A new era of piano playing

[iumonito]

In the beginning, there was the musician, the instrument, and the music.

When J.C. Bach started the practice of playing in public for an entrance fee, musicians and music lovers started a dance that is now to change its step.

Improvements in the instruments and a cultivation of the hero-performer led first to the establishment of the concerto appearance with Mozart and the solo recital with Liszt, soon to be followed by the explosion of the non-composer performer: the result of material developments in teaching and harvesting the legacy of the great notating composers, from J.S. Bach to Beethoven and Schubert.

The era of the non-composer performer has given us the beautiful arch of the likes of Josef Hoffman, Josef Lhevine, Artur Schnabel, Artur Rubinstein, and later Richter, Gilels, Bolet, Argerich, Pollini, and the like.  It has also given us more than a million wonderful pianists of varying notoriety and flight.  So many, in fact, that I feel there is now a complete saturation of performance in the few venues where most great concerts occur: New York, London, Berlin, Tokyo.

I feel that somehow the next step is for the millions of pianists who albeit very worthwhile, do not have the opportunity, and sometimes not even the appetite, to have a career based upon more than 200 public appearances per year in as many venues.  Local music-making, that's what's next.

[artsyalchemist]

Here's my prediction for what will happen next:

Asia will become the mecca for the classical music world.  Apparently, it's a huge deal over there now, and millions of children are being trained as musicians.  It won't surprise me if Western people from my generation end up going to Asia.

[weissenberg2]

Here's my prediction for what will happen next:

Asia will become the mecca for the classical music world.  Apparently, it's a huge deal over there now, and millions of children are being trained as musicians.  It won't surprise me if Western people from my generation end up going to Asia.

That would probably create thousands of teaching jobs for pianists. This would help some pianists, but all those ones being taught will have trouble getting concerts schedules     

[iumonito]

This is precisely where local music-making comes in.  There are not enough public concerts to support all good musicians.  Yet, at the same time, places so civilized like Houston, Atlanta or Raleigh in the US (just to give an example) do not have as a daily option to go to a worthwhile piano recital.  I think part of it is that a place like, say, Columbus, Ohio, does not have 365 dedicated pianist who would be willing to play a recital a day to make available to people who perhaps have never heard the likes of Beethoven Op. 90 or the Alban Berg sonata (that is, entirely mainstream repertoire that isn't Liszt's Dream of Love) a healthy and constant diet of classical music that is necessary for a human being to grow whole and happy.

Perhaps we will see it in provincial China before we see it in sprawling middle-classed America or in the one-person-per-square-inch Europe.

So I say, go out an play frequently for free, and forget about seeking paid gigs in large halls.

 

[Bob]

Can do.  (Bob takes "big paid gigs in large halls" off his list.)

What about local paid gigs?

[n00bhippy]

So I say, go out an play frequently for free, and forget about seeking paid gigs in large halls.

 

I support this idea. I also wish that was more time spent on music education so that more people could play music for themselves. The ability to create / perform music is something that I think is within the abilities of most people if they are dedicated, and I certainly believe that it is an ability that should be shared, not for profit, but for the good of the human soul.

[artsyalchemist]

I support this idea. I also wish that was more time spent on music education so that more people could play music for themselves. The ability to create / perform music is something that I think is within the abilities of most people if they are dedicated, and I certainly believe that it is an ability that should be shared, not for profit, but for the good of the human soul.

Right now, it seems inplausible to have free gigs because of the economy.  Music seems to suffer big time, since the audience levels are low in the first place.  Paid local gigs seem a little more likely for the time being.

And I'm all for better music education.  Especially if it is more inclusive than reserved for the "very talented".  That would give kids much more self-esteem to explore more of this field.

[n00bhippy]

Right now, it seems inplausible to have free gigs because of the economy.  Music seems to suffer big time, since the audience levels are low in the first place.  Paid local gigs seem a little more likely for the time being.

