In part, this is because the method of inquiry has mainly focused on criticism and not on the wider system of journalistic practices in which the criticism was written. This system of practices, or the business of the press, includes legal, business, and social structures that had the potential to alter the outcome of articles, which, in turn, changes the way in which history itself is recorded in music journals, and the way in which we interpret the contents of those journals. For instance, Kerry Murphy has shown that some critics accepted bribes in exchange for positive reviews, but did not consider less obvious and more common ways in which musicians and critics might trade favors, such as exchanging tickets or writing complementary articles to secure future publishing contracts.
In some cases, one person might fulfill all three of these roles at the same time and need to negotiate their 4 I refer to this as a system, but it is not systematic in any way.
Join Kobo & start eReading today
Rather it is a loose smattering of interested behavior that is not visible in the articles we can read, but which I argue was central to the act of writing these articles down. It was also business, laws, and tricks. What relates these activities to one another is the way in which they had the potential to alter the outcome of articles. UMI Research Press, , 61— Cambridge University Press, passim, esp. In this mixed musical world, any piece of journalistic writing had the potential for repercussions for the critic or the journal owner, and therefore, since a given critic would know about this potential, he would write always with a myriad of such issues in mind.
This presents a central issue in the analysis and comprehension of the nineteenth-century press. How can we tell which ideas were heartfelt and which were fabricated? To better understand how one might know when this invisible self-imposed censorship might be happening, this chapter will look at the business of the press from the ground up and help answer a number of fundamental questions: What were the requirements to start and run a journal?
Was running a journal profitable? What sorts of repercussions existed for writing positive, negative, or polemical articles? How did critics communicate with artists and how did journals communicate with each other? And what influenced the outcome of a given review? Answering these questions will help to identify areas of journalistic life that might influence the written word, and work toward creating an intellectual cosmos in which we can better interpret the contents of the nineteenth-century press.
Though it was a small and short-lived paper, Le Pianiste provides an excellent case study of the sorts of business practices involved in nineteenth-century French music journalism. Lemoine and Chaulieu were journalists, composers, teachers, and publishers. In these capacities they wrote criticism about new music, and sometimes published the music of the artists they reviewed.
They received criticism in other journals for their new pieces, and sometimes their critics might have been composers whose works had been reviewed by Le Pianiste. Lemoine and Chaulieu also sought and received contracts for their own compositions from rival publishing houses, some of which had their own music journals.
These activities sometimes disagreed with one another, and Lemoine and Chaulieu faced consequences in one part of their professional lives for actions carried out in another. Furthermore, Lemoine and Chaulieu were atypically open about the business of the music press in Le Pianiste in that they called attention to the conflicts of interest that arose between their various musical enterprises.
This chapter will begin by discussing the laws governing music journalism in the early s. While the establishment of political censorship is cited by political historians as one of the reasons that the July Revolution of occurred, how this changing legal landscape affected non-political journals has received little attention. Many journal owners of this period lost money on their ventures, but they recouped their losses in other indirect ways, namely as I argue, through the exertion of power and authority that would earn them favors or perks and a valuable air of prestige.
This chapter will trace the flow of money, favors, and influence that made journalism worthwhile for journalists and owners, and also susceptible to corruption. This chapter will culminate in an investigation of the professional risks and rewards of journalistic activity by analyzing the anatomy of an extended rivalry between Le Pianiste and the Gazette musicale. The feud between these journals illustrates how journals functioned as sources of power for their owners, and demonstrates a variety of actions and reactions in the mixed world of composing, journalism, and publishing, from two men who worked in all three fields.
What Lemoine and Chaulieu wrote in Le Pianiste affected their whole professional life. The Press and the Government To understand French music journalism of the s, it is important to know something about the press at large during this time. Longman, , Breaking the law risked penalties, fines, and imprisonment, and journals were required to register, provide declarations, and deposit every issue with various government offices.
The government also monitored the activities of each journal and printer. While the responsibilities of journalism feature prominently in political histories of this time, there is remarkably little written about the legal requirements for music journalism in music scholarship. Opera in Paris, — Amadeus Press, , — However, non-cautioned papers were still subject to other restrictions. Loi du 18 juillet , art. Collingham notes that some political papers were printed at random intervals to evade the cautionnement. Collingham, The July Monarchy, Journals not subject to the caution would have to declare the following in advance: The law listed 5 items that must be mentioned in the declaration, but journals that were exempt from the cautionnement only had to provide items 1, 2, and 5.
A slightly different set of information was recorded in the Bibliographie de la France: The declarations for the relevant journals in the Bibliographie are as follows: Bibliographie de la France Gazette musicale de Paris, 29 item ; Le Pianiste, item Not anyone could be a printer: The government dossier on Delacour shows that he had a license to be a bookseller which included permission to own a cabinet de lecture and a license to be a lithographer, but that he had tried in vain to obtain a printing brevet. His requests were denied because Paris already had the maximum number of printers allowed.
Delacour then found an illegal solution. He set up a pseudo-shop in Meudon, a town just outside Paris, and obtained a printing license there while he ran the business in Vaugirard. The government caught up with him in , and after lengthy deliberations and a discussion of his story, surprisingly awarded him a brevet in Paris with no consequences for his previous behavior. For instance, a non-political journal like Le Pianiste could not print political news or commentary, as it had not paid a cautionnement nor declared its political intent beforehand.
