I congratulate you for the short and concise definition.
Just digressing: over the past century, surely the scientific knowledge behind piano technique has accumulated to an all-time high. Bernhard often commented that in the times of Liszt, this knowledge was lacking, and Liszt even told his students to play difficult passages in ways contrary to the way the body worked (not a criticism of Liszt).
Now that we have such knowledge, and can put basically any technical question in terms of it, and have so much of it that we can condense it succinctly and efficiently, I think the time has come to a return of true musicianship studies. What I mean is this: technique as a science should never be central, as it is in so many methods we see today. The emphasis should never be in fact on personal technique, but only on the pure study of music. The technique should be guided from the teacher's constant alterations and watchful eye, and with the knowledge of the science in the background. Students should focus expressly not on how they look when playing, or how it feels to play, or how to play this passage or that, but on learning real music skills, the basic music skills that I am probably not wrong to suggest most pianists lack.
The vast canon of repertoire that pianists play has been devalued in modern society. You often find academics with the nagging feeling that they have to justify their profession, justify their art, defend it from comparison with other things, and then become overprotective. I believe study should back away from the physical technique, and go back to the pure study of music itself: its history; its development; its theory; its structure; its endless opportunities. I actually believe this is the true path to real creativity, a skill which most concert artists lack.
Yo-Yo Ma had this to say in a recent interview:
"All this work makes me wonder whether we are heading toward something like world classical music. People right now do partake in a recognizable tradition, but they want that tradition to acknowledge the world as we experience it, especially after the nineteen-eighties, when suddenly we became more conscious than ever before of living in a global culture, or on a globe of many cultures. Nothing is totally distinct. Every great world religion has elements that are taken from other religions or overlap with them. It’s a sort of biological or ecological need to keep evolving. If we don’t, then a tradition gets smaller and may eventually die out. If we want to preserve a tradition, the best way to preserve it is to let it evolve."
To my delight, he echoes an insight that Bartok had over a half-century before. Bartok, after intensive studying indigenous folk music of Eastern Europeans, travelled to North Africa to do the same. He discovered that the folk music of North Africa was stagnant, having been the same thing for centuries (maybe a millennia). The music of the E. European tribes, who were all ethnically diverse but in close proximity to each other, on the opposite side of the coin, had developed to amazing levels of complexity and ingenuity. His research told him that only a cross-fertilization of the musics guaranteed its evolution and continued survival. North African tribes, living in isolation in desert environments, or in homogenous ones, were not able to develop their folk music to that level.
That's a round-about way of saying, students should be made to focus on how to make music - in all of its forms - and not just play the piano.
Just some random thoughts.
Walter Ramsey
PS Not sure if this reads as critical of marik's post - just in case, let me say it isn't at all. I recognize that it is a feat of great knowledge and study that a big area like piano technique can be condensed into such a logical form. My argument is that we should build off that, and go back to musical roots!