And I'm all for better music education.  Especially if it is more inclusive than reserved for the "very talented".  That would give kids much more self-esteem to explore more of this field.

Not exactly implausible. Only implausible if you want to make your living by having people pay to hear you play music. 

[ramseytheii]

The era of the non-composer performer has given us the beautiful arch of the likes of Josef Hoffman, Josef Lhevine, Artur Schnabel, Artur Rubinstein, and later Richter, Gilels, Bolet, Argerich, Pollini, and the like.  It has also given us more than a million wonderful pianists of varying notoriety and flight.  So many, in fact, that I feel there is now a complete saturation of performance in the few venues where most great concerts occur: New York, London, Berlin, Tokyo.

I feel that somehow the next step is for the millions of pianists who albeit very worthwhile, do not have the opportunity, and sometimes not even the appetite, to have a career based upon more than 200 public appearances per year in as many venues.  Local music-making, that's what's next.

Just to make a small correction, Hoffman and Schnabel were both composers, and performed their own works.

The next step, because the concert industry is over-bloated, is to burn the chaff.  Pianists in particular should go back to music basics, and become composers again.  Competitions should start requiring pianists to play their own compositions in the competition, submit the score to the judges - which should include composers.  Judging a composition is no more objective or subjective than judging a piano performance.

Pianists today, the ones on the stage, lack basic music skills.  They can't compose, they can't transpose, they can't transcribe, they can't improvise.  They are essentially slaves - slaves to glorious masters, yes, but slaves nonetheless.  Liberate yourselves!  Free yourselves from the anxiety of influence - from the weight of history.  Write your own music, create your own repertoire, and be your own pianist, not the slave of Ravel and Liszt.

Walter Ramsey

[iumonito]

I beg to differ, but I think the thought of "burning the chaff" is precisely the wrong way to think about it.

If you want to stand by Hoffman and Schnabel as composers, be my guest.  Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff were composer pianists.  They played their own music and were known primarily as composers.  The played the music of others, sometime exquisitely, but never secondarily to their own.  You simply cannot say the same of Schnabel and Hoffman, no matter how you dice it.

But the main point I seek to advance here is that the concept that the purpose of a music career is to get paid in exchange for playing a whole bunch of concerts is a dead end.  There is no market for that many great pianists.

Yet, communities are starving, often without knowing so, for a steady supply of great but not famous music makers, that would make Beethoven and Schumann as much of the daily fabric of life as the endless stream of pop songs that capture the ear of about 5 billion people.

It is a revolution, and it cannot be based in the concept that we make music for money, or even for approval.  Call it evangelical, I feel we have a message to carry and me, for one, am not carrying my weight yet.

Play more, play free, play to educate and share, and not to dazzle and get a laurel.

[ramseytheii]

If you want to stand by Hoffman and Schnabel as composers, be my guest.  Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff were composer pianists.  They played their own music and were known primarily as composers.  The played the music of others, sometime exquisitely, but never secondarily to their own.  You simply cannot say the same of Schnabel and Hoffman, no matter how you dice it.

Well there's not a lot of point in arguing, but they are in fact composers who played their own works.  You could have picked better examples, like Cortot and de Pachmann, to pick at random two other pianists from the general time period, who didn't compose, as far as I know.

And Rachmaninoff, for the record, played and conducted in public mostly the works of other composers.

I understand your point though.

Walter Ramsey

[jgallag]

But the main point I seek to advance here is that the concept that the purpose of a music career is to get paid in exchange for playing a whole bunch of concerts is a dead end.  There is no market for that many great pianists.

Yet, communities are starving, often without knowing so, for a steady supply of great but not famous music makers, that would make Beethoven and Schumann as much of the daily fabric of life as the endless stream of pop songs that capture the ear of about 5 billion people.

It is a revolution, and it cannot be based in the concept that we make music for money, or even for approval.  Call it evangelical, I feel we have a message to carry and me, for one, am not carrying my weight yet.

