Chapter 7 & 8

Although I do not hold Czerny in such high esteem as the author clearly does, I do think many of his writings are still applicable today. For example, his eloquently phrased remarks on the importance of practicing, “Practice is the great Magician, who not only makes apparent impossibilities performable, but even easy” is encouraging. His statement that in teaching subjects should be distributed across lessons is obvious enough, but shouldn’t be overlooked. I think it is particularly important to have a systematic approach to teaching young students… at least in theory, history, and technique.

Again we find the importance of avoiding all unnecessary movements, a concept he must have inherited from Beethoven…

“We shall gain nothing by torturing the young Pupil with Compositions which must appear to him as old fashioned, unintelligible, and tasteless, or as too difficult and troublesome; every Pupil makes much greater progress when he plays all his lessons willingly and with satisfaction.” I agree that the student should work on music that appeals to him or her… but often music that seems unintelligible or difficult at first becomes more fulfilling than what is quickly playable.

Turk recommends thinking of each note as a spoken tone, which I think is essential for piano. His ideas about agogic accents in moderation is important to consider as well. Much of the chapter was devoted to the Chiroplast and similar devices, which I believe are all horrible… for obvious reasons... I also strongly object to Logier’s teaching classes of 30 to 40 students. I believe the piano should be taught individually whenever possible. Kalkbrenner did have some useful ideas about tone though, specifically “the manner of striking the key must exhibit innumerable variations corresponding to the various emotions to be expressed” which is even more important today on our more sensitive pianos.