I will be discussing this incident in more detail in a forthcoming article. It is possible that the article was simply ghostwritten by someone in Le Pianiste. Reconstructing the situation from the letter, it seems that the piano, as a manufactured good, was given different legal protection than paper media like music scores and journals. For Le Pianiste, the lithographs for which it was known were made illegal by the September laws. Delacour was a lithographer by trade and there were new restrictions on his work, and likely increased delays.
There was more oversight, more work, and more risk involved in publishing. It is possible that when the 29 Collingham, — Loi du septembre titre III. Turning a Profit Or not Laws, at least, were fairly predictable, but the economics of owning a music journal were anything but. Surprisingly, owning a journal often meant losing money, as many papers were not solvent. Nor did a journal make money through advertisements, which were only beginning to be published in the daily papers, and had not yet appeared in music journals of the s. Many nineteenth-century music journals, like Le Pianiste or the Gazette musicale, were connected to publishing houses.
The advertisements would have been in the form of positive reviews, philosophical musing, general publicity, or even fiction. This power then is a type of capital that may be transformed into monetary gain in another setting. Since a journal owner held this power, musicians might ingratiate themselves with him to gain access to that influence and to secure good reviews. The German poet Heinrich Heine, who lived in Paris from until his death in , was well aware of this when he noted the following about Maurice Schlesinger: In a similar fashion, it has been alleged that Meyerbeer used his wealth to pay critics for positive reviews, but Murphy notes that instead critics would have relied on Meyerbeer for personal loans.
This sort of agreement is much more indirect than paying someone for positive reviews, though the outcome is nearly identical. Instead it was more common for a critic or owner to earn benefits from his articles in more subtle ways. For instance, theaters or artists would give critics free tickets.
In Illusions perdues, Balzac suggests that these tickets were provided for purposes other than attending at no cost. Rather, the artists would give many tickets, maybe dozens, so the critic could resell them to others and earn some money through their sale. The Modern Library, , 57 and An Art and a Business New York: Once, the failure to give tickets resulted in no review at all; in its place, Le Pianiste mentioned that an article would not be written since no tickets were received. Lambert, by the fact that Le Pianiste had often spoken well of her pianistic ability, and she had failed to acknowledged the journal with tickets and invitations.
Consequences for Bad Behavior Being a musician and a critic in this milieu were not mutually exclusive activities, however. Musicians were also critics, publishers were critics, musicians were publishers, and everyone had to negotiate the needs of their various positions. If good behavior earned a person rewards and positive reviews, what would be the consequences for bad behavior? What if allegiance or favors to one person earned retaliation from another?
Le Pianiste provides an interesting perspective on these matters because the men involved in its production were critics, publishers, and working musicians with various publishing contracts of their own. Concert held at Salle Chantereine. She was from a musical dynasty: Her first name is unknown. Their doing so was certainly an attempt to discredit others and promote the fairness of their own journal, but some part of it was a wholesome attempt to expose the trickery found in certain articles. The majority of this activity centered on two rival journals: Le Dilettante, owned by Franz Stoepel, a musician, and the Gazette musicale, owned by Maurice Schlesinger, a publisher.
The substance of these feuds shows the ways in which journals might be used to promote personal power, and how public, private, and business life were not separated in these early publishing house journals. Finally, it provides new insight into the ways that publishing house journals operated behind the scenes. While the article did not mention Le Pianiste by name, the journal was clearly its intended target.
No article in Le Dilettante was ever signed, no one made any claim of ownership in the journal, and its owner also remains unknown in modern scholarship. This may suggest that Stoepel was unhappy with the merge. Franz Stoepel was Prussian who had lived all over the German states and in London before moving to Paris in His establishing of Le Dilettante would be consistent with his past endeavors.
The journal mocked his group piano classes based on the Logier system and made fun of his advertisements that claimed he was a professor. Possibly to avoid any libel suit, Le Pianiste often referred to Stoepel with nicknames: This exchange, however, cannot compare to the complex relationship between Le Pianiste and Gazette musicale, but serves as an important background layer to the subsequent interactions with the Gazette.
The Gazette musicale is considered to be one of the most important music journals in nineteenth-century France. The journal was unpopular at first and its early life was marred by a series of scandals: Pendragon Press, , 5. Behind the gossipy nature of the accounts of this rivalry, there is a lesson about contemporary journalistic ethics. The relationship that developed between the owners and editors of these two papers may be unmatched in nineteenth- century music journalism: The creative means by which the men exerted control over one another illustrates, as a case study, how music journalism functioned as a source of power for journal owners, and offers new avenues for critical interpretation of contemporary criticism.
Behind the Gazette, Le Pianiste saw a Prussian publisher, Schlesinger, who had ties to the German states and who had German artists in his catalog. Schlesinger still had a tangible 60 Schlesinger also freely discussed these happenings in the Gazette. The Gazette, from the start, belittled French musical taste and musical institutions and offered German alternatives in their place. Even in the impure journalistic world that I have painted, the Gazette stood out among its contemporaries for its lack of subtlety and finesse in promoting its interests. Le Pianiste complained that the Gazette was unabashed in advertising for its own titles at the expense of others.
