Chapters 3&4

It is indeed exceedingly important for every pianist, especially we the younger generations, to recognize that the piano was once a very different instrument than what we’re playing nowadays. The instrument itself had gone through many changes through the past hundreds of years and many of these changes in fact inspired composers to write extraordinary music, particularly when the instrument first evolved. Before reading these two chapters, I have never think of the piano itself as one of the major inspiration for composers writing new music. I would even say the influence of the instrument towards music outweighed the other aspects at the time of Haydn and Mozart. In my point of view, it is out of the development of piano grew the variety of texture and technique, and hence more interesting music. It is so fascinating to see how these great composers experimented with the instrument and left wonderful music for us as a result.

Mozart is a prodigy and no doubt the first recognized as a piano virtuoso. However I always think it is less demanding to be a virtuoso pianists in those days. The expectation of performance must be different between now and back that time for a couple of reasons: the keyboard are built differently, the venue is different, the expectation is different..etc. In Mozart’s time, music was probably performed to a smaller group, not necessarily music educated, usually as a casual meeting and entertainment. The piano has lighter actions and to be played in a smaller room, thus physically less demanding. Yet not to mention after music recording is invented, audience tends to become less tolerating mistakes. It is always interesting to try to imagine how astonishing could Mozart achieve if he was born in 21st century...

Another interesting point is that Mozart was known not only playing with perfect technique but also with 'taste'. Mozart himself also emphasized the importance of playing music with feelings when comparing himself with Clementi. As mentioned above, I think the perspective of performance has changed since recording appeared. We now tend to be more aware of the surface features of music, e.g. wrong notes are barely acceptable, but missed the expressiveness in music. Yet Mozart has already spotted this conflict back in his time.

The last thing I want to mention is the method books. Unquestionably Clementi has been very successful in pedagogy by introducing those exercises and method books. However my question is, are they still as valuable to us now? The exercises are meant to be practice on the piano at their time. As the piano developed, the approach and technique of piano playing changed as well. Are those exercises applicable to our modern piano, or should we only stick with the method books solely composed to our modern piano?