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I only write this in order to give you some idea of pianoforte-playing and teaching here, so that you may in turn derive some benefit from it. Herr Stein is quite infatuated about his daughter. She is eight years old, and learns everything by heart.
Here pianoforte-playing owes him great innovations which, on account of their expedience, were soon adopted, notwithstanding the horror with which authorities like Kalkbrenner at first regarded them. But if with Chopin smoothness was one of the qualities upon which he insisted strenuously in the playing of his pupils, he was by no means satisfied with a mere mechanical perfection.
Her music suffered by reason of a sudden ardour for illumination; or art went to the wall because a London musical season and an enthusiastic admiration of Halle had inspired her with a desire to cultivate a more classic style of pianoforte-playing. So in her English reading, each new book blotted out its predecessor.
In connection with Chopin's production of tone, I must not omit to mention his felicitous utilisation of the loud and soft pedals. It was not till the time of Liszt, Thalberg, and Chopin that the pedals became a power in pianoforte-playing. Hummel did not understand their importance, and failed to take advantage of them.
But it was impossible to assume that the furious anger which his face betrayed, could have been excited by a child who had run away from a lesson. No: the vainest of men and musicians had heard that he was ugly, and that his pianoforte-playing resembled the performance of a musical box.
Miss Burney was greatly surprised at hearing the sounds of singing and pianoforte-playing while she was beneath its roof. It was only the Miss Lawrences practising but the inn-keepers' daughters of the last century were not generally possessed of such accomplishments.
Only one little drawback lay in the fact that the reading-room opened into the ladies' drawing-room, and the almost incessant pianoforte-playing made it impossible to read with any real enjoyment. Indeed, who could sit down selfishly to reading, even one's favourite newspaper, with the momentary expectation of a loving wife or daughter strolling in from her music, for a little chat?
What he said was this: Chopin held that dementi's Gradus ad Parnassum, Bach's pianoforte fugues, and Hummel's compositions were the key to pianoforte-playing, and he considered a training in these composers a fit preparation for his own works. He was particularly fond of Hummel and his style. Beethoven he seemed to like less. Schubert was a favourite with him.
The one has done for the piano what the other has done for the voice...Chopin was a composer from conviction. He composes for himself, and what he composes he performs for himself...Chopin is the pianist of sentiment PAR EXCELLENCE. One may say that Chopin is the creator of a school of pianoforte-playing and of a school of composition.
Pianoforte-playing, amongst other things, seemed an occupation so inappropriate and uncongenial, that to escape those odious "exercises" which thousands of girls, by the way, have found equally distasteful she would frequently cut and wound her fingers severely. We have alluded to her fondness for history.