Josef Gat: The Technique of Piano Playing - Preface

(Boosey & Hawkes; 5th edition. 1980, Istvan Kleszky, Tr.)

 Preface 中譯

Prefaces are usually apologies. I have the feeling that I have to apologize for having added one more book to the mass of – mostly unread – books on the methodology of piano playing.

This work was intended as a manual for pupils at teachers’ conservatories. In order to preserve this handbook character of my work, I have ruthlessly eliminated from the original manuscript everything which seems to me unessential. As a result, the material of some chapters has become concentrated to such a degree that it is not enough to read them through superficially, they have to be studied.

The main fault of most books on piano playing is that they depend too much on the individual experiences of the authors gained in the course of teaching. These works are consequently often full of contradictions. The only solution is to search for the general laws. In order to reduce the errors to a minimum, I have endeavoured to arrange the books in such a manners as to present the general laws in the opening chapters and to apply the in subsequent chapters as a means of control in dealing with the detailed technical problems. I hope that this method will enable the reader to find whatever fault I may have overlooked.

I did not strive to invent any new method of playing the piano. It is my belief that Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt and Chopin were not only outstanding composers but outstanding pianists. Too I believe the piano to be a prodigious marvellous instrument – if the performer knows how to handle it. Two hundred years ago, Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach started a campaign to make the piano a singing instrument. He writes about the “thumping” pianists, who by dint of ghastly effort, finally succeeded in casting competent listeners to hate the piano. If the reader will but recollect, how often, at the recitals of such piano-murderers, he wished that the piano were able to hit back, he will realise that even in our time we still have to fight against this kind of piano playing.

It is not a new, more modern method of piano playing we need, but good piano playing. The structure of the human organism has not undergone any changes since Beethoven’s time and – in its essentials – the mechanism of the piano has also remained the same. Thus we have to find the common factors in the relation of the great artists to their instrument. This will reveal the right path which we, too, should follow. A superficial examination, however, will not prove sufficient. If a general law is not confirmed by everyday practice, it will thereby have been shown to be invalid save on paper. We will, therefore, accept only data adequate both from the point of view of anatomy and physics, that can be verified by physiology and, at the same time, in conformity with the experiences gained in concert halls and in teaching.

I have been working on this book for twenty years. During these years I have arrived at certain new perceptions and conclusions which made the use of new expressions inevitable. These will become intelligible for the reader only if he will take the trouble to study the book thoroughly and carefully, chapter by chapter.

I commend my book to those who are labouring to make the piano once more a singing instrument.