CHAPTER 1 A Gathering of Traditions
Comments by Menahem Pressler were made to the author in an interview in 2009. Comments by Piotr Anderszewski are excerpted from the film Piotr Anderszewski: Unquiet Traveller by Bruno Monsaingeon. Comments by Mike Longo were made to the author in an interview in 2009.
Comments by Oscar Peterson were made to the author in an interview, likely the last one he gave, conducted in 2006. Elements of it first appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 29, 2006.
Leonard Feather’s Oscar Peterson spoof appears in From Blues to Bop: A Collection of Jazz Fiction, edited by Richard N. Albert (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1992).
On the subject of the relationship between African, African-American, and European music, one indispensable scholarly resource is the brilliant article “Open Letter about ‘Black Music,’ ‘Afro-American Music,’ and ‘European Music’ ” by Philip Tagg, in Popular Music, Volume 8/3, 1989, pp. 285–298, published by Cambridge University Press (also available at www.tag.org/articles/opelet.html).
Books drawn on for this chapter include:
Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History by Edward A. Berlin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); I Really Should Be Practicing by Gary Graffman (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1981); A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano by Katie Hafner (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008); Dvorˇák by Kurt Honolka, translated by Anne Wyburd (London: Haus Publishing, 2004); Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall by Joseph Horowitz (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005); The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, translated by Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988); Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904–1930 by William Howland Kenney (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing by Gene Lees (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1988); The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002); Is Jazz Dead? (Or Has It Moved to a New Address) by Stuart Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 2005); Oscar Peterson: A Jazz Odyssey by Oscar Peterson, editor and consultant Richard Palmer (New York: Continuum, 2002); and Music on My Mind: The Memoirs of an American Pianist by Willie “the Lion” Smith with George Hoefer (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1966).
Also cited were the articles “A Piano Is Born, Needing Practice” by James Barron, New York Times, April 2, 2004; “Time-Travelers from a Golden Age” by Nat Hentoff, Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2010; and “Three Piano Misereres” by Joseph Smith, Journal of the American Liszt Society 59–60 (2008–9), 10–23.
CHAPTER 2 The Piano Is Born
For historical material on the Medici family and Florence, I consulted The Last Medici by Harold Acton (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1958); Florence: The Golden Age, 1138–1737 by Gene Adam Brucker (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984); The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall by Christopher Hibbert (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1975); Florence: A Portrait by Michael Levey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); and Medici Money by Tim Parks (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005).
For information on the earliest piano and its predecessors, I am indebted to the work of my friend Stewart Pollens, including his book The Early Pianoforte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and “The First 300 Years of the Piano,” a public lecture sponsored by Sotheby’s Institute of Art and delivered by Stewart at the World Financial Center on September 25, 2003.
In addition, I drew on Music in the French Royal Academy of Sciences: A Study in the Evolution of Musical Thought by Albert Cohen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); French Musical Thought, 1600–1800, edited by Georgia Cowart (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989); Early Keyboard Instruments by Philip James (London: Tabard Press, 1970); The Clavichord by Hanns Neupert (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1965); Harpsichord Manual by Hanns Neupert (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1968); The Cambridge Companion to the Piano, edited by David Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and French Pianism: A Historical Perspective by Charles Timbrell (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1999).
The following scholarly articles were particularly helpful: “Pantaleon’s Pantalon: An 18th-Century Musical Fashion” by Sarah E. Hanks, Musical Quarterly 55, no. 2 (April 1969), 214–227; “The Capture of the Chekker” by David Kinsela, Galpin Society Journal 51 (July 1998), 64–85; “The Myth of the Chekker” by Christopher Page, Early Music 7, no. 4, Keyboard Issue 1 (October 1979), 482–489; and “Keyboard Scholarship: Letter from Nicolas Meeùs and reply by Christopher Page,” Early Music 8: no. 2, Keyboard Issue 2 (April 1980), 222–226.
CHAPTER 3 The First Piano Superstar
The quote about Mozart from Josef Krips was first conveyed to me by pianist André Watts, to whom Krips used the line when they were performing together. I heard it again in a lecture by András Schiff. Apparently it was one of Krips’s favorite sayings.
The comments from Alfred Brendel appear in “A Mozart Player Gives Himself Advice,” from Alfred Brendel on Music (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2001).