Over the course of its first year, in addition to announcing that French music was bad and that French music criticism was poor, the Gazette said that France had no decent method for learning music, that French orchestras did not play Beethoven as well as German ones, and that the Paris Conservatoire did not create good musicians. Despite the aristocratic disdain that is affected for journals less expensive than the Gazette des Allemands, which has superiority over others only by its subscription price, Le Pianiste will nonetheless pursue its self-imposed task of signaling, like a vigilant sentinel, all the charlatanism, nonsense, and impertinence contained in certain papers that deal with the musical art form.
Henri Herz, Rossini, and Hummel. As noted earlier, Herz had successfully sued Schlesinger for libel, and Le Pianiste saw in this and subsequent behavior something other than aesthetic arguments. Le Pianiste alleged that in his shop, Schlesinger forced people to buy music that he published, even when they did not want to. See also response in Le Pianiste an 1, In this little comedic sketch, the editor unfailingly replies that he does not have what she wants but he has something by Schunke. The article closes with the editor speaking to himself after the transaction: As a music publisher, Schlesinger had a reputation for printing works with mistakes.
Le Pianiste mentioned this issue often, by pointing out errors and generally rebuking Schlesinger for the quality of his editions. This care is all the more necessary in view of the particular nature of the works of Chopin, which often slip into faults, despite all the precautions that the editor takes to 78 Le Pianiste an 2, Thus, for example, the treble clef is missing in the first and third measures of the sixth staff, page 7; the same for the first measure of the eighth staff; the bass clef has been forgotten in the fourth measure of the 10th staff, page 16, and the treble clef is missing again in the first and fifth measures of the 12th staff, same page; not to mention the many wrong notes that exist here and there.
Second, since the obvious solution to the problem of wrong notes was to consult another edition, and since people were already doing this, the article suggesting so was almost insulting. Le Pianiste responded sarcastically to the advice with a sense of exasperation: Le Pianiste believed that anyone skilled enough to play Chopin would know when a clef was wrong, and that the Gazette would be more helpful if it pointed out less obvious note mistakes. That the overseer is distracted, negligent, or that the Gazette puts him to sleep while reading the proofs of his own journal?
Harvard University Press, , — See also Chopin First Editions Online. In any case, Le Pianiste believed that all music had value, from the most simple and unassuming to the most complex and ambitious, and here it showed that this aesthetic was a source of national pride. Letter of January 1, See also Le Pianiste an 1, footnote.
The advertisement in the Le Constitutionnel repeated the same list from the masthead. The poem printed in Le Pianiste alleged that the Gazette had amassed a larger group of editors than it had subscribers, and delivered this message in a silly tone meant to reflect the subject and its actions. The poem is as follows: Et longue elle est assurement!
And long it was assuredly! In one instance, the Gazette accused Le Pianiste of plagiarism. The accusation seems to have rankled Lemoine and Chaulieu. Schlesinger probably had fewer options for professional retaliation which make the actions he did take all the more creative and astonishing: Letter dated 3 March This was intended as an insult, and Chaulieu understood it as such.
Le Pianiste discussed this matter of pricing, formatted as a discussion between two people. The first person introduces the subject, and the second does not see the connection, so the first replies: Well sir, two pieces by the same author, which appear on the same day, which have the same scope, and which are published by the same editor, and one of which sells for 5 fr.
Chaulieu did not publish any music with Schlesinger after this incident. It seems rather puzzling that Schlesinger was willing to lose money in sales just to embarrass Chaulieu, but this incident shows the lengths to which one could go to ruin an enemy. From a certain standpoint, however, this loss of income was small compared to what Schlesinger might risk by a more public display of spite. Journalistic activities did not result in equal and opposite reactions, and for someone who was composer, critic, and publishing partner, like Chaulieu, it was an especially messy business.
The merger made the Revue et Gazette musicale the largest musical paper in Paris. The request was denied. But looking at journalism as a function of power makes it possible to draw upon general patterns. For instance, we understand better that a publisher who owned a journal would use it in a different way than would a composer who wrote for that journal: Does a positive review mean that a piece was beloved or just that the article was written by its publisher? Does the fact that a musician was unpopular mean that his music was deplored or just that he was a cantankerous person who tended to make enemies out of critics?
Answering these questions will require much further research into the press, as well as publishing, society, and audiences, not to mention taste and aesthetics. But for the time being, foregrounding the various practices that make up the business of the press provides an entry point into understanding the cultural system of the French music journalism in a more accurate and meaningful way.
This discussion not only provides new information about reception history and canon formation in the s, but also helps to reconstruct musical activity and taste in France in the first two decades of the century. Typically, the lead article in the first issue of a nineteenth-century music journal featured an important musical figure, intended to set the tone for, or represent, the aesthetic stance of the journal. For example, the Gazette musicale , a more progressive, romantic journal, opened with an article on Beethoven, and the Revue musicale , a more conservative journal, began with Mozart.
Even from the point of view of s Paris, there is something asynchronous about this choice: Clementi was not popular by that time and articles about him are difficult to find in the contemporary French press outside of Le Pianiste. Placing Clementi at the start of Le Pianiste, however, was not emblematic of a dominant aesthetic stance, but was part of a larger strategy by its authors to reclaim the importance of a specific group of musicians, Muzio Clementi, Johann-Baptiste Cramer, Daniel Steibelt, and Jan Ladislav Dussek, and to preserve their legacies in the public imagination.
Understanding these forces also provides new insight into some of the factors that influenced the formation of the musical canon in the nineteenth century, and what was lost as it was formed. Background and Context Centrally important to understanding Le Pianiste is the fact that its two authors, Lemoine and Chaulieu, had grown up together and studied at the Conservatoire with the famous piano pedagogue, Louis Adam.
