History of the pianoforte and pianoforte playersBie, Oskar
History
History of the pianoforte and pianoforte players
Bie, Oskar
Pianists; Piano -- History
of the masters, which are now so numerous, or even play them himself.
He desires to have acts of operas, arrangements of concertos, or many
dainty short pieces. The old clavier-books, which we can trace from
the Elizabethan Virginal Book to the volumes of Bach’s children, now
gradually disappear. Instead of copying with its personal character,
the press is more and more in requisition, and the musical treasury
is more and more thrown open to the public. The engraving of notes,
during the eighteenth century, rapidly improves, and the clefs and
types become more simple. The ornamental devices become constantly
more fixed, and the player has less and less liberty in his use
of them. And whereas, in earlier times, the instruction-books did
not always distinguish between composition and playing, now, since
Couperin’s time, the instruction-book of pure playing became
constantly more common; while Philip Emanuel, to whom, perhaps with
justice, we trace the systematisation of the principles of modern
clavier-playing, wrote a book on playing, and then waited eight years
before publishing a second part on the thorough bass.
The extension of musical interest led further to such a multitude of
musical magazines as even to-day is not to be found. For the most part
they disappear after a few years, but we have, as a matter of fact,
in a year’s issue of such a paper, a very fair picture of musical
tendencies. I have before me a volume of the last of these, published
in 1762, by George Ludewig Winter, in Berlin. It is well printed,
with dainty rococo borders. Very amusing and characteristic is the
sanguine Preface, in which also is to be discerned the inability of
the German tongue to restrain itself while talking of our classics.
“Music,” says the publisher, “serves either to delight with its mere
art the professor, whether he be such by nature or by cultivation--as
a well-built house, or a well-laid out garden, satisfies the
connoisseur; or, on the other hand, it is the language of emotion.
Then roar forth tones teeming with revenge, sorrow glides over the
strings, passion frantically beats the air, joy revels in the blue
æther, friendship and love sigh forth on the delicate notes, praise
and thankfulness well from a full heart on the vigorous melody, or
rise, cleaving the clouds on the tongues of men, to the very throne of
the Almighty.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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