London - After the Romans (part three)

By Walter Besant

The conquest of England was now virtually completed. There was fighting at Old Sarum in 552; at Banbury in 556; at Bedford, at Aylebury, and at Benson in the year 571. One would judge this to be the last sortie made by the Welsh who had been driven into the fens. In the year 577 three important places in the west were taken - Gloucester, Bath, and Cirencester. In 584 there was fighting at Fethan-lea, when the victor took many towns and spoils innumerable; "and wrathful he thence returned to his own."

As late as 596 we hear that the King of the West Saxons fought and contended incessantly against either the Angles (his own cousins), or the Welsh, or the Picts, or the Scots; and in 607 was fought the great battle of Chester, in which "numberless" Welsh were slain, including two hundred priests who had come to pray for victory.

It is therefor evident that the conquest of the country took a long time to effect - not less, indeed, than two hundred years. First, Kent, with Surrey fell; next, Sussex - both before the end of the fifth century. Early in the sixth century the West Saxons conquered the country covered by Hampshire, a part of Surrey and Dorsetshire; next, Essex fell; and there was stubborn fighting for many years in the country beyond the great Middlesex Forest.

The conquest of the North concerns us little, save that it drew off some of those who were fighting in what afterward became the kingdom of Mercia. I desire to note here only the surroundings of London, and to mark how by successive steps of the invaders' march it was gradually cut off, bit by bit, from the surrounding country. When Kent fell, the bridge gate was closed, and the roads south, southwest, and southeast were blocked; at the fall of Essex, Norforlk, and Suffolk, the eastern gat was closed. When Wessex was an established kingdom, the river highway was closed; there remained only the western gate, and that, during the whole of the sixth century, led out into a country perpetually desolated and destroyed by war, so that by the middle of the sixth century no communication whatever was possible between London and the rest of the country, unless the people made a sortie and cut there way through the enemy.

Observe, however, that no mention whatever is made of the capture of London in the Chronicle. Other and less important towns are mentioned.  Anderida or Pevensey, Aquae Solis or Bath, Gloucester, Chester, and many others; but of London there is no mention. Consider. London, though not much greater than other cities in the country - York, Verulam, Lincoln, Colchester, for instance - was undoubtedly the chief port of the country. We need not bring modern ideas to bear when we read of the vast trade, the immense concourse of merchants, and so forth. Roman London was not modern Liverpool. Its bulk of trade was quite insignificant compared with that of the present. When we begin to understand medieval trade this will become apparent. Still, a vigorous and flourishing place, and the chief port of the country. Why, therefore, does the Chronicle absolutely pass over so great an event as the taking of London?

John Mason Evans Hasslinger's Famous Piano (and Keyboard) Teacher Precursors

By Frances Swarthington

Since many piano teachers and instructors often have many students, it's not hard to imagine that branching out from the famous pianists of history their lineage or succession of talented pupils and virtual "descendants." These pupils have spread out across the globe over the decades and can trace their musical education back to the masters of the Romantic era and perhaps further.

BACH, HOMILIUS, HILLER AND NEEFE

We will examine one such lineage leading up to the present day beginning with none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. Much has been written about this master who was composing and performing when the piano was in its infancy and therefore concentrated on the organ, clavichord and harpsichord.

J.S. Bach's pupil Gottfried August Homilius (at left) was born in 1714 in Rosenthal. He studied law at the University of Leipzig starting in 1735. During this time he studied privately with Bach at least until 1742 when he put the world of law behind him to some extent to become the organist of the Frauenkirche (Cathedral of Our Dear Lady)  in Dresden. 13 years later he worked in Dresden's three primary churches as the director of music as well as the choir master of the Kreuzschule (Church of the Cross).He was highly regarded as an organist and composer. He died in Dresden in 1785.

Speaking of the Kreuzschule, it is the oldest surviving school in Dresden; possibly founded in the 14th century. This is where Homilius taught his pupil Johann Adam Hiller.