Because of this shared formational training, Le Pianiste was in part an organ for Lemoine and Chaulieu and the legacy of the Paris Conservatoire that they embodied. Schirmer, , — Despite this success, however, the writing in Le Pianiste exhibits unease, especially surrounding a new attitude among the younger generation, invoked by the use of the popular insult perruque, or periwig. As slang, no stable definition exists, but the term was used against older people to mean that someone was out of touch, stuffy, or desiccated.
The romantics are all young men, and the classicists are all old perruques Voynich ; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, , The Modern Library, , Delaunay, , Lemoine and Chaulieu thought that an understanding of the past was the key to a good future. Le Pianiste was founded with this goal in mind. Yet, other journals began printing more youthful manifestos insulting tradition and the recent past, which escalated the tension between 7 Prospectus of Le Pianiste Vaugirard: The Corneilles and the Racines of piano are not perruques!
Lemoine described this world retrospectively as an insulated place, which could only be understood by what knowledge it lacked: Adam reigned in France and the best students of this skillful and respectable master shone, either in the salon, or in public, with the beautiful compositions of Dussek, Cramer, Clementi, and Steibelt; Hummel was not yet known, Beethoven was not yet understood [emphasis original].
Non, non, les Corneille et les Racine du piano ne sont pas des perruques! Oxford University Press, , 22— For more information on Beethoven reception in France see James H. Muzio Clementi — , an Italian composer based in London for the majority of his life, never lived in Paris, though he held concerts there on tours, —81, , , and travelled for business trips in and Johann-Baptiste Cramer — , of German origin, lived in London from childhood.
He visited Paris in , publishing his first works there, and thereafter appeared from time to time in concert tours. Daniel Steibelt — was born in Berlin and moved to Paris by , though he had visited Paris prior. After moving to London in , he returned to Paris in —, then again in — before being offered a position in the Russian court. He moved to Russia in and remained there until his death.
Aux galops de l'inconnu
At his stays in Paris Lemoine and Chaulieu attended his concerts and his salon. Jan Dussek — spent the most time in Paris among these four. Dussek lived in Paris for a few years prior to the Revolution before escaping to London, and returned to Paris in and remained there until his death in Chaulieu performed for him at least once.
- Aux galops de l inconnu (French Edition) eBook: Alain L Heureux: theranchhands.com: Kindle Store.
- The Sky Road.
- SBSL: Successful Business in Second Life Best Practices, Third Edition.
- Katey and Her Possessed Budgie.
- Aux galops de l'inconnu : poèmes;
- Gli Angeli Custodi Rolf e Carmelo (Italian Edition)!
This edition is commonly available as a Minkoff reprint. One that could perform many types of music, move people with subtlety and finesse, be sometimes deep and introspective and at other times be dazzling and exciting, and not develop an ego no matter how famous they became, a lesson hammered out when comparing Steibelt and Dussek, discussed below.
Aux galops de l'inconnu by Alain L'Heureux (eBook) - Lulu
The other years did not have winners. Adam traces for them, will easily avoid the pitfalls that stop or that slow the course of progress, and they will quickly arrive at that perfection of execution that contains the inseparable qualities of good style and delicate taste. In Le Pianiste, pianism as an art form was traced back to its roots in harpsichord and organ playing through composer-performers, much as one would trace a genealogy.
The opening statement in Le Pianiste is striking for its detailed simplicity. Before its first article on Clementi, one finds an elaborate list of important pianists. This is followed by four piano eras. The first is small, with just six members: The second, third, and fourth piano eras are large. The list was meant to be inclusive, and after receiving letters about the pianists they omitted, Lemoine and Chaulieu published a supplement See Table 2.
The list is fascinatingly detailed, and includes a great number of pianists who are unknown today, including numerous female pianists. There are also some glaring omissions: These articles comprise what Lemoine and Chaulieu knew and what they had experienced, but also what they thought an s audience would want or need to know. These are individual stories, but they make up a larger whole, a series of constellations in two colliding worlds: Mort en J. The article was one part of a three-part series outlining the state of the piano as a declarative opening statement: Clementi represented music of the past; Kalkbrenner, the music of the present; and Chopin, the music of the future.
Clementi, an Italian pianist who spent the majority of his life in England, never lived in Paris though he did travel there throughout his life for concerts and other business; his most significant visits were probably , , and Oxford University Press, ; and Rohan H. Ut Orpheus Edizioni, ; Quaderni Clementiani, 2. Cambridge University Press, , Later generations came to believe that this was the first work written for the piano. Oxford University Press, , — Clementi was noted for his teaching, and his best students were listed in the article: The article says op.
See Le Pianiste an 1, He never lived in Paris, though he published his first works there while traveling, and he performed there throughout the early nineteenth century on tours. Le Pianiste reviewed a concert he gave on 12 December , in its issue of 10 January What happened at the concert was rather extraordinary. The review expressed the idea that at the concert the sound world of the decade of the s reappeared.
Cramer is here, he revives a whole century with a brilliance that will resonate[: It is unclear, unfortunately, what exactly was so different about his performance style. The journal used language which suggest that the audience could not help themselves: Cramer entranced them and brought them to their feet.
