Chopin's Pedagogy: A Practical Approach
Presentation delivered at the MTNA National Convention, Pedagogy
Saturday, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2010
Resources
I see this paper
as essentially practical: Chopin's pedagogical ideas are ideas that I
and many
other teachers use regularly. Rereading Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger's
important book Chopin as Pianist and
Teacher reminds me of how much Chopin's ideas resonate with the way
I
teach, the way I was taught, and the way that I try to play. This
important
source collects most of the information that we have on Chopin's
teaching in a
convenient and user-friendly format. The book draws from Chopin's
memoranda
books, correspondence, and his fragmentary "Projet de méthode"
as well as the annotated scores and
statements of his students and associates.
Chopin's
approach to teaching was original and individual: as he had been
himself
largely self-taught, and thus not part of any "school" of learning or
teaching,
he was to some extent free of the technical dogmas of his
contemporaries. He saw
technique in an essentially musical way, and his teaching emphasized
sound
production first, technique second. In his sketch for a method, he
writes, "One
needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to
the keys
to obtain with ease the most beautiful quality of sound, to know how to
play
long notes and short notes and [to attain] unlimited dexterity." "A
well-formed
technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary a
beautiful sound
quality." (Quoted in Eigeldinger, 16-17).
Chopin
spent a great deal of his time on teaching, unlike Liszt who, at least
in the 1830s,
had no desire to be known as a teacher. Chopin's teaching was his
primary means
of support once he settled in Paris (1832-1849). In fact, he seldom
performed
after 1835, and was not particularly interested in teaching his
students to
perform. (Eigeldinger,
5). He
told one pupil, "Concerts are never real music; you have to give up the
idea of
hearing in them the most beautiful things of art." Contemporaries
(students and
associates) mentioned that Chopin himself was at his best as a
performer in private
because of his nervousness.
Students
were given one to three lessons a week, officially of 45 minutes each,
but not
always so short if the pupils were talented. He taught 5 pupils per
day. He was
much in demand as a teacher of wealthy women, who paid 20 gold francs
per
lesson (this was a lot of money) or 30 if he came to them (Eigeldinger,
6-7). The more talented pupils seem to have paid less;
sometimes nothing at all.
Of Chopin's
roughly 150 pupils, only a few are of great interest to us, both
because of
their later success as performers and teachers and because of their
recollections. Clara Wieck's
description of George Mathias, one of Chopin's most
important disciples because of his later career as a professor at the
Paris
Conservatoire, illustrates Chopin's teaching well. In an 1839 letter to
her
father, Clara writes of the twelve-year-old Mathias: "[he] has received
an
excellent education, has wonderfully flexible fingers, plays all of
Chopin, and there is nothing he cannot do. In fact he outshines all the
keyboard
strummers around here. Remarkably, he has never worked more than one
hour per
day. His father, an extremely reasonable man, does not make him play in
public
and is not one of those fathers who deify their children." (Quoted in Eigeldinger, 170). Understanding that Clara's
father was
something of a slave-driver and insisted on
her
practicing a lot and performing all the time, these words are quite
interesting! We have this description of the adult Mathias' playing by
his
contemporary Marmontel: "Under his agile
and firm
fingers, the most arduous passages retain their transparent clarity;
one never
senses fatigue, or is aware of the difficulties overcome. The
expression,
controlled by the principles of style and good taste, is never
exaggerated."
(Ibid.) Of Chopin's teaching of rubato,
Mathias
himself said, "you can be early, you can be late, the hands are not in
phase; then you make a compensation which
re-establishes the
ensemble. In Weber's music, for example, Chopin recommended this way of
playing." (49-50). Mathias went on
to teach at the Conservatoire (for over 30 years, beginning 1862)
(Ibid.) His
two most important pupils were Isidore
Philipp and Raoul Pugno. (Interesting examples of Pugno's
playing are available on YouTube, including the
A-flat Impromptu, the F-sharp Nocturne, and the Berceuse; see Resources page.)
