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This work leads to the highest possible technical development at the keyboard, and I consider it the last word in piano technic. The hundreds of exercises have been devised with most wonderful ingenuity, and the musicianship of the author stands out on every page.
Had all the doors and windows of the house been thrown open, and all its inhabitants expelled, so that you could have free ingress with a companion or two, and time and the mood to explore the whole of its ramifications and arrangements, you must have concluded that the designer of so much that was hideously obvious and so much that was mysteriously obscure was a most extraordinary example of viciousness, ability, purpose, and musicianship.
Pinton's musicianship was not profound. He had begun life as an organ salesman. He manipulated the cabinet organ for impossible customers in Wisconsin, and he came to New York because he was offered a better chance. The inevitable church position occurred. Then came Zundel voluntaries and hard pedal practice.
Virtuosity without musicianship will not carry one far these days. In many cases these students come from small inland towns, far from any music center, and have a wrong attitude of mind. They crave the glamor of footlights, flowers and applause, not realizing that music is a speech, an idiom, which they must master in order to interpret the works of the great composers.
Spontini's training was Neapolitan, but his first visit to Paris showed him that there was no place upon the French stage for the trivialities which still delighted Italian audiences. He devoted himself to careful study, and his one-act opera 'Milton, the first-fruits of his musicianship, showed a remarkable advance upon his youthful efforts.
He appears to have had little ambition, and was content throughout his career to fit his saccharine melodies to whatever words the librettists of the day chose to supply. No one can deny him the possession of fluent and commonplace melody, but there his claim to musicianship ends.
"Come on, Nan. Time, seven-four " "Sandy, don't be ridiculous!" "Why not seven-four?" innocently. "You have five-four. Come along. One, two, three, four, five, six, sev'n; one, two, three, four, five " And the next moment the two were improvising a farcical duet that in its way was a masterpiece of ingenious musicianship.
It would be interesting to follow up this idea and enumerate the vocalists who have broadened their musicianship through the study of other instruments than their own voices. But this delightful task must be reserved for future leisure.
Of course such false prophets of the virtuose have nothing in common with such high-priests of public utterance as Ysaye, Kreisler and others, whose virtuosity is a true means for the higher development of the musical. The encouragement of musicianship in general suffers for the stress laid on what is obviously technical impedimenta.
When Remenyi visited the United States in 1878, he arrived a few weeks after Wilhelmj, and notwithstanding the fact that the two violinists were widely different in temperament, ideas, musicianship, in fact in every particular, they were frequently made the subjects of comparison. At this time Remenyi played an "Otello Fantaisie," "Suwanee River," "Grandfather's Clock," etc.
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