One work in particular caused a sensation among the large crowd: Cramer was certainly no perruque. In this case, however, their report appears to be true: See Johann-Baptiste Cramer, Studio per il pianoforte, book 1, Cramer had brought the sound world of the first decade of the nineteenth century to life in the s, and had proven that that music could dazzle s ears. Steibelt was a German pianist who lived in Paris on and off around the turn of the nineteenth century, in the years —, —, and — Defending Steibelt was somewhat more problematic for Le Pianiste than it had been for Cramer who defended himself or Clementi.
For one, Steibelt had been out of favor for many years. Steibelt was already forgotten! After all, it mentioned, it was common knowledge that jealousy and envy had exaggerated the extent of the wrongs for which he was guilty. Le Pianiste see note Furthermore, Le Pianiste argued that each style of music formed an integral part of the broader musical world and a healthy musical society had music for all sorts of musicians: Le Pianiste explained that various types of music had their own function: Therefore, Steibelt, who had been naturally talented at writing salon music, also had made a smart business move, and his choice of music genre should not be judged by the tastes of the s.
Chaulieu lamented elsewhere in the journal that he wanted to write more sonatas, but publishers only wanted salon music — variations and fantasies. It is doubtful the authors of Le Pianiste knew these works, since they are not mentioned in the journal and were only performed in Russia. Lemoine and Chaulieu also shared some personal memories of Steibelt which are notable for the scene they set. It appears Steibelt held an open salon in the early years of the century, that Lemoine and Chaulieu, teenaged Conservatoire students at the time, attended: Puttick and Simpson, Both of these works are listed as op.
Cambridge University Press, , 66— Daniel Steibelt, Piano Concerto No. In addition to an earlier stay prior to the French Revolution, he lived in Paris from to and Lemoine and Chaulieu attended his concerts and performed for him during that time. Out of the four fathers of piano, Dussek was the one to have the most direct impact on music in Paris, Chaulieu argued. The notice on Dussek is easily the longest ever printed in Le Pianiste, at nearly seven pages. The study includes a remarkably detailed biography with analyses and vivid descriptions of his best works. Chaulieu divided his life into three phases, gracing them with these fanciful titles: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, , Rather I believe the comparison is to Steibelt, since the words used to describe what happened to Steibelt are identical.
Those techniques did not involve brute force or banging on the keys, because too much force would stifle the instrument. Thus, he knew how to turn the instrument into a maximally resonant vibrating body. Chaulieu wrote that while the bust of Dussek adorned every piano, young people had never been told why his likeness deserved to be there, presumably because until so recently, it had been obvious to everyone. Le Pianiste an 1, — For further discussion, see David Rowland, — He could also be referring to Vauxhall Gardens.
Chaulieu wrote that 3, guineas a guinea is one pound, one shilling was equivalent to 75, F. Jan Ladislav Dussek, Tre Sonate per il pianoforte, op. In advocating that the third movement not be played, Chaulieu was probably describing a performance convention of the time. But either way, this personal and poignant analysis reveals so much about what Chaulieu thought music could aspire to, and comprises some of the most intriguing and intimate writing in Le Pianiste.
To complete his picture of Dussek, Chaulieu also added his own memory of performing for Dussek as a young man. He wrote that around , We were fortunate enough to hear him play it many times [the Grande symphonie concertante for two pianos and orchestra, op. Dussek, who was as indulgent as he was talented, was kind enough to encourage our efforts and attest to the satisfaction he felt in hearing his symphony without having to play one of the parts.
Jan Ladislav Dussek, Quatuor pour le pianoforte, violin, alto et violoncelle, , C. This also may have fed into the meaning and usage of the word perruque.
- Product description.
- Product details.
- Impotence: How to overcome impotence?!
- No Player Left Behind.
- The Lesson (Stoney Ridge Seasons Book #3): A Novel: Volume 3;
The writing in Le Pianiste reflects this tension and its solution. In typical French philosophical fashion of the time, the authors take the juste milieu, or the middle path, and discuss the value of both groups. Lemoine and Chaulieu were open to new music, but despite this 84 See note On the other hand, Lemoine and Chaulieu had met Hummel: But neither Lemoine nor Chaulieu had ever met Beethoven. See the note imbedded in the article Le Pianiste an 1, For Hummel, this included his op.
Le Pianiste writes in one other place about playing posture, but no where else do its authors discuss free improvisations. This can make these issues seem rather disconnected from the rest of the journal. Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Twenty-five Etudes, op. Instead, Lemoine and Chaulieu clearly felt strongly about these two performance issues from his concerts and had not had a public platform to discuss them, until late His body was so tranquil while playing that he made difficult passages look like easy tasks.
She has also told me that she is able to learn pieces faster now than ever before, because of the technique. Her PhD thesis with results is forthcoming. It appears there was even a desired aesthetic that prized making difficult passages look easy. It might have been seen as skillful, masterly, or perhaps even coquettish.
By in Paris, however, at least some audience members, who may have been less educated and more bourgeois, were looking to the pianist to provide them with cues about how difficult the music was. To show that the pianist was working or even struggling to successfully play certain passages provided information to the audience about the skill required to achieve them.
By the fact that Le Pianiste had to explain that Hummel had played difficult passages, it appears that this physical communication had become a crutch to some audience members — lacking it, they did not understand that the music was hard to play. Because Le Pianiste does not discuss this issue in further detail, more conclusive answers cannot be drawn. However, it does seem to suggest a disappointment with less educated audiences, and explains another reason why Le Pianiste took up its avid mission to educate. Please see chapter 4 for more on Liszt. To remedy this, Lemoine and Chaulieu explained the relationship between composition and improvisation and explained how Hummel had been steeped in a higher and more profound method of improvisation that apparently had become rare in Paris by It is commonly understood that free improvisation declined in the period from about to , and this particular episode and its confusion provides some idea about differences in regional practices.
