technology was invented, we have to rely on written evidence, such as criticism, letters, articles, and books (written by the pianist or by people who knew the pianist). The more popular the virtuoso pianist, the more was written about him or her. We can also get a sense of how a pianist played from the music he or she composed.
One aspect of piano playing I didn't know before reading this book is that, up to the early years of the 19th century, there were two types of pianos. The Viennese/German action, favoured by Mozart, was light, with relatively little carrying power, but easier to play repeated notes and rapid passages. The English style of piano, favoured by Clementi, was bigger and more heavily strung; it required more pressure to play, but also had a brilliant, full sound.
By 1830, the piano had been improved and was basically the instrument we know today. It had become the most popular instrument; many homes had pianos, and young ladies were expected to play the piano and/or sing to its accompaniment. Orchestral works, chamber music, and music from popular operas were made available in reduction for piano (solo or duet). Many people played the piano, and they wanted to hear virtuoso pianists play.
Chapter VIII of Schonberg's book is entitled “Romanticism and Its Rules”. The milieu for music in the 19th century was quite different from the past. European culture moved away from the patronage system that had supported musicians. Many famous conservatories and private music schools were established in the first half of the 19th century. A rising middle class began paying to attend concerts. Piano recitals were especially popular. Pianists were individualists; some were flashy and somewhat lacking in good taste, but the best produced beautiful sounds, singing melodies, and massive sonorities, combining technical brilliance with musicianship. Personality was more important than scholarship: pianists would often rearrange or embellish pieces composed by others.
The first solo piano recital was played by Franz Liszt in Rome in 1839. Before that, a pianist would normally share the program with other performers. Liszt referred to his solo performances as “musical soliloquies”. (He wrote to a friend, “le concert, c'est moi”!). Solo performances were first called “recitals” in 1840 by T. Frederick Beale, founder of a London instrument firm, after booking Liszt to play there. Liszt was something like a modern rock star: he was extremely handsome and charismatic in addition to being a flashy virtuoso, and women shrieked in ecstasy, fought over items discarded by Liszt, and sometimes fainted from sheer excitement.
Program music (instrumental music with extra-musical associations) was a significant trend in the 19th-century. Many compositions were written with descriptive titles and/or a “program” provided by the composer. But even pieces that were not programmatic could be subjected to the game of reading things into the music. Schonberg gives us some funny examples of the programs which Hans von Bülow provided for Chopin's Préludes. Here's a particularly surrealistic one (for No. 9 in E major):
Here Chopin has the conviction that he has lost his power of expression. With the determination to discover whether his brain can still originate ideas, he strikes his head with a hammer (here the sixteenth and thirty-seconds are to be carried out in exact time, indicating a double stroke of the hammer). In the third and fourth measures one can hear the blood trickle (trills in the left hand). He is desperate at finding no inspiration (fifth measure); he strikes again with the hammer and with greater force (thirty-second notes twice in succession during the crescendo). In the key of A flat he finds his power again. Appeased, he seeks his former key and closes contentedly.
As Schonberg says, “that this inanity could have come from what was conceded to be the sharpest musical mind of the time passes belief.” (page 138)
The title of Chapter IX is “Tubercular, Romantic, Poetic”. Frédéric Chopin was never very strong, and he suffered from tuberculosis. He was “a romantic who hated romanticism”; he disliked the music of most of his contemporaries and revered the music of J.S. Bach and Mozart as well as the operas of Bellini. His music was considered to be revolutionary and exotic, with strange harmonies and dissonances, but everyone loved his beautiful and original piano playing, with its extraordinary control, nuance, and perfect legato.
The other composer who revolutionized piano playing was Claude Debussy. He was a gifted pianist who had new ideas about pedalling, sonority, and figuration. When he played, it was as if his hands floated over the keys, gently but with great power of expression.
I was especially interested in reading about the Spanish pianist and composer Isaac Albéniz. What an unusual childhood he had! He was a child prodigy who rebelled against his controlling parents by running away from home repeatedly. On one occasion (at the age of twelve!), he hid on a ship heading across the sea to Puerto Rico. He played the piano for the passengers, and they gave him money. He ended up in South America: he started out by sleeping in churches and begging in the streets of Buenos Aires; eventually he managed to give concerts and make money. He then went to Cuba, where his father finally caught up with him. And then the thirteen-year-old Isaac talked his father into letting him go alone to New York. He made his way across America, doing odd jobs and playing in saloons. At the age of fourteen, he returned to Europe. When he was an adult he settled down and became a respected virtuoso pianist and composer (best known for his Iberia piano suite).
Schonberg discusses many great pianists of the 19th and 20th centuries in this book. Canadian pianist Glenn Gould gets a chapter to himself (“Bach à la Mode”). The book was published in 1963, revised in 1987, so you won't find any information about the current generation of pianists. Schonberg also focuses on “classical” pianists; there's no discussion of jazz.
Here is some piano music to enjoy (including the above-mentioned Prélude by Chopin):
Frédéric Chopin: Prélude in E Major, op. 28, no. 9
Claude Debussy: Deux arabesques
Isaac Albéniz: Iberia, Book 1