Piano Forum

This is an interesting quote from the musicologist, composer and pianist Tovey, writing about the late Beethoven sonatas; however the idea is applicable also in this case!

"...It is no use deferring the study of such music until you feel ripe for it... Those who recognise that they are unready for it must remember that experience cannot come except by experience; and therefore its foundations must be well and truly laid in youth.  No criticism is so mean and mischievous as that which discourages young players from playing great music accurately because 'correctness is not enough.'  Who supposes that?  But when your accuracy has become habitual you will be able to think of the music without thinking of yourself..."

There are many interesting points in there, for instance his idea that a fixation on technical barriers (the self) blocks the production of music.  Also that experience for a piece can come also from the piece itself, something we often forget.  Yes, Liszt travelled the world; he read Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, Petrarch, he heard every contemporary composer and a good many ancient one; and yet music is music.  Should we then travel every place he went before he composed the Liszt Sonata, and listen to all the banal French and Italian opera of his day, to try and recreate his life experience to that point?

 Even if the Sonata is based on the Faust legend (which Friedheim said was "taken for granted" among Liszt pupils), what makes the Faust legend so important is its universal characters and emotions; I truly believe the Liszt sonata can be understood without making a lifelong study of Faust.  If one believes otherwise, then one must also believe that Messiaen was correct to say that only a Catholic person can understand his music.  I simply cannot believe that, though maybe many non-Catholics who do understand it are secretly Catholic in the depths of their heart (something I also doubt). 

And then also, what of the case of Chopin, and his "hidden programs" of the ballades?  We cannot read the sources that inspired him, and know beyond a doubt that those are the very stories that excited his musical thoughts.  Perhaps then, nobody will ever understand these ballades.

Of course reading for inspiration never hurt anybody, but I want to present the reverse side of the coin here: that music is in the end music, and can also be understood from its own point of view.

Walter Ramsey