First, Lemoine and Chaulieu distinguished between two styles of free improvisation. This did not mean, however, that the piece had been practiced or planned. One conceives that the man of genius can, in the silence of his room, classify with order his inspiration [musical ideas], and that, only delivering them to the public revised with care [in a published, edited form], he says to himself with conscience: One again conceives that in public, without preparation, these same inspirations come with clarity, to form a whole so perfect that the envious can say with some appearance of truth: As for us, we were not tricked there [emphasis original].
Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance Oxford: See Gazette musicale an 1, 2. Cambridge University Press, , — As for us, who like to give justice to even those with whom we have differences, we say that Liszt would seem to us the sole pianist called to realize for us the memories of Beethoven, if the heat of playing and the extraordinary facility that place this young player in a totally exceptional position, would suffice; endowed with imaginative abilities, he might have been then a man of genius for whom all the possible conceptions are feasible.
But Liszt is only a man of talent, an immense talent, sometimes admirable, sometimes capricious, and often exaggerated. Instead, their discussions of Clementi, Cramer, Steibelt, and Dussek were meant to prevent these figures from being permanently overshadowed by the rising reputation of Beethoven. Their writing on the music and lives of these musicians is incredibly detailed, personal, and vivid: As we know, Beethoven began to be mythologized during his lifetime in a way that was so powerful it has been hard to alter in any way, and Le Pianiste allows us to see that these ideas were common currency in France by The valorization of Beethoven and the attitude about perruques created an environment hostile at worst, or indifferent at best, to the French piano history that Lemoine and Chaulieu feared would not be able to survive them.
While virtuosity seems like a new and contentious topic in other s journals, it was tritely familiar for the authors of Le Pianiste, and they believed that its pernicious influence did not extend to the fourth generation, or young pianists like Chopin and Liszt. Musicologists tend to trace the first backlash against nineteenth-century pianistic virtuosity to the s. Most of this opposition stems from German sources, and has been understood to be a product of German romantic movements.
D dissertation University of Rochester, , 5—9 for more information. In an enlightening study, Dana Gooley shows how virtuosity in Germany in the s was negatively connected to what he sees as provincial fears of flamboyant, selfish city folk that live in Paris. But using the press as a tool in this case can skew results because music journalism was much more common in the s than it was in the s. The preponderance of this evidence from the s may simply be due to a proliferation of sources instead of a change of ideas.
As its authors explained it, virtuosity, or a style of playing that prized rapid passagework above all else, had been a problem since it had come to France in Gibbs and Dana Gooley Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, , 75— Cambridge University Press, , n. Le Pianiste did not focus on denouncing certain genres — piano variations, for one — as the Gazette did. This issue was deeply personal for Lemoine and Chaulieu, who explained how this change in pianism had irreparably altered the meaning of music in the public imagination.
The story the journal tells is not comprehensive, as it is found buried within biographical articles about pianists and in reviews. Yale University Press, One admired his skill, one laughed, and then it was over. Moscheles left France some months after his concert and moved to London. This idea is repeated in an 2, The French version of cup-and-ball features a carved rod and a ball with a hole in it.
The final part of this passages repeats an idea that Chaulieu expressed elsewhere that sonatas had been made so unpopular that no publisher would buy them, but here the blame is ascribed to the rise of virtuosity that is absent in other iterations. University of Rochester Press, Yale University Press, , It is not clear to what publisher Le Pianiste was referring, but judging by the amount of Czerny works published by one publisher over others, the comment may refer to the publishing firm of Richault. See Bibliographie de la France. Czerny, and his dramatic intentions are almost nil.
Czerny, et ses intentions dramatiques sont presque nulles. For instance, a review of his Norma variations op. Sometimes noisy, sometimes diffuse, it nearly always tires the listener, either by the mass of chords or by the excessive quantity of notes. However, Le Pianiste believed that a musician could reform himself. Lemoine and Chaulieu implored Czerny to abandon this florid style and remake himself as Moscheles had done. Lemoine and Chaulieu thought that musicians had their own unique and personal voice, something they called talent or ability. While Pixis is now considered to be a piano virtuoso, Le Pianiste viewed him as a serious composer of elevated works and compared him to Beethoven and Hummel.
Pixis the weak sister of the bunch , and Carl Czerny A Social History New York: Dover, [] , Le Pianiste also mentioned some operas. La Fanchette, the piece modeled after Moscheles whose success was thought to cement or represent a tangible change in Parisian taste, was published in Le Pianiste wrote that his op. His best works according to Le Pianiste were a series of sonata concertantes op. Identification was aided by John S. Whereas Pixis was a victim of changing tastes, Henri Bertini jeune was a crusader against them.
Pianiste virtuose et compositeur de musique Grenoble: Like most composers of his time, Bertini did not hold an exclusive contract with Lemoine, but Lemoine published enough of his music that he could be considered a house composer. Bertini a fait entendre quelques-uns de ces grands Caprices [ However, despite this commercial arrangement, these articles describe the fight against the style of the s that goes far beyond Bertini himself.