Play more, play free, play to educate and share, and not to dazzle and get a laurel.

You are an idealist. I should know, I'm one too. Unfortunately, in this world, money is a necessity. You must pay to have a home, an education, transportation, food, land, taxes, and a host of other expenses that will simply depress you. Therefore, we cannot encourage the dissemination of music for free, though I would love too. This is because the artist must have time to practice/compose/perform the music, but there must also be time for a job that puts food on the table. If these are one and the same, the artist is that much the luckier for it, and it should not be discouraged.

Let's consider the music (piano) teacher: He/she must also put food on the table, and therefore deserves to be paid well for his/her service (I think $60 an hour is not unreasonable). Herein lies the problem: there is no way, and I don't think there will be a way, to ensure quality piano education. We can make degrees, certifications, whatever, but people will teach the way they want to teach. In addition, a degree does not tell you the grade this person received. Would you rather learn from a person with a performance/pedagogy degree who got A's at all of his/her lessons, or B-'s? But how would you know? Surely both could graduate. Also, the family that can get lessons for $20 an hour will go to that teacher instead of the $60, even though the former has probably had no formal music training and can barely manage Fur Elise. There is also no guarantee that, just because the latter is more expensive, that he/she is more knowledgeable.

Also, I believe that the training for a piano teacher should be different than that of a performer. In many cases teachers are performers who happen to teach on the side to make a little more money. A teacher, in my opinion, must not only be trained in making music, but in analyzing how he/she makes music in order to impart this knowledge to others. For the performer a fine technique is all that's necessary, but the teacher must know all of the bad habits that will prevent speed and grace and could lead to injury. The teacher must be trained in communication, and, in my opinion, the teacher must realize that he/she is being paid to teach and therefore becomes an employee of the student. This is not to say that the teacher must bend to the student's every whim, but I see a lot of BS in teaching a student musically stale material because it "builds technique". The teacher must also be trained in the view that he/she is NOT always correct, that he/she must ALWAYS be searching for new material and ideas to use in piano instruction, and that he/she must NEVER blindly accept a methodology. Yes, we must all learn to teach by teaching, but there's a lot more to it. That's one of the reasons I like these forums, because other people can provide viewpoints and little gems of insight that help you move ever closer to the goal of a more musically satisfying experience. We must put an end to the mindset of a teacher that his/her method is right, and the only right way, or, what may be even worse, the mindset that there are so many different view on technique that his/hers is probably fine and therefore doesn't need any updating.

So we must create these teachers and propagate them all over the world, so that anyone and everyone can have access to a fine teacher. Yeah, okay.

In response to your first paragraph: 1) The people, the great musicians who we hear about, truly are passionate about their music. Just because they make a lot of money doing it doesn't mean money is the first thing they think about. A good section of the public is willing to pay them for their incessant quest for beauty, and they take the money thankfully. 2) I don't see how we can get so many great pianists out there that the market for a nice concert will die. While I believe that the potential is out there in pretty much anyone who isn't mentally/physically handicapped to the point where they can't play, that potential is extremely difficult for the student to realize, and even harder for the teacher to unearth and cultivate.

Sure, we must dream big, but then we must revise our dreams within the strict confines of reality. I like your attitude, though. I hope you end up teaching and disseminating knowledge to as many students as are willing to learn from you. I hope you do all that you can to bring out the potential in each of your students, and also in yourself. But don't shortchange yourself or your students by not requiring compensation for your services.

[iumonito]

I think all I can add at this point is that I have found, for my own music-making, a new goal and motivation: to make live classical music available to my community, to the extent that it isn't.

[iroveashe]

Pianists today, the ones on the stage, lack basic music skills.  They can't compose, they can't transpose, they can't transcribe, they can't improvise.  They are essentially slaves - slaves to glorious masters, yes, but slaves nonetheless.  Liberate yourselves!  Free yourselves from the anxiety of influence - from the weight of history.  Write your own music, create your own repertoire, and be your own pianist, not the slave of Ravel and Liszt.

