tausig exercizes

[kitty on the keys]

Has anyone used these exercizes? I ave just started reading through a few and they seem to be a nice challange---if you don't abuse your hand. knowledge of hand position, wrist and arm is important. Any comments or suggestions?

Kitty

[thalbergmad]

I have messed around with them out of interest, but i am nearly a fully fledged member of the Bernhard "don't need to do them" School.

However, we must give Tausig some respect here, since he was considered by many contemporary observers to have an all round technique superior to that of Liszt. Therefore, he must have known what he was talking about.

Some are a nice warm up anyway.

Thal

[shun]

i am nearly a fully fledged member of the Bernhard "don't need to do them" School.

Intriguing. Tell me more

[strepito]

Tell me more about Tausig.

[thalbergmad]

Intriguing. Tell me more

Type the word Hanon into the search field and all will be revealed.

Thal

[thalbergmad]

Tell me more about Tausig.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Tausig

Here is a little write up.

Some of his transcriptions are well worth a look at.

The Bach - Toccata & Fugue and Schubert March Militaire are probably the most famous.

His take on the Weber- Invitation to the dance is a masterpiece if you are into transcriptions.

Checkit.

Thal
     

[JP]

I agree with Thal.

To me, this is especially true if you've been playing for a few years and you have a decent size repertory.

[iumonito]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Tausig

Here is a little write up.

Some of his transcriptions are well worth a look at.

The Bach - Toccata & Fugue and Schubert March Militaire are probably the most famous.

His take on the Weber- Invitation to the dance is a masterpiece if you are into transcriptions.

Checkit.

Thal
     

Totally agree.  My favorite are his transcriptions of Strauss waltzes.  Very forthright.

In his time, his Gypsy Airs were one of the literature showstoppers.  Hough has recorded it.

May have been said, but the Brahms Paganini Variations (two set of studies on the 24th caprice) were dedicated to (and inspired by) Tausig.

On the other hand, his edition and selection out of gradus ad parnassum has set that work years in being rediscovered.

You probably did Tausig scales (lots of contrary motion, which is very comfortable).

[demented cow]

Be careful of arguments of the type 'Tausig was a great pianist, therefore his exercises should be good'. Thalbergmad is not really claiming this anyway, but it's maybe worthwhile to point out the dangers of this argumentation to people who might take it seriously:
a) The suggestions of extremely talented pianists like Tausig, Liszt, Godowsky etc. are not automatically the best source on how to get a good technique. Two possible problems with their suggestions:
(a) They might recommend what they hear other teachers saying, which could be anatomically ill-informed rubbish (e.g. Beethoven told his students to use the fingers-only and fingers-close-to-the-keys method but used arm weight and flying arms himself), or
(b) They might recommend what they did while learning 'cos it seemed to work for them. This is irrelevant firstly because different techniques suit different people. (Tausig told students to play octaves wrist-only, reasoning that his octaves were good, therefore his method is the only one, but other good players preach either arms only or mixed wrists & arms.) Secondly, it could be that the feats of a talented pianist were possible IN SPITE OF rather than BECAUSE OF the methods they learned with. E.g. Rachmaninov was a great pianist, but there was a link posted a while ago describing the silly teaching practices at his conservatorium: For a few years, the students were only allowed to play Hanon, and part of their 'learning' included having to memorise the 'numbers' of the exercises. (Their 'examinations' took the form 'Play no. 9 in F#, no 17 in Bb, no 26 in C#'...) A farce. One wonders how Rach managed not to become a musical idiot in this environment. Probably his talent helped him to master Hanon so quickly that it didn't get the chance to kill his musical sensibility. It clearly wasn't Hanon that taught Rach to play Schumann's Carnival so well.

[pianistimo]

from 'the great pianists' on page 242
tausig's method teaching wasn't much better.  'terrible!  shocking!  dreadful!  o gott!  o gott! (his words, not mine) his idea of teaching was to push the student aside, play the passage himself and tell the pupil to do it just so.'   now - in and of itself - playing for a student has it's place - but i think to do this repeatedly causes a student to lose faith in him or herself and copy (as amy fay's experience) the teacher in everything.

'tausig hated teaching, and he avoided it as much as he could, dashing into his classes only when he had a free moment in his concert schedule...his once famous transcription of bach's organ toccata and fugue inD minor occasionally gets a hearing.  fifty years ago it seemed to be against the law not to open a recital with it....' 

he died young of typhus.  he did marry - but it didn't last long.  he was an enigma.  and, according to this book - who knows what he would have developed into.  brahms was so awe-struck by his talent that he wrote a letter to clara schumann in which he said he would play his two-piano sonata (which later turned into the D minor piano concerto) with tausig...tausig was liszt's favorite pupil - just as his favorite of the ladies was sophie menter.  she came to liszt in 1869 after having worked with tausig and von bulow.  he especially admired her 'singing hand.'

[dnephi]

lented pianist were possible IN SPITE OF rather than BECAUSE OF the methods they learned with. E.g. Rachmaninov was a great pianist, but there was a link posted a while ago describing the silly teaching practices at his conservatorium: For a few years, the students were only allowed to play Hanon, and part of their 'learning' included having to memorise the 'numbers' of the exercises. (Their 'examinations' took the form 'Play no. 9 in F#, no 17 in Bb, no 26 in C#'...) A farce. One wonders how Rach managed not to become a musical idiot in this environment. Probably his talent helped him to master Hanon so quickly that it didn't get the chance to kill his musical sensibility. It clearly wasn't Hanon that taught Rach to play Schumann's Carnival so well.

THose examinations were actually good, I believe.  If you developed the mental map and the finger strength and independence to play those mindless exercises by number and play them well and quickly and play their scales @120 in each key, then you can easily memorize other things.
I wouldn't just insult him like that.  You are certainly not an authority, and many people in the Music Teacher's National Association who are very capable pianists and excellent teachers believe in Hanon, both for themselves and their students.

If you can breathe life into Czerny exercises, you can make beautiful music out of much more advanced and difficult works. 

[demented cow]

sorry, I just saw how carelessly written my post was. My point wasn't to bash Hanon, which I use bits of myself, and certainly not scales. I was merely querying the excessive & exclusive use of it that Rach was talking about.
A comment on the last post: I wonder whether the argument 'If you can memorise Hanon and the numbers of Hanon exercises, you can memorise anything' is really sound. It's like the people that learn Latin so that they could learn French quickly. Why not go for a more, um, direct approach. If I want to memorise a Mozart sonata , then maybe memorising the sonata itself might be quicker than memorising Hanon. Arguably the same goes for technical mastery as well as memorising, but this has been discussed already, with no consensus.

[dnephi]

sorry, I just saw how carelessly written my post was. My point wasn't to bash Hanon, which I use bits of myself, and certainly not scales. I was merely querying the excessive & exclusive use of it that Rach was talking about.
A comment on the last post: I wonder whether the argument 'If you can memorise Hanon and the numbers of Hanon exercises, you can memorise anything' is really sound. It's like the people that learn Latin so that they could learn French quickly. Why not go for a more, um, direct approach. If I want to memorise a Mozart sonata , then maybe memorising the sonata itself might be quicker than memorising Hanon. Arguably the same goes for technical mastery as well as memorising, but this has been discussed already, with no consensus.

If you learn Finnish, Samoan comes more quickly.  That part of the brain becomes more adept.

About the Mozart, yes.  However, memorizing is not the point.  In order to become adept enough at the exercises they know them by name.  Then in comparison it's even easier to memorize other pieces you learn afterwards.