In one case, the sacrifice that Bertini had made by writing serious works was mapped onto Lemoine, because he, it was suggested, had abandoned potential profits by choosing to eschew fashion: There is more courage than one thinks in the world of music lovers, to engage in this serious and noble style of compositions that yield more glory than money. There, he waits with calm for the term of all his troubles. There is in this interrupted, monotone bass, all the memory of the past agonies, and in this chorale in the right hand, all the resignation of the true philosopher.
Le Pianiste, an 1, For the authors of Le Pianiste, however, he was not only a great opera composer, but also a fellow pianist of the Louis Adam school and a recently departed friend, having died in early His opera Ludovic, in particular, received attention in Le Pianiste because it premiered in mid, and variations based on numbers from Ludovic were being commissioned.
After the Encyclopedie pittoresque folded, this article was reprinted in Le Pianiste, but without the lithographed letter.
Le Pianiste an 2, There is no daredevilry, therefore, it is pale. This practice had led to the idea that his music was for beginners, and Le Pianiste saw this as a serious problem for two reasons. Lemoine invested himself in writing music for beginners to alleviate this problem. His fingering, often little correct, achieved a great similarity between him and Steibelt [emphasis mine].
We can cite some grand performers who seem born to be mathematicians or something else entirely. We have many little Herzs, little Kalkbrenners, and why?! Aussi avons-nous beaucoup de petits Herzs, petits Kalkbrenners; et pourquoi! It is unclear what would have been a normal performance for the authors of Le Pianiste since they never describe it fully, but their denouncement of the emphasis on virtuosity, cleanliness, and speed indicate that these elements had not been the focus of their concert experiences.
For Le Pianiste, too much neatness in a performance meant that the ideas were rehearsed and therefore not fresh. Elsewhere, Le Pianiste argued that eight hours of practice a day was too much because extemporaneous performance was better than extreme polish, which revealed a fatal lack of ideas. Allusions, suggestions, and references that would have opened up a world of meaning for the authors and presumably their readers are lost on a modern audience.
This is common in the historical press, of course, but it seems especially pronounced for Kalkbrenner in Le Pianiste, as 95 For more on the Dactylion, see Schnapper. There, Kalkbrenner is both venerated and vilified, and his relationship to the virtuosity of the s is hard to place. Kalkbrenner seems to be the embodiment of a typical Parisian virtuoso in many ways. But while Le Pianiste scolded Kalkbrenner for deficiencies in his early career, the journal does not explain exactly what these deficiencies were. The journal seems to pass over these problems, to make oblique references to them, and to focus on how Kalkbrenner by was the founder of one of the best schools in pianism.
Hamilton uses the word brilliant here to mean the particular type of virtuosity popular in the s. Kalkbrenner, the journal explained, was fortunate enough to have extended this typically brief transition period, and had been enjoying this part of his career for nearly 10 years, since he returned to France around The piece moves from a G-sharp dominant heard in relation to C-sharp to G dominant via a fully diminished seventh chord on A-flat see the final three measures in Example 3.
A pianist as famous as Kalkbrenner would have exerted influence on this debate, and he could have guided virtuosity toward dominance or extinction, depending on what was found in his music. Kalkbrenner was internationally admired in the late s and early s, though his reputation fell sharply thereafter. This discussion helps to illuminate the style of a pianist whose influential career remains misunderstood. It is possible he published the piece earlier in England. Bibliographie de la France , In Le Pianiste, there is a sharp decline in Kalkbrenner performances between the first and second years.
In the first season, he played at least four times, and in the second year, he did not even play once. On 20 April , Kalkbrenner performed his 4th concerto in A-flat op. Le Pianiste also mentioned that Lemoine and Chaulieu had heard Kalkbrenner play in private in early ; Kalkbrenner performed his Variations on a Mazurka of Chopin op.
Marie Pleyel possibly op. Kalkbrenner was also a model for the way in which he had worked to better himself throughout his career. In a few cases, Le Pianiste rebuked Kalkbrenner for composing in genres that it felt were unworthy of this attention. The waltz from op. For Le Pianiste, Kalkbrenner was not always perfect, but when he was at his best, he combined style, wit, execution, and emotional variation. Virtuosity emphasized the overt instead of the subtle; it rewarded the casual listener and left nothing for the finely-tuned ear.
Further, the virtuosity of the s created an appetite for imitation that was felt to be unprecedented. Kalkbrenner might be best known for being the teacher Chopin turned down: Chopin was offered lessons and eventually refused because Kalkbrenner required three years of study at minimum. Dover Publications, , — But the worst part for Lemoine and Chaulieu was that the success of this virtuosic style had fundamentally changed music comprehension.
Many musicians in the first and second eras — Mozart and Beethoven, most notably — are well-known today. Equally familiar are musicians from the fourth era: But everyone in the third era is obscure. Why is it that this entire generation seems to have faltered, whereas their teachers and their students did not? Broadly speaking, little of their music seems to rise above its time and place.
Is it that virtuosity so overwhelmed pianism in the s that even those opposed to it could not escape being defined by it? That some may be called virtuosi now only seems to represent the fact that they were primarily active in the s. Instead of placing all the agency on individual people, Le Pianiste understood virtuosity to be a response to a particular climate.