I was made aware of Borgato and its ongoing production of pedal pianos through Italian pianist Roberto Prosseda. The reference to Chopin’s playing of the pedal piano is from Music in Chopin’s Warsaw by Halina Goldberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Sources used for the material on late-eighteenth-century Vienna and Mozart’s life and work there included, in addition to Mozart’s letters, the books: W. A. Mozart by Hermann Abert, translated by Stewart Spencer and edited by Cliff Eisen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Mozart in Vienna, 1781–1791 by Volkmar Braunbehrens, translated by Timothy Bell (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989); Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School, 1740–1780 by Daniel Heartz (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995); Concert Life in Haydn’s Vienna: Aspects of a Developing Musical and Social Institution by Mary Sue Morrow (New York: Pendragon Press, 1989); and Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995). For information on Muzio Clementi I turned to Clementi: His Life and Music by Leon Plantinga (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
Particularly helpful articles included: “Mozart’s Viennese Orchestras” by Dexter Edge, Early Music 20, no. 1 (February 1992), 63–65, 67, 69, 71–88; “Mozart’s Keyboard Instruments” by Richard Maunder, Early Music 20, no. 2 (May 1992), 207–219; “Mozart’s Pedal Piano” by Richard Maunder and David Rowland, Early Music 23, no. 2 (May 1995), 287–296; “Mozart in the Market-Place” by Julia Moore, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 114, no. 1 (1989), 18–42; and “Clementi, Virtuosity, and the ‘German Manner’ ” by Leon Plantinga, Journal of the American Musicological Society 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1972), 303–330.
CHAPTER 4 Piano Fever
The Vladimir Horowitz comments come from Talking About Pianos (Long Island City, NY: Steinway & Sons, 1982).
Sources used for this chapter include: Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England by Judith Flanders (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004); Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos: A Technological History from Cristofori to the Modern Concert Grand by Edwin M. Good (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance by Kenneth Hamilton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre by Jeffrey Kallberg (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit by Elise K. Kirk (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body by Richard Leppert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Art and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the Making of Cultural Identity by Dianne Sachko Macleod (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); American Writers at Home by J. D. McClatchy, photographs by Erica Lennard (New York: Library of America and the Vendome Press, 2004); Player Piano Treasury: The Scrapbook History of the Mechanical Piano in America by Harvey Roehl (New York: Vestal Press, 1961), brought to my attention by Dick Hyman; Chambers Music Quotations by Derek Watson (Edinburgh: W & R Chambers, Ltd., 1991); A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002); and the article “J. C. Bach and the Early Piano in London” by Richard Maunder, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 116, no. 2 (1991), 201–210.
CHAPTER 5 Performers on the Road
The Yefim Bronfman quote came from two interviews conducted by the author, the first of which appeared in the Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2008; the second took place in 2010.
I am grateful to scholar and author Nancy Reich for making an English translation of Clara Schumann’s diaries available to me.
Books used in the preparation of this chapter include: Mozart’s Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music by Jane Glover (New York: HarperCollins, 2005); Notes of a Pianist by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, edited by Jeanne Behrend (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979); After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance by Kenneth Hamilton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); From Paris to Peoria: How European Piano Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland by R. Allen Lott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Vladimir de Pachmann: A Piano Virtuoso’s Life and Art by Mark Mitchell (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); A Life in Letters by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, edited by Cliff Eisen, translated by Stewart Spencer (New York: Penguin Classics, 2007); Virtuoso by Harvey Sachs (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982); The Social Status of the Professional Musician from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century, edited by Walter Salmen, translated by Herbet Kaufman and Barbara Reisner (New York: Pendragon Press, 1983); Dr. Burney’s Musical Tours in Europe, Volumes I and II, edited by Percy A. Scholes (London: Oxford University Press, 1959); The Great Pianists by Harold C. Schonberg (New York: Fireside, Simon & Schuster, 1987); French Pianism: A Historical Perspective by Charles Timbrell (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1999); and The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, edited by William Weber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).
