Thank you for the exceptionally deep and interesting info, Howard. I haven't yet listened to or opened my Teaching Co. Goldberg course on the Beethoven Piano Concertos, so I'm reserving judgement. Didn't list Lizst because that peripatetic peacock pianist is supposedly the originator of the awful tradition known as the "master class," and he was close to that creator of overblown events Wagner, whose operas are "better than they sound" according to Sam Clemens.
I think it was Greenberg who said in his Bach course that Bach didn't like Silbermann's pianos, though he loved Silbermann's organs and harpsichords. Bach was the heaviest hitter I could think of for help in politically attacking the modern piano Goliath. Your point is well taken that those old pianos weren't like the newer ones. But I doubt the interesting archival hearsay that Bach provided his complete approval (how conveenient for piano lovers and Mr. Gould). My concern is that requiring young potential guitar or lute players to learn piano first could severely thin the ranks to the vanishing point. I think classical Guitar and lute are difficult instruments requiring for success almost total commitment, unlike many other instruments. Also, only well-to-do folks had pianos where/when I grew up--my piano playing mother gave hers up to aid the purchase of a house. It was painful and pathetic later watching her nostalgically play a toy 16?-key plastic piano provided to the kids. Are you a piano player as well as a lute enthusiast? Mark Seifert From: howard posner <howardpos...@ca.rr.com> To: lutelist <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2013 9:54 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams) On Aug 4, 2013, at 5:11 AM, Mark Seifert <[1]seifertm...@att.net> wrote: > Why the piano chauvinism in modern music? I don't like piano (except > maybe Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Hummel, Schumann, Tim Story) You might want to check out this dude named Beethoven. > Bach firmly rejected the newfangled > 1709 piano instruments offered to him. I cringe or become nauseated by > disgust whenever 16th or 17th century singing is accompanied by a > piano. Both inaccurate and irrelevant, I think. Re inaccurate, here's my recycled response to a similar comment last year: Johann Friedrich Agricola related in a 1768 treatise on keyboard instruments that Bach once tried a Silbermann pianoforte (didn't say when or where), and liked its tone but said the bass was weak and the action was too heavy. Silbermann sulked, but spent years improving the instrument, and Bach later expressed "complete approval" of his pianos It's on page 259 of the 1966 "revised" edition of the Bach Reader. "The Piano" (by four authors including fortepiano builders Philip Belt and Derek Adlam), on page 8, connects the "complete approval" that Agricola mentions with Bach's 1747 visit to Frederick the Great in Berlin, which resulted in the Musical Offering. Big Fred had a few Silbermann pianos. "The Piano" says they "are reported [by whom? Agricola?] to have met Bach's complete approval" on that occasion [which is probably speculation], "and the composer served as a sales agent for Silbermann in 1749 (see C. Wolff: 'New Research on Bach's Musical Offering', MQ, lvii (1971), 403)." Of course, Silbermann was famous for his organs and harpsichords, and Bach's admiration for Silbermann's organs is well documented. Re irrelevant: 1) The mid-eighteenth-century piano is about as closely related to the modern one as the renaissance lute is to the modern guitar, and 2) why would Bach's view of the piano be important now? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:seifertm...@att.net
