CHAPTER II METHODS OF FAMOUS TEACHERS All the major music encyclopedias contain biographical information re- garding thousands of teachers who devoted, or are devoting their lives to instructing millions of piano students during the past two hundred years. Most of these teachers, patient and long-suffering as they may have been, achieved only local reputations; about twenty developed pedagogic methods of such originality that they either have exerted or will exercise a marked in- fluence on the art of piano instruction. The teaching methods of Clementi, Czerny, Moscheles, Kullak, Liszt, Deppe, Leschetizky and Matthay have been selected for discussion as representative of the entire group. Muzio Clementi ( 1752-1832).--It is unfortunate that information of suf- ficiently definite character is not available regarding the pedagogical meth- ods of Clementi; that they must have been efficacious is proved by the large number of pupils who later became either great virtuosos or teachers; Field, Cramer, Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, Klengel and Zeuner are only a few of those who profited by his methods, and utilized them later during their own years of concertizing or teaching. Clementi an Originator.-- It must be borne in mind that Clementi worked during the period when the piano was in the final stages of superseding the harpsichord, and for this reason all the teaching methods he employed were necessarily based on instructive material personally originated without the aid of previous models; his outstanding work was the immortal Gradus ad Parnassum, a series of one hundred piano studies on which all modern piano technique is admittedly based. These remarkable études have been in constant use since their publication in 1817, and Hans von Bülow is only one of many distinguished editors who prepared new editions over a period of usefulness of more than a century. While neither Clementi himself nor any of his distinguished pupils have penned an illuminating description of his method of teaching in the classroom, there is no question that the "Gradus" gives him the right to be regarded as the founder of modern piano technique because the basic principles laid down in it have never been superseded. Karl Czerny ( 1794-1870).--Many piano pedagogues of the past have preserved their methods of teaching in the studio through treatises prepared either by the masters themselves, or in numerous instances by distinguished pupils who have delighted in this method of showing their appreciation of such instruction. As in the case of Clementi, there is no means of ascertaining how Czerny worked in the studio after he became one of the most famous piano teachers of all time. A pupil of Beethoven, whose piano works became his special study, he also made the acquaintance of -245- |