Articles used in the preparation of this chapter include: “Westward to the East” by Joseph Bloch, Juilliard Journal, May 1960; “Counting European Slaves on the Barbary Coast” by Robert C. Davis, Past & Present no. 172 (August 2001), 87–124; “Public Performance and Private Understanding: Clara Wieck’s Concerts in Berlin” by David Ferris, Journal of the American Musicological Society 56, no. 2 (Summer 2003), 351–408; “Mozart’s Transitory Life,” a paper presented by musicologist Peter A. Hoyt at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 2005; “Beethoven’s Pianos,” a paper written by Stewart Pollens; and “W. F. E. Bach’s Six-Handed Flower” by Joseph Smith, Piano Today, Fall 2002. The report on the battle between Herz and de Meyer appeared in Musical World (London) 22, no. 1, January 2, 1847. The circumstances surrounding Alkan’s death are explored in “More on Alkan’s Death” by Hugh MacDonald in Musical Times 129, no. 1741 (March 1988), 118–120.
CHAPTER 6 The Four Sounds
The Murray Perahia quote comes from Talking About Pianos (Long Island City, NY: Steinway & Sons, 1982). Additional comments by various pianists were taken from personal correspondence to the author.
Also used were the books Physics of the Piano by Nicholas J. Giordano Sr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); A History of Pianoforte Pedalling by David Rowland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Performing Beethoven, edited by Robin Stowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
CHAPTER 7 The Combustibles
The Aldous Huxley excerpt is from his novel Point Counter Point (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1928). The Wanda Landowska excerpt is from Landowska on Music by Denise Restout and Robert Hawkins (New York: Stein and Day, 1964). The contribution by André Watts is from an interview conducted by the author in 2009. The contribution by Alfred Brendel is excerpted from “Liszt Misunderstood,” in Brendel on Music (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2001). The excerpt by Ferdinand Ries was taken from Beethoven Remembered: The Biographical Notes of Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, translated by Frederick Noonan (Arlington, VA: Great Ocean Publishers, 1987).
The following books were also used as research for these chapters: Stravinsky Dances: Re-Visions Across a Century by Stephanie Jordan (Alton, UK: Dance Books Ltd., 2007); The World of Earl Hines by Stanley Dance (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977); Striders to Beboppers and Beyond by Leslie Gourse (New York: Franklin Watts, 1997); Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring by Peter Hill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque by Annette Richards (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion by Charles Rosen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); The Romantic Generation by Charles Rosen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); The Great Dr. Burney: His Life, His Travels, His Works, His Family and His Friends, Volume I by Percy A. Scholes (London: Oxford University Press, 1948); Remembering Franz Liszt, Including “My Memories of Liszt” by Alexander Siloti and “Life and Liszt” by Arthur Friedheim (New York: Limelight Editions, 1986); Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicolas Slonimsky (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978); Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination by Maynard Solomon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Performing Beethoven, edited by Robin Stowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Beethoven Remembered: The Biographical Notes of Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, translated by Frederick Noonan (Arlington, VA: Great Ocean Publishers, 1987); and Portrait of Liszt, by Himself and His Contemporaries by Adrian Williams (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
The excerpt by Claude Debussy on Mussorgsky is from La Revue blanche, April 15, 1901, translated by Richard Langham Smith. The Garrick Ohlsson contribution on Liszt and Scriabin is from an interview conducted by the author in 2009. Herbie Hancock revealed his harmonic ideas to the author in an interview that took place in the 1980s. The Bill Charlap contribution on Bill Evans is from an interview conducted by the author in 2009. The Noah Creshevsky comments were made to the author in 2010. Observations about Steve Reich stem from an interview with him conducted by the author in 1981. I am grateful to pianist Menahem Pressler for his insights on performing Debussy’s first prelude. The quotes from Baudelaire are from his collection of poems Les Fleurs du mal.
I am grateful to the John Cage Trust and to its executive director, Laura Kuhn, and to Michael Grace and Stormy Burns of the Colorado College Music Press for the essay by Cage on his first prepared piano.