Carl Mikuli
was another important pupil. In his preface to his
edition of Chopin's works, he writes,
A
true pianist's hand, not so much large as
extremely supple, enabled [Chopin] to arpeggiate
the
most widely disposed harmonies and to perform sweeping passagework,
which he
introduced into the idiom of the piano as something never before dared,
and all
without the slightest exertion being evident, just as overall an
agreeable
freedom and ease particularly characterized his playing. At the same
time, the
tone that he could draw from the instrument was always huge, especially
in the
cantabiles; only Field could compare with him in this respect. A
virile, noble
energy - energy without rawness - lent an overwhelming effect to the
appropriate passages, just as elsewhere he could enrapture the listener
through
the tenderness - tenderness without affectation of his soulful
renditions. With
all his intense personal warmth, his playing was nevertheless always
moderate, chaste,
refined, and occasionally even austerely reserved. Unfortunately, in
the trend
of modern pianism, these fine distinctions, like so many others
belonging to an
ideal art movement, are thrown into the attic of "superseded ideas"
that hinder progress, and a naked display of strength, not considering
the
capacity of the instrument, not even striving for the beauty of the
sound to be
shaped, today passes for large tone and energetic expression.
Mikuli's
pupils included Moriz Rosenthal and Raoul Koczalski.
(See
Resources page for examples of
their
playing on YouTube)
Chopin's
philosophy of teaching springs from the idea of music as a language,
which had
become standard by Chopin's time. Chopin was said to have frequently
incorporated language as a metaphor in his teaching. In the sketch for
a
method, Chopin made a list of attempts at defining music: (Eigeldinger,
195)
The art
that manifests itself through sounds is called music.
The
art of
expressing one's thoughts through sounds.
The
art of
handling sounds.
Thought
expressed through sounds.
The
expression
of our perceptions through sounds.
The
expression of thought through sounds.
The
manifestation of our feelings through sounds.
The
indefinite (indeterminate) language of men is sound.
The
indefinite language music.
Word is
born of sound—sound before word.
Word: a
certain modification of sound.
We use
sounds to make music just as we use words to make a language.
The idea of "musical
declamation"
also relates to Chopin's interest in
bel
canto.
Chopin is known to have frequently advised his pupils to listen to
great
singers of the time (Eigeldinger 14).
Chopin
placed great emphasis on musical
practice. In contrast to Liszt, Thalberg,
and other
virtuosi known for having their students focus on finger exercises, or
pianistic "acrobatics," as Chopin said, Chopin taught mostly from the
music itself. That
said, assigned repertoire did include Clementi's
Preludes and Exercises, as well as Gradus
ad Parnasssum, evidently in order to
develop even scales in
particular. He also liked to teach some of Moscheles'
etudes – the most "musical" etudes before Chopin's own. A-flat major
seemed a particular favorite—the Clementi
Exercise in that key and also the Moscheles
Etude in
A-flat (op. 70, no. 15) are both mentioned by pupils. Marie
Roubaud,
who had 18 lessons with him in 1847-48, studied the A-flat major
sonatas of
Beethoven (op. 26) and Weber (no. 2) with Chopin. (Eigeldinger, 61, 178). Chopin was also
said to have played
FieldÕs A-flat major Concerto particularly beautifully.
(Examples: Clementi Exercise in A-flat
major; Moscheles
Etude in A-flat major, op. 70, no. 9.)
Mikuli mentions Cramer studies
as part of the curriculum as
well, but it seems these were only for the less advanced pupils and
were seldom
assigned in actuality. Chopin was known to reserve his own works (and
especially
the Etudes and the larger scale works) for the most advanced pupils.
His own
practicing and teaching of Bach is well documented, with special
emphasis on
the Well-Tempered Clavier – apparently the only music that he brought
along to practice himself on the trip to Majorca with George Sand.
(That trip
resulted in the composition of the Preludes, op. 28.) According to his
student
Camille O'Meara (Dubois), he said at their last meeting in 1848 "always
practice Bach—this will be your best means of progress" (Eigeldinger 61). George
Mathias reported that Clementi,
Bach and Field were the composers given to new students.
Chopin
encouraged short practice sessions. Madame Dubois (Camille O'Meara)
reported: "One day he heard me say that I practiced six hours a day. He
became quite
angry, and forbade me to practice more than three hours." (Eigeldinger 27).
Another student wrote: "He always
advised the pupil not to work for too long at a stretch and to intermit
between
hours of work by reading a good book, by looking at masterpieces of
art, or by
taking an invigorating walk."