Hiller (at left) was born on Christmas Day, 1728 in Wendlich-Ossig, Germany. After his father's death at age 6 he found it difficult to procure a proper musical education. He persisted however with his talents in several instruments as well as voice. By 1747 he was studying the harpsichord under Homilius at the Kreuzschule.   He studied law and music (as did Homilius) in Leipzig beginning in 1751. He later became well known as the creator of a form of German opera, Singspiel ("sing-speak"). From 1781 to 1785 he was musical director of the Gewandhaus concert hall and from 1789 to 1801 choir master and organist of the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church). He died in Leipzig in 1804.

His pupil Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748-1798 at left) had also studied law in Leipzig (as his father had directed him to do against his true calling of music and the theatre) and sought out Hiller there as his mentor.  In Dresden he became his mentor's successor as musical director for Abel Seyler's theatrical company which Neefe had joined 1776 . By 1781 he became the court organist in Bonn court succeeding the renowned Gilles Van den Eeden.  Van den Eeden was allegedly Beethoven's teacher for a period but the young Ludwig was certainly Neefe's pupil by this time and substituted as court organist in 1782. 

Much has already been written about Beethoven, this master who bridged the Classical Era with the Romantic Era. 

BEETHOVEN, CZERNY AND LISZT

Beethoven heard the 10-year-old Carl Czerny (at left) performing Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, opus 13 at his home and was so impressed he offered to be his piano teacher which he was from 1801 to 1804 and occasionally in the years that followed. Czerny's prodigious memory allowed him to absorb many of Beethoven's works including all of his sonatas for performance. Beethoven recommended Czerny as a teacher who began this aspect of his career at age 15.

In 1819 Franz Liszt's father brought his son to Czerny as a potential student and had him play for him. Czerny was quite taken with the boy's decidedly (at that time) raw talent and took him under his pianistic wing for lessons, gratis. Liszt later as an homage to the kindness of his teacher performed Czerny's works at his Paris recitals.

Liszt's long career included his composing and performing era until 1847 then relinquishing his performing to concentrate on composing, conducting and studying theology ( eventually becoming an abbé). Notably he also taught and his pupils included such famous names as Hans Van Bulow, Eugen d'Albert, Moriz Rosenthal, Alexander Siloti, and Karl Tausig.

It goes without saying these giants of the piano were also brilliant composers whose works have resonated through time immemorial.

BERNARD STAVENHAGEN

Another notable pupil was Bernard Stavenhagen (1862-1914, at left with Liszt) who after beginning piano studies at age 6 later studied under Liszt in Weimar late in the famous virtuoso's life, in 1885. Stavenhagen also travelled with Liszt over a great deal of Europe on Liszt's 1885-1886 tour where he visited Budapest, Munich, Innsbruck, Rome, London, Antwerp, Paris and Bayreuth. At Liszt's funeral Stavenhagen gave the oration.

For ten years after Liszt's 1886 death, Stavenhagen toured Europe and North America. His musical career highlights included court pianist to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and conducting various operas in Weimar and Munich as well as works by such luminaries as Strauss, Debussy, Mahler and Ravel. The Geneva Conservatoire received him in 1870 as a teacher of piano master classes until his death in 1914. He composed two piano concertos, 1893's Piano Concerto in B minor and 1912's Second Concerto. In addition to his musical accomplishments he was also decorated as a knight of the Order of the White Falcon. He died on Christmas day in 1914 was buried in Weimar.

ERNEST HUTCHENSON

The next link in our antecedent timeline is Ernest Hutchenson (1871-1951) who was born in Melbourne, Australia. Hutchenson was a child prodigy and at age 14 travelled to Germany, specifically the Leipzig Conservatory where one of his teachers was none other than Bernhard Stavenhagen. Stints in London and Berlin evenutally led Hutchenson to settle in the U.S., specifically New York City in 1914 where he debuted his repertoire. 

Speaking of repertoire, according to an article by Richard Aldrich in the November 12, 1919 issue of The New York Times, Hutchenson had the chutzpah to play 3 Beethoven concertos in a row at Aeolian Hall: 

"Hutchenson Plays Three Concertos - Whether or not he has ever had any predecessor ins carrying out the idea, Ernest Hutchenson' enterprise in giving a concert in which only three piano concerts of Beethoven should be played is sufficiently original to deserve to remain unique."