I think that's a great idea, but the problem is (and I don't know if this is just my problem or a general one) that they don't really teach you all that in a practical way. I can't find a private piano teacher who teaches theory and composition, and if I went to a conservatory they gave me scales for example, but the piano teacher didn't tell me much about what scales are for, that's the theory teacher's job, who happened to be teaching a completely different subject, with boring theory books on one hand and boring scales and exercises for the separate piano teacher. I think the great works from the past shouldn't only be performance pieces but teaching tools and inspiration for everyone to compose their own music.

[rc]

My take:  the concert career will always have a place in the world.  Even if the talent pool is getting crowded, there will still be a handful of musicians who are above the rest, who can do what 99% cannot.

But music is vast and there's space for all sorts.  I agree about keeping things more local, for those of us who aren't able or don't want to make some sort of career of concertizing.  Basically start from where you are and make of it what you can.

My friends are starting to get married, so I'm offering my music there, and doing the best of it I can.  I figure a wedding ought to have great music.  When people aren't chatting, they can be caught by fine music, wrapping the whole thing in an atmosphere.  Sometimes all ya gotta do is expose people to the greats and it plants a seed.

There's a budding music scene in my city, open mics and a few venues that hold regular shows for basically anyone who wants to put on a show.  Many possibilities.  Nearly everyone plays guitar to some capacity, it would be fun to arrange a Bach prelude for guitar + bass.  Could write something to play with various friends, customized to their abilities.  Take a popular tune and make a fugue of it.  There's a pub in town with a piano and I'd like to one day hop up and play some ragtime, improvise on "what do you do with a drunken sailor" or somesuch fun.

Do a good job of whatever opprotunities come along (or we invent), and who knows how the ball could start to roll?

[lontano]

There is a huge "world library" of works that have rarely, if ever, been performed from the 18th century to (especially) the current times. All the cookie-cutter pianists that learn the basic repertoire and try to make a career of performing, recording and teaching the same thing as millions of other pianists have done seems pointless in this era.

If more genuinely talented pianists paid more attention to all those scores by composers past, present and future, they could really open up a new world of music to be explored and presented to a new public in any part of the world. It's not an easy track to take, but doing new things in music and art is risky, but eventually it should pay off. There are quite a few people doing this so far, but more people need to follow this trend until it no longer is so risky.

Lontano   

[michel dvorsky]

Agree with Ramsey.

[ted]

I also concur with Walter. I was very lucky to have had a teacher in my youth who got me started on all those things. So I have just kept on composing, improvising and playing for forty or more years, wondering why everybody else didn't do it too. I decided very early on that I would support my music by earning my living in another field, so fortunately that aspect has never had to concern me. Recently I have been asked to teach quite often, but for obvious and numerous reasons I am very careful about accepting such arrangements.

[timothy42b]

But the main point I seek to advance here is that the concept that the purpose of a music career is to get paid in exchange for playing a whole bunch of concerts is a dead end.  There is no market for that many great pianists.

I think you are right, but not precise enough.

It is a customer driven industry, as are nearly all of them (except maybe government).  If you produce what the customer wants, at the quality and price point he wants, you will prosper.  If you ignore it, you go under. 

Your perception is that there is no market for great pianists.  But that is incomplete.  Really, there is no market for great pianists, or any other great instrumentalists, playing that tiny fragment of the musical universe called classical solo piano literature. 

The music industry in general is booming.  There is vast demand for music and billions of dollars available to fund it.  However, those funds come from customers.  Customers buy what they want, and not what we think they should.  They pay for what is popular.  Classical composers were to some extent popular in their day, but that day was 3 or 4 hundred years ago. 

Why should there be a venue where classical pianists can earn a living?  Where is it written we are entitled to that?  Or that somebody else should be forced to subsidize it?