Musicon / Beethoven / Musical education / Significance of the piano
-Significance of the piano
To follow the progressive development of the mechanical principles underlying the piano, one would be obliged to begin beyond the veil which separates history from tradition, for the first of them finds its earliest exemplification in the bow twanged by the primitive savage. Since a recognition of these principles may help to an understanding of the art of piano playing, I enumerate them now. They are:
1. A stretched string as a medium of tone production.
2. A key-board as an agency for manipulating the strings.
3. A blow as the means of exciting the strings to vibratory action, by which the tone is produced.
Many interesting glimpses of the human mind and heart might we have in the course of the promenade through the ancient, mediaeval, and modern worlds which would be necessary to disclose the origin and growth of these three principles, but these we must forego, since we are to study the music of the instrument, not its history. Let the knowledge suffice that the fundamental principle of the piano is as old as music itself, and that scientific learning, inventive ingenuity, and mechanical skill, tributary always to the genius of the art, have worked together for centuries to apply this principle, until the instrument which embodies it in its highest potency is become a veritable microcosm of music.
It is the visible sign of culture in every gentle household; the indispensable companion of the composer and teacher; the intermediary between all the various branches of music. Into the study of the orchestral conductor it brings a translation of all the multitudinous voices of the band; to the choir-master it represents the chorus of singers in the church-loft or on the concert-platform; with its aid the opera director fills his imagination with the people, passions, and pageantry of the lyric drama long before the singers have received their parts, or the costumer, stage manager, and scene-painter have begun their work.
It is the only medium through which the musician in his study can commune with the whole world of music and all its heroes; and though it may fail to inspire somewhat of that sympathetic nearness which one feels toward the violin as it nestles under the chin and throbs synchronously with the player’s emotions, or those wind instruments into which the player breathes his own breath as the breath of life, it surpasses all its rivals, save the organ, in its capacity for publishing the grand harmonies of the masters, for uttering their “sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies.”
From: H. Krehbiel’s, How to Listen to Music; excerpts, edited by Musicon