Hutchenson's teaching career took off as well. He taught at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore (a future pupil we will discuss was Austin Conradi) and the Chautauqua School of Music in New York State where he provided training and solace for George Gershwin. He taught at Juilliard where he moved up from faculty member to Dean (1926-1937), then President (1937-1945).

Hutchenson composed solo and concertos for piano; 2 pianos; and violin, a symphony and many solo piano works including a transcription of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. He also wrote a number of textbooks on piano literature and technique, among them The Elements of Piano Technique, copyright 1907 and published by The G. Fred Kranz Music Co. in Baltimore, Maryland.

AUSTIN BURRELL CONRADI

This brings us to Mr. Hutchenson's pupil Austin Burrell Conradi (1890-1965). Son of a Lutheran pastor, Conradi studied piano at Peabody Conservatory with Ernest Hutchenson, and with its chair of composition Otis Bardwell Boyza (who like Stavenhagen studied at the Leipzig Conservatory). He also taught at such institutions as the Hamburg Conservatory in Toronto (1917-1918), the Curtis Institute (1925-1926), and the Philadelphia Conservatory (1936-1937). 

However Conradi was also a performing pianist and we can see from various programs from 1916 to 1921 what sort of repertoire he commanded.

In the summer concert series at Chautauqua, NY in 1916 (as per The Music News, published in Chicago) Conradi played Chopin (Prelude in Db, Etude in A minor, Valse in F minor, Scherzo in Bb minor), Bach E (Italian Concerto), Beethoven (Sonata in C# minor), Schumann (Einsame Blumen Contrabandiste, arr. Tausig), Scarlatti (Pastorale and Capriccio, arr. Tausig), and Schubert (Barcarolle, arr. Liszt).

As per Musical America (published in New York), by early 1921 he was performing at the Peabody Institute for its Friday afternoon concert series and at the Hotel Hadley ballroom in Baltimore. His repertoire grew to include compositions by Rameau, Franck, Ravel, Debussy and Wagner. In April Conradi was performing the same repertoire at Poli's Theater in Washington D.C.

Alexander Scriabin was also in his repertoire and travelling to New York he recorded several of Scriabin's works from 1921-1922. Some of these have been preserved in player piano rolls. Conradi was attuned to the audiences of his concerts: according to a December 10, 1928 New York Times article, Conradi's recital began with short pieces allowing the audience more time to be seated before he launched into the major works of his repertoire. 

He returned to where he had graduated, the Peabody Conservatory, where he taught piano for over 40 years.  One of his famous pupils was George Manos who was the White House pianist for President Truman and wrote a book about his years there. Another pupil was John Mason Evans Hasslinger who would go on to be a notable teacher of his own.

JOHN MASON EVANS HASSLINGER

(1927-2015) Hasslinger's family seafood business in East Baltimore provided him with work after he graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1945. Entering the Marine Corps in 1946, he was stationed in China as a Control Tower Operator. Returning stateside Hasslinger studied piano under Austin Conradi at Peabody Institute, graduating June 1, 1956. 

After graduation he began his teaching career providing private lessons for his pupils in his parents' house in Lutherville, MD. As his reputation grew and the number of pupils along with it, he split his teaching between his parents' house and his new home in the neighborhood of Pine Valley-Valleywood in Timonium, MD where he and his family moved in August 1963. His reputation for effective and well rounded instruction continued to grow and included students from a up to 27 miles away in Pennsylvania. Hasslinger provided a balanced approach including theory, sight reading, improvisation, technique, classics, jazz and popular music. 
Some of Hasslinger's pupils include:

Dr. Denise (Dede) Ondishko went on to receive her Ph.D in Music Theory and Composition from the Eastman School of Music and later headed IT and telecommunications departments at several large institutions. In 1999 she became a  National Board-Certified Teacher in early childhood music; 