The following books were used in the preparation of this chapter: Scriabin: A Biography by Faubion Bowers (New York: Dover, 1996); The Well-Prepared Piano by Richard Bunger (Colorado Springs: The Colorado College Music Press, 1972); Composers on Music, edited by Josiah Fisk (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997); Paths to the Absolute by John Golding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); The Art of French Piano Music by Roy Howat (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Debussy in Proportion by Roy Howat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece by Ashley Kahn (New York: Da Capo Press, 2001); The Technique of My Musical Language by Olivier Messiaen (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1966); Writings About Music by Steve Reich (New York: New York University Press, 1974); Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew by Alexander L. Ringer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Claude Debussy by Paul Roberts (London: Phaidon Press, 2008); Image: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy by Paul Roberts (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996); Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development by Gunther Schuller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey by Allen Shawn (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002); Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915–1945 by Richard M. Sudhalter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, edited by Simon Trezise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Satie the Bohemian by Steven Moore Whiting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Portrait of Liszt, By Himself and His Contemporaries by Adrian Williams (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); and Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint by David Gaynor Yearsley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
The following articles were also used: “Scriabin’s Octatonic Sonata” by Cheong Wai-Ling, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 121, no. 2 (1996), 206–228; “Notes on John Cage, Eric Satie’s Vexations and Andy Warhol’s Sleep,” by Gary Comenas, Warholstars.org, 2009; “Ligeti in Fluxus,” by Eric Drott, Journal of Musicology 21, no. 2 (Spring 2004), 201–240; “Was Scriabin a Synesthete?” by B. M. Galeyev and I. L. Vanechkina, Leonarda 34, no. 4 (2001), 357–361; “Skryabin and the Impossible” by Simon Morrison, Journal of the American Musicological Society 51, no. 2 (Summer 1998), 283–330; “Skryabin: Summer 1903 and After” by Alexander Pasternak, Musical Times 113, no. 1558 (December 1972), 1169–1174; and “Scriabin’s Self-Analyses” by George Perle, Music Analysis 3, no. 2 (July 1984), 101–122. The sidebar by Oscar Peterson is taken from “In Memoriam—Duke Ellington, ‘The Man’: Reflections by Oscar Peterson” in Sound Magazine, November 1974.
CHAPTER 9 The Rhythmitizers
Eudora Welty’s Powerhouse appears in From Blues to Bop: A Collection of Jazz Fiction, edited by Richard N. Albert (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1992). Material on Louis and Lil Armstrong can be found in Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).
Some of the material on New Orleans pianists and an interview of Henry Butler by the author appeared in Piano Today, Spring 2005. The commentary by Mike Lipskin was adapted, with permission, from his writings from his Web site, mike lipskinjazz.com. The Billy Joel quote about synthesizers appeared in the Independent, May 23, 1990; Billy Joel’s comments on composing and his quotes about rock music were taken from an interview conducted by the author for Piano Today, winter 1997. The sidebar by Gabriela Montero is from an interview conducted by the author in 2009. The comments on “Afro-Cuban Piano Style,” as well as much of the information about Latin music and its pianists, were provided by Arturo O’Farrill Jr. during an interview conducted by the author in 2010.
The following books were also used in the preparation of this chapter: The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech by Irving Lewis Allen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); All Shook Up: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America by Glenn C. Altschuler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Five Points by Tyler Anbinder (New York: Free Press, 2001); Music in Latin America: An Introduction by Gerard Béhague (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979); Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History by Edward A. Berlin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); The Harlem Reader, edited by Herb Boyd (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003); Striders to Beboppers and Beyond by Leslie Gourse (New York: Franklin Watts, 1997); Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Studios and the Birth of Recorded Jazz by Rick Kennedy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904–1930 by William Howland Kenney (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Too Marvelous for Words: The Life & Genius of Art Tatum by James Lester (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); From Paris to Peoria: How European Piano Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland by R. Allen Lott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); The Great Jazz Pianists: Speaking of Their Lives and Music by Len Lyons (New York: Quill, 1983); A Left Hand Like God: A History of Boogie-Woogie Piano by Peter J. Silvester (New York: Da Capo, 1988); Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicolas Slonimsky (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978); Music on My Mind: The Memoirs of An American Pianist by Willie “the Lion” Smith with George Hoefer (London: Jazz Book Club by arrangement with MacGibbon & Kee, 1966); Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915–1945 by Richard M. Sudhalter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Chambers Music Quotations by Derek Watson (Edinburgh: W & R Chambers, Ltd., 1991).
