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Updated: May 23, 2025
"No matter how wonderful the pianist's technic that is, how rapidly and accurately he can play passages of extraordinary difficulty, it is quite worthless unless he possesses that control over his touch which enables him to interpret the composer's work with the right artistic shading.
Speaking theoretically, every individual needs a different technical system. Every hand, every arm, every set of ten fingers, every body and, what is of greatest importance, every intellect is different from every other. I consequently endeavored to get down to the basic laws underlying the subject of technic and make a system of my own.
"Of course, there must be other technical material in addition to scales, but the highest technic, broadly speaking, may be traced back to scales and arpeggios. The practice of scales and arpeggios need never be mechanical or uninteresting. This depends upon the attitude of mind in which the teacher places the pupil.
Popular excellence in one age is but the mechanism of what was good in the preceding; in Art, the technic. Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults; and his faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own. This is as true in Art as in morals.
The basic cause of modern mannerism, mainly in harmonic effects, lies in a want of formal mastery; an impatience of thorough technic; a craving for quick sensation. With Bruckner it was the opposite weakness of original ideas, an organic lack of poetic individuality. It is this the one charge that cannot be brought home to the earlier German group of reaction against the classic idea.
"It appears to me that mastery of the technic of the violin is not so much of a mechanical accomplishment as it is of mental nature. It may be that scientists can tell us how through persistency the brain succeeds in making the fingers and the arms produce results through the infinite variety of inexplicable vibrations.
Some teachers believe in applying the technic directly to pieces, and use almost no studies; but I think a study is often more valuable than a piece, because a definite technical principle is treated in every kind of way. Though I do not require studies to be memorized, they must be played with all the finish of a piece, if the pupil is to derive the maximum of benefit from them.
These two movements show a mellower technic, perhaps, but are less vital. He has written three ballet suites with pronounced success, the work being musical and yet full of the ecstasy of the dance. His third ballet suite, which is the best, was produced at a concert of the American Symphony Orchestra, under Sam Franko.
And in this field of technic, during his later years, when in composition his mind turned almost wholly to this mode of expression, he reached a plane of tonal effect which, for variety, from vague, shadowy, mysterious ppp, to virile, orchestral ffff, has never been surpassed by any pianist who has visited these shores in recent years.
"Perhaps I have what might be called a natural technic; that is I have a natural aptitude for it, so that I could acquire it easily, and it stays with me. Hofmann has that kind of natural technic; so has d'Albert. Of course I have to practise technic; I would not allow it to lapse; I love the piano too much to neglect any part of the work.
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