Soraya Sina (now Sina-Bitters), an RN having worked in the ER and ICU in the Greater Baltimore area; 

Graham Eckler, composer and keyboardist in several bands such as Iguana and Chapter IV;

Stuart Ortel, an excellent artist and now has an interior/landscaping design company in the Baltimore area;

Ellsworth Hall, in addition to working in grants management and IT, continued his passion for music and has been a performer, film and video producer and composer for film, video and multimedia for over 35 years.  Ellsworth has composed 2 piano concertos, the first composed in 1985/1986 but re-orchestrated and released in 2014 on the Melodic Revolution Records label.
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Source materials for this article include:

The Organ and Its Masters (Lahee)
Famous Pianists (Lahee)
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute
Wikipedia
The New York Times Archives
Amazon music reviews
The Internet Archive
J.W. Pepper
NYPR Archives
Dignity Memorial
The Music News
Musical America

Musical Discoveries (part one)

By composer and critic Felix Borowski

It is at once a fascinating and a difficult investigation which has for its raison d'etre the discovery of musical discoverers. Such an investigation must be fascinating because there is a certain piquant satisfaction in tracing the origin of things to the source from which they have spring; it is difficult because in so many cases - nearly in all - the existance of numberless affairs of art has been the result of evolutionary processes rather than the offshoot of a sudden and an unexpected stronke of inventive inspriation on the part of some gifted men (or women). The difficulty is added to in certain cases by the nebulous condition of musical chronicles in earlier periods of time.

Inventions which were of material assistance to the progress of what may be called modern music could not come into being until someon  discovered a method of expressing musical ideas in writing - the invention of musical notation, in a word. This invention had, first of all, to consist of a staff which would permit the pitch of sounds to be designated, and secondly of a method of indicationg the duration of notes. Now a primitive species of notation had been employed by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and in the eighth century a species of stenographic notation - it is known to us as the "Neume" system - was in general use. But there was not staff and therefore no precise method of fixing the pitch of notes.

The Invention of The Staff

The first great invention arrived, therefore, with the discovery of the staff. This came about with the employment of one line, the pitch of whihc was supposed to represent the note "F;" but no one knows who was the musician to whom it first occurred to fix the exact pitch of the "Neumes" placed upon this line. Probably it was some humble but ingenious monk - for after all, it was the monasteries that, in the earlier days of art, accomplished the most for music and painting and sculpture.

The staff was then, however, in a merely rudimentary state. We arrive at the invention of one such as is known to us today; and this brings forward the name of Guido of Arezzo. This Benedictine monk, who was born about 995 at Arezzo, in Tuscany, was undoubtedly the inventor of the four line staff; whether he was also the inventor of some other things - solmization and the clefs for instance - is less certain. The discovery of giving time and rhythm to music came later; nor is it possible to say who was the first to invent notes of different value, or who invented the signs which we call "rest." Bar line did nto come into existence until about four hundred years ago.

The First Printed Music

The gratitude of music lovers should go out to the man who first made printed music possible. Now the art of printing music followed very shortly the invention of printing books. The first to print music of any kind from type was Ulrich Hahn, a Roman printer who brought out a Roman missal with notes in 1476. His work was quickly taken up by other printers. Our modern system of printing sheet music froum engraved copper plates was invented by Simone Verivio, of Rome, who published by this method his collection of Canzonettes entitled Diletto Spirituale in 1586. But music typography has, to be sure, undergone remarkable changes and improvements since that time.

By the time the sixteenth century had well started, the rapid dissemination of printed music led to the not less rapid development of different forms in the art itself.
But the century had grown old before any important inventions bearing upon modern music came into existence. It was the rise of instrumental art which was responsible for many of the inventions which, primitive enough four hundred years ago, have since grown into wonderful and complicated forms of art; but in the sixteenth century instrumental music as a separate and independent branch was in its infancy, and it was the handmaid of vocal art. Yet neither the opera nor the oratorio could here come into existence without it.

Selected Technical Truths from World Famous Pianists

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

 Impossible Pieces

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