Articles used include: “The Use of Habanera Rhythm in Rockabilly Music” by Roy Brewer, American Music 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1999), 300–317; “Percussion and Petticoats” by Henry G. Farmer, Music & Letters 31, no. 4 (October 1950), 343–345; “Social Dance Music of Black Composers in the Nineteenth Century and the Emergence of Classic Ragtime” by Samuel A. Floyd Jr. and Marsha J. Reisser, The Black Perspective in Music 8, no. 2 (Autumn 1980), 161–193; “The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz” by Lawrence Gushee, from Black Music Research Journal 14, no. 1 (1993); “Defining Ragtime Music: Historical and Typological Research” by Ingeborg Harer, Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 38, Fasc. 3/4 (1997), 409–415; “Why They Call American Music Ragtime” by J. Rosamond Johnson, The Black Perspective in Music 4, no. 2 (July 1976), 260–264; “Eugene Stratton and Early Ragtime in Britain” by Michael Pickering, Black Music Research Journal 20, no. 2 (Autumn 2000), 151–180; “Three Piano Misereres” by Joseph Smith, Journal of the American Liszt Society 59–60 (2008–2009), 10–23; “Ben Harney: The Middlesborough Years, 1890–93” by William H. Tallmadge, American Music 13, no. 2 (Summer 1995), 167–194; and “Chicago’s Jazz Trail, 1893–1950” by Dempsey J. Travis, Black Music Research Journal 10, no. 1 (Spring 1990), 82–85.
In addition, references from nonprint media include the DVD Jerry Lee Lewis: Killer Piano (2007) and the following CDs: Fidgety Digits: Rare Syncopated Piano 78’s from Collectors’ Archives (Shellwood Productions); The Ragtime Women, Max Morath and the Ragtime Quintet (Vanguard); and Jazz Nocturne: The Collected Piano Music of Dana Suesse, Sara Davis Buechner, piano, E1 Music: Port Washington, New York, 2009.
CHAPTER 10 The Melodists
The András Schiff contribution is from an interview conducted by the author in 2009. The Garrick Ohlsson quote on Chopin is from an interview conducted by the author in 2009 for Lincoln Center’s Stagebill. The Emanuel Ax quote is from an interview conducted by the author in 2009.
Although parallels between Gershwin and Schubert may seem odd, Gershwin was a devotee of Schubert, especially of his great String Quintet in C Major, and it is worth noting that Gershwin’s sidekick Oscar Levant, the pianist, found evidence of direct influences of that piece in Gershwin’s show Let ’Em Eat Cake.
The following books were used for this chapter: Better Than It Sounds by David W. Barber (Toronto: Sound and Vision, 1998); Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century by Susan Bernstein (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Schumann Piano Music by Joan Chissell (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972); Music in Chopin’s Warsaw by Halina Goldberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); World of Our Fathers by Irving Howe (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976); Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre by Jeffrey Kallberg (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music by Rey M. Longyear (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973); Erik Satie by Rollo H. Myers (New York: Dover, 1968); Mendelssohn Remembered by Roger Nichols (London: Faber and Faber, 1997); Ravel Remembered by Roger Nichols (London: Faber and Faber, 1987); Oscar Peterson: A Jazz Odyssey by Oscar Peterson, editor and consultant Richard Palmer (New York: Continuum, 2002); George Gershwin: His Life and Work by Howard Pollack (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Schubert Piano Sonatas by Philip Radcliffe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970); Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman by Nancy B. Reich (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Romantic Poets, Critics, and Other Madmen by Charles Rosen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); The Lives of the Great Composers by Harold C. Schonberg (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1970); Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicolas Slonimsky (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978); Chopin in Paris: The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer by Tad Szulc (New York: Scribner, 1998); Frédéric Chopin: Profiles of the Man and the Musician, edited by Alan Walker (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1966); Schubert Chamber Music by J. A. Westrup (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969); Satie the Bohemian by Steven Moore Whiting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician by John Worthen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
Also used were the articles “Gabriel Fauré, a Neglected Mastery” by Aaron Copland, Musical Quarterly 10, no. 4 (October 1924), 573–586; “Fired! Because He Could Not Play Jazz!” by A. L. Wallace, Popular Songs 1, no. 5 (April 1935); and “Chopin in London” by Iwo and Pamela Zaluski, Musical Times 133, no. 1791 (May 1992), 226–230.
CHAPTERS 11, 12, 13, AND 14 The Cultivated and the Vernacular; The Russians Are Coming; The Germans and Their Close Relations; Keys to the World
The comments by Ilya Itin were made to the author in an interview in 2009. The comments by Yundi Li were made to the author in an interview in 2010. The reference to Augie March’s grandmother is from The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (New York: Penguin, 2006). Comments by Alfred Brendel were made to the author in the fall of 2010.
