Scott Price is Assistant Professor of Piano, Piano Pedagogy, and Coordinator of Group Piano and Piano Accompanying at the University of South Carolina. A graduate of the University of Oklahoma, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Bowling Green State University, he has studied with Jane Magrath, Thomas Hecht and Virginia Marks. He has performed at the national conventions of the Music Teachers National Conference, Music Teachers National Association, the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy, and has given performances and seminars at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas TX, the University of Oklahoma Seminar for Piano Teachers, the North Dakota State Music Teachers Convention, the South Carolina State Music Teachers Convention, and the Bowling Green State University Summer Music Institute. He has served as repetiteur with Lyric Opera Cleveland, and as music director for Lyric Opera Cleveland's Educational Outreach program. He has been a faculty member of the Cleveland Music School Settlement and the Bowling Green State University Creative Arts program. Dr. Price is creator and co-editor of the on-line piano pedagogy journal "Piano Pedagogy Forum," and publishes educational piano compositions with the FJH Music Company.
Scott Price
School of Music
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
sprice@mozart.sc.edu
803.777.1870
The latter half of this century has witnessed a continuing debate over the value and validity of the piano transcription. Composers and performers have practiced the art of transcription as long as music has existed as a profession in the western tradition. While some have seen the art of transcription as a corruption of the original composer's intent, others have seen transcriptions as a way to disseminate little-known compositions to a wider audience.
The piano transcription is often at the center of arguments over artistic taste and musical merit. The varying ideals and quality of piano transcriptions have only added fuel to the debate over the art form's usefulness and validity. While some transcriptions are viewed as high achievements in the art of music, others are seen for what they are - vehicles for the display of a particular artist's individual gifts. As these arguments play themselves out through the changing social climate, the piano transcription is inevitably subject to the whims of social fashion - popular in one moment and in the next, reviled.
The fact remains that many of the greatest composers and pianists have practiced some form of the art of transcription. While I would not presume to know the minds of these celebrated artists, I do think there are several reasons why the piano transcription is a vital part of keyboard artistry. More importantly, I think there are intriguing reasons why this art should be a part of every student's musical education.
As teachers (and as students who continue to learn and develop after we cease our academic careers), we continually struggle with the fact that students do not often wish to do what they are told. They struggle between submission to authority and the desire for self-expression of their individual artistic personalities. Although most students dutifully submit to their teachers' wills (in part because they know that they must learn from someone who has mastered certain necessary skills), do they fully experience the given subject with the passion and drive that they would associate with something that came from within their own heart and intellect? If a student has a burning love of a particular non-keyboard musical work, perhaps we could help them discover for themselves the same things we wish to teach to them. Through the art of transcribing that beloved piece of music for the piano, the students may truly learn their lessons in keyboard artistry because their internal desires for knowledge and self-expression are being validated and gratified.
The list of skills that can be learned through transcription is too long to fully examine in a format such as this article. There are, however, several skills that we as teachers consistently strive to impart to our students. Students often fail to see details when faced with the sometimes overwhelming page of musical text. If they are forced to deal with the details through actual decision-making and the process of committing those decisions to paper, they may be able to transfer the importance of their own discoveries to the next sonata or salon piece they are assigned to learn.
Note-Length and Rest-Length
When students are studying the music of the Classical period, it is often difficult for them to understand the importance of note and rest length. Even advanced pianists see the combinations of rests and notes and fail to release the fingers or the pedal in the actualization in sound of the composer's intent. The exact length of these score markings seems unimportant, partly because the piano is a very forgiving instrument in the concert hall. Perhaps also, the student has never experienced a musical setting where the exact lengths of notes and rests is of crucial importance.
When transcribing an orchestral score of any level of complexity, a student must come to terms with the sound and role of the orchestral instruments. If one note sounds for a longer time on the piano, the ear doesn't necessarily discriminate the culprit as every sound around it is of the same timbre. In an orchestral setting, the failure of an instrumentalist to rest in a given spot affects the entire musical ensemble in a sometimes embarrassingly noticeable way. Any student who is trying to duplicate the sound and texture of an orchestral score at the piano may become more aware of the vital importance of small details as they endeavor to create the same types of sound at the piano. The student who notices the vital importance of these details through involvement in another musical setting may be able to transfer that new knowledge to their understanding and actualization of their piano repertoire.
