Gems of Pedagogical Thought Crystallized in the Crucible of Time and Experience
Don't Imitate
Don't imitate anyone. Keep true to yourself. Cultivate your individuality in all your practicing and do not follow blindly in the paths others - Franz Liszt
Fast Playing
Do not play too fast. You must bring out the harmonic and melodic beauties, and you cannot do that if you treat the piano like a sewing machine. - Hans Van Bulow
Avoid Fatigue
Physical weakness from too much practice is just as bad as mental fatigue. To permit the muscles to get over-tired is to spoil the tone, at least for the time being and some time must elapse before they can regain their former elasticity and vigor. - I. J. Paderewski
Thought In Playing
Fine playing requires much deep thought away from the keyboard. The student should not feel that when the notes have been played his task is done. It is in fact only begun. He must make the piece a part of himself. Every note must awaken in him a kind of musical consciousness of his artistic mission. - S. V. Rachmaninoff
Phrasing and Fingering
Phrasing is closely allied to the subject of accentuation and both subjects are intimately connected with thatof fingering. Without the use of the proper fingers it is often impossible to execute certain phrases correctly. - F. B. Busoni
Polished Playing
Each note is a composition should be polished until it is as perfect as a jewel - as perfect as an Indian diamond - those wonderful, scintillating, ever-changing orbs of light. In a really great masterpiece each note has its place just as the stars, the jewels of heaven, have their places in their constellations. - Vladimir De Pachmann
Saving Time
The technique which saves time is the technique of the brain, which directs the fingers to the right place at the right time. This may be made the greatest source of musical economy. If you want to save time in your music study, see that you comprehend your musical problems thoroughly. - Xaver Scharwenka
Be Punctual
Be punctual in all your practice. Everything with me goes by clockwork. My house is like a dove-cote. - Frederic Chopin
Intelligent Practice
Don't simply run over the keys as a parrot runs over its pet phrases. That is not real practice. Goodness knows - the parrot has practice enough but it can talk to the day of doom without increasing its mental capacity. All practice must be intelligent - progressive, self-developing. - Emil Sauer
Years and Tears
It is only with labor of years and tears bitter as death that the true artist is developed. Few realize this. Consequently there are few artists. - Anton Rubinstein
An Ounce of Prevention
Remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Avoid sowing the seeds of mere mechanical playing which devoid as they are of musical feeling, can only beget their own kind. - Dr. William Mason
Real Practice
Continually playing a piece over and over is not what I call practice. When I want to learn a new piece I do not keep the notes in front of me on the music rack. I throw them on the top of the piano so that I have to get up every time I want to look at them. After the image of the passage to be memorized is well i mind I sit down at the instrument and try to reproduce it - notes, touch, pedaling and all. Learn as passage just once. Afterwards only repeat it.
- Theodore Leschetizky
To those who are still in the preparatory stage of development I am glad to give one word of advice. Do not play pieces that are away beyond your grasp. Pupils who do this are committing the greatest fault in our American musical educational life. - Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler
True Interpretation
Really artistic piano playing is an impossibility unless the outlines of technique have been erased to make way for true interpretation in the highest sense of the word. - Josef Hofmann
Listen!
It is absolutely necessary to listen to every note you play. Music is a sound, and must be studied accordingly. - William Sherwood
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Originally presented in The Etude, October 1912