Chopin,
beyond the basic level, was not very interested in purely "technical"
exercises. In general, he advocated an approach that avoided brute
force
solutions to technical problems. Mikuli
offers the
following example, writing that, "In complete opposition to Chopin,
Liszt
maintains that the fingers should be strengthened by working on an
instrument
with a heavy, resistant touch, continually repeating the required
exercises
until one is completely exhausted and incapable of going on. Chopin
wanted
absolutely nothing to do with such a gymnastic treatment of the piano."
And: "Chopin invented a completely new method of piano playing that
permitted him to
reduce technical exercises to a minimum." (Eigeldinger 27). In light of these
remarks, it is
hardly surprising that Chopin preferred the Pleyel
pianos, which had a lighter and more responsive touch than the Erards that Liszt preferred.
He was
concerned with developing hand position in a natural way. Thus, he says
that C
major, which he considered the most
difficult scale pianistically, should not
be introduced first. Rather, he
suggests beginning with the B-major (RH) and D-flat-major (LH) scales
in order
to more naturally introduce the passing of the thumb—an understanding
of
piano technique from a piano-centered rather than music-theory centered
approach. Chopin writes: ÒFind the
right position for the hand by placing your fingers on the keys E, F#,
G#, A#,
B: the long fingers will occupy the high keys, and the short fingers
the low
keys....this will curve the hand, giving it
the
necessary suppleness that it could not have with the fingers straight."
ChopinÕs
method was predicated on what
the student actually needed to know in order to play the piano. Chopin
writes
in the Sketch for a method: "People have tried out all kinds of methods
of
learning to play the piano, methods that are tedious and useless and
have
nothing to do with the study of this instrument. It's like learning,
for
example, to walk on one's hands in order to go for a stroll. Eventually
one is
no longer able to walk properly on one's feet, and not very well on
one's hands
either. It doesn't teach us how to play the music itself—and the kind
of
difficulty we are practicing is not the difficulty encountered in good
music,
the music of the masters. It's an abstract difficulty, a new genre of
acrobatics." (Eigeldinger 193)
Chopin's
sketch for a method attempts to be very practical and simple, beginning
from
first principles: all music is either steps or skips (scalar or
arpeggio
patterns). From this he derives the idea that all you need to know how
to do is play trills, scales, and
arpeggios, in addition to chords
of various numbers of notes.
The method
also goes into the proper position, suggesting the elbows level with
the
keyboard. His pupils and associates report that both in teaching and in
his own
playing, he wanted the elbows relaxed and close to the body, and with a
minimum
of unnecessary movement. Of one pupil, Chopin is reported to have said
that he
is talented but still plays from his elbows! According to Jan Kleczynski, who collected reminiscences from a
number of
Chopin's pupils, "For all rapid passages in general the hands must be
slightly
turned, the right hand to the right, and the left hand to the left; and
the
elbows should remain close to the body, except in the highest and
lowest
octaves." (Eigeldinger 31)
Chopin
works from the idea that the finger initiates everything, the wrist is
supple
(29), and "the arm is slave to the hand." Mikuli
writes: "According to Chopin, evenness in scales and arpeggios depended
not
merely on equal strengthening of all fingers by means of five-finger
exercises,
and on entire freedom of the thumb when passing under and over, but
above all
on a constant sideways movement of the hands (with the elbow hanging
freely and
always loose)" (Eigeldinger 37) Chopin
writes "No one
will notice the inequality of sound in a very fast scale, as long as
the notes
are played in equal time" (Eigeldinger 37)
–an
important indicator of where his priorities lay.
Perhaps
Chopin's most important idea, one which was
taught to
me by Earl Wild many years ago, is that the second finger is the center
of the
hand. (Eigeldinger 18 elucidates extensions
etc. in
the etudes). I will show this idea with various examples from the
etudes. The
most obvious case is in op. 25, no. 3. Some less obvious examples
include op.
10, no. 3 and op. 10, no. 4, which can serve to illustrate how all-pervasive this second-finger-centric
philosophy is (and
how practically applicable). Any arpeggiated passage (op. 10, no. 8; op. 25, no.
1) and many
chordal passages (op. 10, no. 11 is an
excellent case
in point) serve to strengthen the second finger and achieve good
balance. The
accent pattern in the opening of the "Revolutionary" Etude (op. 10, no.
12)
also forces the hand to roll through the second finger, actually making
the
passage easier to play. This idea comports nicely with Chopin's desire
for a
hand position with the hands slightly turned out.