The following published materials were used in the preparation of these chapters: Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas by Boris Berman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Alfred Brendel on Music (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2001); The Roots of Texas Music, edited by Laurence Clayton and Joe W. Specht (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003); Hitler’s Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl, Confidant of Hitler, Ally of FDR by Peter Conradi (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004); Reflections from the Keyboard: The World of the Concert Pianist by David Dubal (New York: Schirmer, 1997); Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist by Allan Evans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); My Nine Lives: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music by Leon Fleisher and Anne Midgette (New York: Doubleday, 2010); Famous Pianists and Their Technique by Reginald R. Gerig (Washington, D.C.: Robert B. Luce, 1974); I Really Should Be Practicing by Gary Graffman (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981); Piano Playing, with Piano Questions Answered by Josef Hofmann (New York: Dover, 1976); Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit by Elise K. Kirk (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Myra Hess by Her Friends, compiled by Denis Lassimonne, edited and with an introduction by Howard Ferguson (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966); Life and Culture of Poland by Waclaw Lednicki (New York: Roy Publishers, 1944); Richter, the Enigma, a film directed by Bruno Monsaingeon (NVC Arts, 1999); Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations by Bruno Monsaingeon, translated by Stewart Spencer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Beyond Frontiers by Jasper Parrott with Vladimir Ashkenazy (New York: Atheneum, 1984); The Human Stain by Philip Roth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000); My Many Years by Arthur Rubinstein (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1980); Music and the Line of Most Resistance by Artur Schnabel (New York: Da Capo, 1969); History of Italian Architecture, 1944–1985 by Manfredo Tafuri, translated by Jessica Levine (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989); Composition in Black and White by Kathryn Talalay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); The Oxford History of Western Music, Volume 3: The Nineteenth Century by Richard Taruskin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); French Pianism: A Historical Perspective by Charles Timbrell (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1999); and Schnabel’s Interpretations of Piano Music by Konrad Wolff (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979).
Articles used include: “The Future of the Piano” by S. Montagu Cleeve, Musical Times, July 1946; “Looking Ahead—II” by Feste, Musical Times, February 1934; “More Play for Prizes” by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2010; “The Great Piano War of the 1870s” by Cynthia Adams Hoover, A Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock, edited by Richard Crawford, R. Alen Lott, and Carol J. Oja (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1990); “The Great Chicago Piano War” by Paul and Ruth Hume, American Heritage, October 1970; “Catching Up to the 21st Century” by Stuart Isacoff, Keyboard Classics, May/June 1986; “The Rise and Fall and Rise of Van Cliburn” by Stuart Isacoff, Ovation, September 1989; “Van Cliburn Then & Now” by Stuart Isacoff, Piano Today, Summer 2001; “Vladimir Ashkenazy: Pianist of the Straight and True” by Stuart Isacoff, Piano Today, Spring 2007; “Another Early Iberian Grand Piano” by Beryl Kenyon de Pascual and David Law, Galpin Society Journal 48 (March 1995), 68–93; and “His Cold War Concerts Helped Break the Ice” by Barrymore Laurence Scherer, Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2008.
CHAPTER 15 The Cutting Edge
Martin Canin’s comments on technique were made to the author several years ago. Some of the quotes from Gary Graffman were given during an interview with the author in 2009. I am grateful to Italian pianist Riccardo Scivales for his insights into the world of prog rock. The comments from Earl Wild are from an interview conducted by the author and published in Musical America for their Instrumentalist of the Year Award in 2006. The Victor Borge comments were derived from an interview conducted by the author and published in the magazine Keyboard Classics, November/December 1984 in the article “They Laughed When I Sat Down To Play … Victor Borge at 75.”
Books used in the preparation of this chapter include: Conversations with Glenn Gould by Jonathan Cott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984); A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano by Katie Hafner (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009); Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History by Arthur Loesser (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954); Glenn Gould Variations, edited by John McGreevy (New York: Quill, 1983); Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius by Peter F. Ostwald (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997); The Glenn Gould Reader, edited and with an introduction by Tim Page (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984); and Glenn Gould: Music & Mind by Geoffrey Payzant (Toronto: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978).
CHAPTER 16 Everything Old Is New Again
The comments by Margaret Leng Tan were made during a conversation with the author in 2010. The explanation of the chess piano was sent to the author by its creator, Guido van der Werve; I am grateful to author and chess master Frank Brady, president of the Marshall Chess Club, for alerting me to Mr. van der Werve’s work.
Appendix
Resources for this chapter included A Woman’s Gaze: Latin American Women Artists by Marjorie Agosin (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1998).