But they also looked to the future, and worked to mold and encourage young careers. The authors believed that the new generation, pianists such as Chopin and Ferdinand Hiller, held great promise. It was these musicians, they hoped, who would right the course and lead music back to substance in new and exciting ways. While some opinions were influenced by the business of the press, the reviews do not reflect long-standing relationships nor do they summarize entire careers. They are simply contemporary opinions on new music.
But in this simplicity we find fledgling thoughts that would later take hold, and other ideas that were forgotten or abandoned. Lemoine and Chaulieu wrote many early reviews of twenty-somethings such as Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, and Mendelssohn near their debut. What do their reactions reveal about the project of Le Pianiste, and the aesthetics of the Louis Adam school?
New music that appeared to provide an alternative to the virtuosic style of the s was especially praised, along with serious and expressive works. However, not all new ideas were good, and Le Pianiste chided certain players for trying to be bizarre on purpose. In some ways it appears that they thought Chopin was the heir to their line of thinking: Lemoine and Chaulieu were fascinated by him, and they reviewed almost all of his published music and concert activity in the two years Le Pianiste was in print.
These reviews are notable not only for their unusual detail but also for how they evince the authors hopes in way that is deeply connected to and reflective of their desires for the future: Like most of the people discussed in Le Pianiste, Lemoine and Chaulieu knew Chopin personally and had attended his performances numerous times.
However, Kalkbrenner aided Chopin by organizing his Parisian debut in Pendragon Press, , — Eigeldinger notes one concert on Christmas Day and three others in where Chopin played that are not reviewed in Le Pianiste. While Le Pianiste complained that Chopin did not play in public enough, after April , Chopin did not play in public for two years.
It was both familiar in this way, and new and unique, containing special detail that fascinated Le Pianiste. Clementi represented music of the past, Kalkbrenner, music of the present, and Chopin, music of the future. The significance of this pronouncement cannot be overstated: For that reason it does not figure into the present analysis. The people who previously accused Beethoven of being bizarre did not have any more comprehension of him than those today who call Chopin enigmatic. Thus, he implies that Chopin, just twenty-three years old and having completed his tenth work, might be nearly as important as Beethoven, meriting serious study.
The article continues with an analysis of the op. I have only seen the copy in Paris; the Bodleian copy is reported by Ellis. It is likely that Lemoine and Chaulieu were attempting to write meaningful commentaries that might be constructive as well as instructive to their readers, as opposed to generic praise or mere descriptions of the music that can be sometimes found in other contemporary reviews.
Chaulieu gave this disarmingly blunt summation about his vexation with the note: Vient ensuite un solo cantabile pour le piano, long de deux pages et demie [ Alerting the readers to these types of details also modeled long-term study that the authors wanted them to undertake. I say that you have a very delicate ear. Of the opening melody in the first of the op.
As it turns out, this is not a mistake, but the publisher Schlesinger was thoroughly rebuked for it. Similarly, in the op. Third, he mimics the motion of a previous tonicization of F-major where a G-minor chord pivots back to F-major through motion of ii-V-I.
At the end of the piece, this G-minor chord moves to c-minor as predominant in G instead of dominant in F and then onto the dominant D and a clear cadential pattern leading to the end in G-major see Example 4. Note the error in the penultimate chord. Chopin had been publishing all of his works with Schlesinger until he published the opp. It seems the publication was a joint venture between Prilipp and Pleyel: The Lemoine firm also bought op. Chopin First Editions Online. In the second letter, sent the next day, Chopin backtracked and explained that in his haste of the previous day, he forgot about Lemoine, and in fact he preferred that Lemoine publish op.
Any disagreement or criticism was not based on fear, but rather on differing visions for the future. Pieces attributed in Jeffrey Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries: Harvard University Press, , First, Le Pianiste was much more critical of Liszt than Chopin. However, Lemoine and Chaulieu found other aspects of his playing, such as the force with which he hit the keys, as well as his manners, worthy of disdain.
Gooley argues that this lack of criticism in the contemporary press leaves us with an incomplete picture of Liszt and his reception. Le Pianiste is one of these journals, but more importantly, because the journal reprinted different articles on Liszt from other unknown sources, it provides evidence of a much greater range of sources that are, as yet, unstudied. For instance, there is an article borrowed from a medical 53For instance Le Pianiste an 1, One borrowed article in particular deserves special mention because of how it captures journalistic politics of the era.
Liszt is depicted as an angel who graces the earth with his golden tresses and heavenly fingers. Cited in Walker, Franz Liszt: Bruise their foreheads on the walls of their prison. Dresses in its freshest finery to please them. Jealous, took to perfume his heaven. The chords completely filled with a vague sadness. Floods you with fresh air and fills your breast. That which often, alas! Your soul had dreamt: Lina Ramann, Franz Liszt: Artist and Man — , vol 2, translated by E.
Seems only to graze the quivering keyboard. Your display name should be at least 2 characters long.
At Kobo, we try to ensure that published reviews do not contain rude or profane language, spoilers, or any of our reviewer's personal information. You submitted the following rating and review. We'll publish them on our site once we've reviewed them. Item s unavailable for purchase. Please review your cart. You can remove the unavailable item s now or we'll automatically remove it at Checkout. Continue shopping Checkout Continue shopping.
Follow the Author
Chi ama i libri sceglie Kobo e inMondadori. Aux galops de l'inconnu by Alain L'Heureux. Buy the eBook Price: Available in Russia Shop from Russia to buy this item. Or, get it for Kobo Super Points! Ratings and Reviews 0 0 star ratings 0 reviews.