Chopin also
made a point in his teaching of advocating the right fingering for
every
passage (Eigeldinger 19). There are
numerous examples
in students' scores as well as in the published scores of the etudes
and other
works that demonstrate his philosophy of fingering. The B-flat minor
scherzo is
full of good examples as well, where the pattern is almost unplayable
unless
you understand the proper placement of the hand around the pivot of the
second
finger.
Some of his
musically-driven fingerings include playing
the same
finger on different notes while carrying the melody, playing repeated
notes
with one finger, and using numerous substitutions to encourage legato
playing
with a relaxed hand. Also toward a more relaxed hand position, he
suggested
trills with 1-3, 2-4, and 3-5 as being inherently more flexible and
easier than
with adjacent fingers.
Some of
Chopin's suggestions for practice include moving from a gentle staccato
to
legato with simple patterns. One advantage of this was to demonstrate a
more
relaxed passing of the thumb, avoiding contortions of the hand in
position
changes (Eigeldinger 38). Chopin's own
legato was
known for depth of tone and relaxed hand position. Chopin was also
known to
abhor overly loud or exaggerated playing.
It is impossible to
overemphasize Chopin's adherence to developing technique only for a
musical
result. Chopin's attitude to "evenness" is telling: he preferred to
emphasize
the individuality of the fingers, and made clear that light and fast
playing
eliminated the need for a forced evenness of touch. Mikuli
writes: "Untiringly
he taught that the appropriate exercises should not be merely
mechanical but
rather should enlist the whole will of the student; therefore he would
never
require a mindless twenty or forty-fold repetition (still today the
extolled arcanum at so many schools), let
alone a drill during which
one could, according to Kalkbrenner's
advice,
simultaneously occupy oneself with reading(!)."
Chopin's
teaching and practice of rubato is
important to
elucidate. Many sources confirm that Chopin actually abhorred liberties
of
tempo. Mikuli writes, for example, "In
keeping time
Chopin was inexorable, and some readers will be surprised to learn that
the
metronome never left the piano." Like Mozart before him, Chopin
suggests that
the accompaniment remains in strict time while the melody is free to
work
around it (this would be akin to the way jazz musicians handle time
now). This
indicates that the hands would not necessarily sound together at all
times.
Mathias writes, "you can be early, you can be late, the hands are not
in phase;
then you make a compensation which re-establishes the ensemble. In
Weber's
music, for example, Chopin recommended this way of playing." (Eigeldinger 49-50). Kleczynski adds,
"This style is
based upon simplicity, it admits of no affectation, and therefore does
not
allow too great changes of movement. This is an absolute condition for
the
execution of all Chopin's works." (Eigeldinger
54) In light of these
comments, it is interesting to me that in the Third and Fourth Ballades
(in
contrast to the first two), Chopin's compositional language has
developed to
the point that he indicates no
changes of tempo (with the exception of a slight pi
mosso at the end of the Third Ballade—it
seems that
he has reached a point of classical balance, and has striven to show
changes of
character more with the notation of note values than with changes of
tempo. I
believe this is reflective of his general "classical" attitude toward
tempo. (Example:
Raoul Pugno:
Berceuse.)
In terms of
phrasing and articulation, the following remarks are important and
instructive.
Kleczynski summarizes: "A long note is
stronger, as
is also a high note. A dissonant is likewise stronger, and equally so a
syncopated note. The ending of a phrase, before a comma, or a stop, is
always
weak." (Eigeldinger
42). "Chopin
attached great importance to slurs, which by the way are not always
correctly
drawn in the greater part of his works; whenever this mark terminated
he
detached the hand after having diminished the tone." (Eigeldinger,
45)
Physical
demonstrations of the principles of playing mentioned throughout this
paper are
necessary to fully elucidate the practical implications of Chopin's
teaching
philosophy. Although I have heard it said that Chopin's school died
with him,
it is evident to me both through the teaching that I received from Earl
Wild
and Paul Doguereau and through the
examples of Chopin's
grand-pupils that this is not the case. Chopin's legacy and philosophy
in fact
do live on, and many of his most important principles—including
practicing musically, practicing
practically, practicing in limited doses, and developing a technique
based on
musical needs rather than on the need to demonstrate physical
prowess—are
central the teaching of many of us in the field today.