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Page 26
"As you say, there are a great many methods of teaching the piano, but
to my mind they are apt to be long, laborious, and do not reach the
vital points. The pianist may arrive at these after long years of study
and experimenting, but much of his time will be wasted in useless labor.
"In my own case, I was forced by necessity to make headway quickly. I
came to Paris years ago as a violinist, but there seemed no opening for
me then in that direction. There was opportunity, however, for ensemble
work with a good violinist and 'cellist. So I set to work to acquire
facility on the piano as quickly as possible. I consulted all the
pianists I knew--and I knew quite a number--as to what to do. They told
me I must spend many months on technic alone before I could hope to play
respectably, but I told them I had no time for that. So I went to work
to study out the effects I needed. It didn't matter to me _how_ my hand
looked on the keyboard; whether my fingers were curved, flat, or stood
on end. I was soon able to get my effects and to convince others that
they were the effects I wanted. Later on, when I had more leisure, I
took more thought about the position of hand and fingers. But I am
convinced that much time is spent uselessly on externals, which do not
reach the heart of the matter.
"For instance, players struggle for years to acquire a perfectly even
scale. Now I don't believe in that at all. I don't believe a scale ever
should be even, either in tone or in rhythm. The beginner's untrained
efforts at a scale sound like this"--the speaker illustrated at the
piano with a scale in which all the tones were blurred and run into each
other; then he continued, "After a year's so-called 'correct training,'
his scale sounds like this"--again he illustrated, playing a succession
of notes with one finger, each tone standing out by itself. "To my
thinking such teaching is not only erroneous, it is positively
poisonous--yes, _poisonous_!"
"Is it to be inferred that you do not approve of scale practise?"
"Oh, I advise scale playing surely, for facility in passing the thumb
under and the hand over is very necessary. I do not, however, desire
the even, monotonous scale, but one that is full of variety and life.
"In regard to interpretation, it should be full of tonal and rhythmic
modifications. Briefly it may be said that expression may be exemplified
in four ways: loud, soft, fast, and slow. But within these crude
divisions what infinite shades and gradations may be made! Then the
personal equation also comes in. Variety and differentiation are of
supreme importance--they are life!
"I go to America next season, and after that to Australia; this will
keep me away from my Paris home for a long time to come. I should like
to give you a picture to illustrate this little talk. Here is a new one
which was taken right here in this room, as I sat at the piano, with the
strong sunlight pouring in at the big window at my left."
* * * * *
On a subsequent occasion, Mr. Bauer spoke further on some phases of his
art.
"As you already know I do not believe in so-called 'piano technic,'
which must be practised laboriously outside of pieces. I do not believe
in spending a lot of time in such practise, for I feel it is time wasted
and leads nowhere. I do not believe, for instance, in the struggle to
play a perfectly even scale. A scale should never be 'even,' for it must
be full of variety and life. A perfectly even scale is on a dead level;
it has no life; it is machine-made. The only sense in which the word
'even' may be applied to a scale is for its rhythmic quality; but even
in this sense a beautiful scale has slight variations, so that it is
never absolutely regular, either in tone or rhythm.
"Then I do not believe in taking up a new composition and working at the
technical side of it first. I study it in the first place from the
musical side. I see what may be the meaning of the music, what ideas it
seeks to convey, what was in the composer's mind when he wrote it. In
other words, I get a good general idea of the composition as a whole;
when I have this I can begin to work out the details.
"In this connection I was interested in reading a statement made by
Ruskin in his _Modern Painters_. The statement, which, I think, has
never been refuted, is that while the great Italian painters, Raphael,
Coreggio, and the rest have left many immature and imperfect pictures
and studies in color, their drawings are mature and finished, showing
that they made many experiments and studies in color before they thought
of making the finished black and white drawing. It seems they put the
art thought first before the technical detail. This is the way I feel
and the way I work.
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