Sound Color
Works for the orchestra, organ, solo instrument and voice have all been transcribed at one time or another for the piano. We have continually marveled at a great performer's ability to transform the uniform sound of the piano into a sound quality that seems to defy the properties of the instrument. We talk to our students about the importance of differing sound colors not only in the performance of music written during a specific cultural period, but also of the importance in sound color between stylistic musical periods. Do our students really understand the concept of sound color when they practice for many hours a day on an instrument that basically sounds the same all of the time?
When students are involved with transcribing not only the music of a different instrument or instruments for the piano but also the sound of that instrument to the piano, they must visualize the sound in their minds as they endeavor to capture it on the two-stave or three-stave piano score. As they experiment with the piano, they begin to realize that different combinations of finger attack and weight do actually approximate the sounds of these other instruments. Not only do they begin to understand that different sound colors are possible on the piano - they gain the knowledge of how to produce them in performance. These skills may also be transferred to their solo piano repertoire.
Attack/Articulation
Attack and articulation are equally nebulous subjects for students to understand when dealing on a daily basis with an instrument that has one basic sound quality. When transcribing an orchestral score for the piano, they may realize that two or more instruments playing at the same time create one sound of unusual quality. As they learn to read the many lines of an orchestral score as one unified thing, they begin to see how the differing attacks and articulation styles of the instruments relate as they create a unified sound. As this concept transfers to the piano, they may realize that eight fingers and two thumbs may actually work with differing articulations and attacks at the same time in the creation of a sound that appears to defy the principles of the piano as an instrument. Also, by understanding and aurally visualizing the differences in articulations and attack of the various instruments, a student may begin to play orchestrally, that is, to give passages and themes different levels, qualities, and characters of sound.
Score-Reading/Texture
One of the immediate benefits of transcribing a larger musical texture to the piano is that students are forced to learn how to read a larger score. Three-stave piano music is not a commonly occurring construct and four-stave writing is somewhat of a rarity. As students are faced with the task of negotiating the maze of a larger score, they begin to really notice that even the smallest internal sound events influence the sound texture of the whole. Students most often are taught to distinguish between melody and accompaniment in their piano studies. When these labels are attached, awareness of the inner delights of the score fades. Through transcription of a larger score, a student may realize that every note of an accompaniment figure is actually part of the melody and influences the color, texture and sound of the melodic note. Alberti Bass can somehow immediately become a very intriguing force in a composition. Transference of this awareness to a Mozart or Beethoven piano score can transform the student's perception of the rhythmic forces at work in the music
Solution of Technical Problems
All good students practice their scales, arpeggios and chords. These are the basis of solid piano technique. However, the performance of any work in the piano repertoire requires so much more in the realm of complex physical movements. Even a strict diet of technical exercises and etudes does not fully cover the spectrum of piano technique nor do they always equip a student with the necessary skills needed to detect, examine and solve the technical problems of the more complex repertoire. As a student must deal with the masses of notes occurring in an orchestral, organ or vocal/instrumental score, the problem of what to keep or discard and how to remain faithful to the original becomes paramount. If a student loves a non-keyboard piece enough to transcribe it for the piano, they will eagerly surmount the technical challenges of how to perform it on the keyboard. Trying to do with two hands what is normally done by eighty people gives a student some very complex decisions to make and problems of technical facilitation to solve. The way a piano score sounds and the way it looks on the page is not always the way it is played. Just as with our popular folk stories, the truth is often more fantastic than the legend. As the student learns how to facilitate the demands of a multiple instrument score onto the piano keyboard, they solve technical problems that are equal to, and often surpass, what they need to accomplish in the piano literature thereby allowing them the gratification of knowing that they solved the problem not as their teacher told them, but in a manner that satisfied their personal internal musical desires.
Conclusions
Not all students are prepared to deal with the demands and problems of transcribing a complex musical score to the piano. They can still gain the same rewards through the simplest transcription assignment. These rewards are often most precious because they were won through the student's own desires and not through the demands of the teacher. Perhaps the most important skill a student learns through the transcription process is that they must aurally visualize the music they wish to transcribe before they commit it to paper. Through problem-solving and reflection, they learn to always hear with their mind's ear what they wish to achieve before they play. As this becomes habit, the process of piano playing is set on a course that will allow students to teach themselves rather than be taught. They become self-sufficient artists who truly understand their craft and can impart the process of their knowledge to those who are beginning the musical journey.
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