You cannot master romantic music without also mastering Bach.
Now I am forced to ask you to provide some scientific evidence to this argument!Are you saying that every romantic pianist/composer mastered Bach before they composed and performed their music? Or that they didn't master their own music?
..The WTC is not so infrequently described as the pianists staple diet. One should chew on some every day if you expect to stay healthy.
And to be honest, I find it extraordinarily unlikely that even a pure genius composer could not improve if they took the time to master bach.. and infact, that more likely, the thorough study of the WTC (and perhaps the Beethoven sonatas as well) is one of the most defining aspects of any musical education that leads to a "genius" composer.. its obviously a subjective point, but I doubt better learning material exists.
Not denying that this is how it is today, but it doesn't really count as scientific (or historical) evidenceEven if this is all true, it still does not prove that it's the ONLY way...I don't like fanaticism (is that a word?) of any kind and I see a lot of that on this forum in regards to Bach. I doubt I will ever be able to provide the empirical evidence to prove you people wrong, but I will certainly keep trying...
For there to be evidence you'd have to either have one person live their life twice, identically, except for failing to study bach in one of them.. and then be able to somehow define the better compositions from each life.
its not fanaticism.. (must be a word, spell check didnt complain) ..
"About the same time, a Canadian named Eugene Canby began subjecting test plots of wheat to recordings of violin sonatas by J.S. Bach, and found that yields increased by 66%""Plants "listening" to selections from Led Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge, and Jimi Hendrix became stunted or gangly, with long stems and sparse leaf growth, some bending away from the sound source; after 16 days, most of these plants died."
I'm beginning to think piano pedagogies are just being lazy, because if they didn't use Bach they might need to come up with something new
I would agree wholeheartedly with that.. but I rather think that in order to replace bach, one would have to be as competent as bach - which I firmly believe is an achievable aim (gasp! blasphemy!)..
To be honest, for myself I use bach as a model for how to write improvise play polyphonic works now.. but I learn most of it through imitating his style and messing with the works not actually playing his music as written. I haven't run into a lot of students that I can tell to do that though, they lack either interest or enough background understanding.. they usually just want to play one thing in particular that sounds cool, not actually learn to play generally.
Learning some Bach in addition to other things is not same as "mastering Bach" (quote from J-Menz with no disrespect).
No its not, but thats not really what j_menz means I think.. so much as mastering the ability to conceive and handle contrapuntal lines, and to a level where you have very independent control over separate ideas. Its far more obvious and easy to learn/understand in baroque work (not necessarily bach) than it is in romantic work... (at least I certainly think so).
Yep.On the romantics and Bach though; Beethoven had, according to his teacher, mastered the WTC by 11; Chopin carried a copy everywhere; Liszt wrote transcriptions of it; Mendelsohn was the one to make it "fashionable" again. What romantic music doesn't stem from these?
No its not, but thats not really what j_menz means I think.. so much as mastering the ability to conceive and handle contrapuntal lines, and to a level where you have very independent control over separate ideas. Its far more obvious and easy to learn/understand in baroque work (not necessarily bach) than it is in romantic work... (at least I certainly think so).Romantics also present obscene physical challenges that can totally cloud your mind from focusing on controlling lines/phrasing - you're just too busy trying to play the right notes at the right speed.. and a lot of us (myself included) are trying to play these phenomenally difficult works with complex harmony when in reality we probably still have a long way to go just controlling a line of single notes. Its a case of walk before you run.. you can go a really long way managing what I might term the "obscenely complex simplicity" found in a lot of baroque music, before you try to handle what I perceive to be a lot more challenging - having the same level of understanding and control over whats happening in later repertoire....the earlier repertoire is far more easily (though it probably doesn't seem to be so at first glance [or attempt]) replicated. The harmonic constructs are more rigid, and that rigidity is more visible in the score.. and MUCH more audible when listened to. This is at contrast to the way more modern composers can use much richer complex harmony and more convoluted chord changes and modulations.In baroque (for example) you can learn to manage harmony in obvious, relatively simple consonance or dissonance at any one moment.. instead of harmony using every conceivable interval all at once.. you get to build up to rich sound, instead of starting with rich sound and no fundamental idea of how you get there and why it works./end rant
You have many valid points. But many people with little understanding of these things (myself included) read this forum, and sometimes what is written comes out as: “Don’t want to spend the rest of your life with Bach? Forget about learning to play the piano!”.
Are you saying the Russian composers are all just derivatives from the Germans/Liszt/Chopin?
Not "just".
Topic: after mikrokosmos 2 