Kenneth Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195178265
- eISBN:
- 9780199870035
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178265.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter uncovers the roots of the myth of a pianistic golden age in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, along with offering a preliminary discussion of national performance styles, and the ...
More
This chapter uncovers the roots of the myth of a pianistic golden age in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, along with offering a preliminary discussion of national performance styles, and the influence of Beethoven, Czerny, Liszt, and Chopin. The vexed claim of a “continuous performance tradition” is analysed and shown to be erroneous.Less
This chapter uncovers the roots of the myth of a pianistic golden age in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, along with offering a preliminary discussion of national performance styles, and the influence of Beethoven, Czerny, Liszt, and Chopin. The vexed claim of a “continuous performance tradition” is analysed and shown to be erroneous.
Kenneth Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195178265
- eISBN:
- 9780199870035
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178265.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter examines the virtually universal custom before the mid-decades of the 20th-century of pianists improvising preludes and transitions between pieces, with especial attention to Chopin, ...
More
This chapter examines the virtually universal custom before the mid-decades of the 20th-century of pianists improvising preludes and transitions between pieces, with especial attention to Chopin, Czerny, Liszt, von Bülow, Busoni, and Grainger. Possible reasons for the origin and eventual demise of the custom are suggested.Less
This chapter examines the virtually universal custom before the mid-decades of the 20th-century of pianists improvising preludes and transitions between pieces, with especial attention to Chopin, Czerny, Liszt, von Bülow, Busoni, and Grainger. Possible reasons for the origin and eventual demise of the custom are suggested.
Adrian Daub
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199981779
- eISBN:
- 9780199370085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199981779.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, History, American
The sixth chapter turns to the display of work—that is, of practice and aptitude, on the piano. Piano playing constitutes a kind of musical dressage, and public playing is always also an acrobatic ...
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The sixth chapter turns to the display of work—that is, of practice and aptitude, on the piano. Piano playing constitutes a kind of musical dressage, and public playing is always also an acrobatic display of a perfectly mastered body. Four-hand piano playing had a particularly important role to play in this regard, whether in the form of four-hand etudes or the infamous “Logier method” popular in England (in which multiple students played the same cadences unisono on the same instrument). Musical examples from Logier, Czerny, Ignaz Moscheles, and Hugo Riemann illustrate how work and eroticism intermingled in four-hand playing. In the different pedagogies of four-hand piano playing, as well as in the description of virtuoso duos, nineteenth-century musicians and audiences grappled with the question of how standardized, mechanized, and industrialized piano practice could and should become. At the same time, many contemporaries suggested that the labor-like character of four-hand playing served only to camouflage its erotic undercurrents, that eroticism in this sphere wore the mask of work, or that perhaps work became itself eroticized.Less
The sixth chapter turns to the display of work—that is, of practice and aptitude, on the piano. Piano playing constitutes a kind of musical dressage, and public playing is always also an acrobatic display of a perfectly mastered body. Four-hand piano playing had a particularly important role to play in this regard, whether in the form of four-hand etudes or the infamous “Logier method” popular in England (in which multiple students played the same cadences unisono on the same instrument). Musical examples from Logier, Czerny, Ignaz Moscheles, and Hugo Riemann illustrate how work and eroticism intermingled in four-hand playing. In the different pedagogies of four-hand piano playing, as well as in the description of virtuoso duos, nineteenth-century musicians and audiences grappled with the question of how standardized, mechanized, and industrialized piano practice could and should become. At the same time, many contemporaries suggested that the labor-like character of four-hand playing served only to camouflage its erotic undercurrents, that eroticism in this sphere wore the mask of work, or that perhaps work became itself eroticized.
