Composers we love to hate

As pianists, one of the most exciting tasks is choosing our repertoire. So why do we steer clear of certain composers? John Evans looks for the positives in the names we find hard to swallow

John Evans explores the repertoire we find hard to swallow, finding heaps of goodies along the way

Do you remember Sparky’s Magic Piano, the tale of the little boy whose piano miraculously saved him from learning the boring pieces his teacher insisted he practised? Sparky would simply run his fingers over its keys and the instrument would magically play much more exciting works such as Chopin’s ‘Revolutionary’ Study and Waltz in E minor, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 and Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor as though he were playing them himself. Both Sparky’s mother and his piano teacher were astonished by his sudden progress and promptly took him and his piano on a sell-out tour of the US. There was just one problem: after a while, the piano would no longer play, leaving Sparky to stab away uselessly at the keys to his mum’s embarrassment and his teacher’s shame.

Poor Sparky: he only had himself (and his piano teacher) to blame. He should have stuck with his boring pieces. You know the kinds of things: Friedrich Kuhlau’s Allegretto Grazioso from Sonatina in C Op 55 No 3, Cornelius Gurlitt’s Cradle Song from The First Lessons Op 117 No 17…

We’ve only scratched the surface. The fact is, there are hundreds of similar pieces composed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to satisfy the public’s demand for piano music that are still being served up to pianists today. No wonder Sparky was pleased to have a magic piano that spared him the agony of learning them.

Examination composers

Why does this music continue to be inflicted on pianists? The examination boards don’t shy away from them with, at various times, their syllabuses featuring pieces by composers including Friedrich Burgmüller, Johann Baptist Cramer, Anton Diabelli,

Gurlitt and Kuhlau. Philippa Bunting, Director of Learning and Qualifications at ABRSM, is unapologetic. ‘We all despise the things we must learn but these and other composers like them teach us how the piano works. Their pieces feature many of the important crux points in music such as changes in rhythm, in keys and in hand positions when, for example, the left hand plays over the right or vice versa. These challenges are an essential part of learning to play the piano.

‘That said, we don’t include the music of these composers merely out of principle and there isn’t a quota that must be filled. Instead, we ask teachers what music works for them and review their suggestions. Invariably, these composers are among their choices.’

The composers’ days may be numbered, however. Recent changes to the ABRSM syllabus mean that candidates now have many more to choose from. The changes reflect the growing number of new composers writing for the piano as well as the introduction of ‘lighter’ pieces by composers including Ludovico Einaudi, a move which, Bunting admits, ‘caused some consternation among more conservative teachers’.

‘In future these older composers will have to earn their place in the syllabus, but while teachers continue to recommend them and while other countries look to us to maintain some kind of canon that reflects their contribution, they will continue to be represented.’

Bring on Burgmüller

One person in particular will be pleased about that. Julian Lambert is a piano teacher who hosts a popular online tutorial service for students up to Grade 8. Without exception, his introductions to the music of composers such as Burgmüller are positive and encouraging. He delights in playing and talking

about them. For example, he describes Burgmüller’s Arabesque Op 100 No 2, a simple little piece, as ‘wonderful’ and furthermore, he means it.

‘Knowing composers such as Burgmüller and others, and playing their music, is all part of the journey to being a good pianist,’ he says. ‘They give us an historical perspective on the history of playing the piano. The early to mid-19th century was a good time to be a piano composer. The instrument was establishing itself and people wanted to learn to play technically as well as aesthetically. The whole concept of learning to read music dates from this time. Composers-pianists such as Burgmüller catered for this growing market.’

He makes them sound like tradesmen rather than musicians but Lambert insists that on the contrary, their music is remarkably sophisticated. ‘Today, we criticise their music for being facile, but in fact much of it is skilfully written. It gives beginners an understanding of functional harmony and an appreciation of melody, and it encourages us to think about essentials such as good fingering and the correct hand position. I love playing their music. We can’t just skip it and play Chopin.’

All that said, he concedes that some of these composers including Diabelli, Burgmüller and Gurlitt relied too heavily on the four same chords and he’s no fan of Czerny whose music, he thinks, ‘lacks imagination’. Not so, Clementi, he says: ‘He played a major part in the development of the piano. His sonatas are tricky but wonderful.’

Three cheers for Clementi

Clementi and Czerny are perhaps the best known of what one might call the ‘medicine composers’, inasmuch as we dislike the taste but suspect they do us good. Indeed, in recent years both have, in a sense, been rediscovered and their musical legacy re-evaluated. Just three years ago, pianist Ilia Kim released an acclaimed recording of some of the Clementi sonatas (Clementi: Sonatas & Preludes, Piano Classics). The composer was already very well known (it had helped his reputation that as well as being a composer he was also a music publisher and piano manufacturer, while among his greatest admirers was one Ludwig van Beethoven) but what drew Kim to his music was its operatic character.

‘I always loved singing and knew quite a bit of opera so when I casually listened to Clementi’s D major Sonata Op 40 No 3 I instantly realised that it was “opera buffa”! He lived and worked in the period we call Biedermeier when the middle classes began to embrace art and culture. It was the most fabulous time for the theatre in which dancing and singing were used to dazzle the audience. This fashion influenced composers, among them Clementi who was a pioneer of virtuosic keyboard playing.’

Kim wasn’t always a fan of the composer. She admits that as a young pianist she got as far as his six sonatinas before ‘completely forgetting about him’. Instead, it was Burgmüller who made the greater impression on her.

‘I’m particularly fond of Burgmüller whose Easy and Progressive Studies Op 100 I played and loved as a child. I think they had an amazing effect on my musical education because they are character studies. All of them have titles so when I played them I always imagined something in my mind. To this day, I paint or tell a story through the music I play.’

Revisit your Czerny

Is Czerny, Clementi’s near-contemporary, another ‘medicine composer’ deserving of greater appreciation? He was taught by Beethoven and gave the premiere of the composer’s Piano Concerto No 1. Later on, he taught Beethoven’s nephew, Carl,

as well as a young pianist by the name of Liszt. His teaching was influenced by Clementi as well as by Beethoven.

Which is all very well, but today Czerny personifies the type of composer we’re talking about; one whose endless finger exercises are the stuff of nightmares.

Frank Huang, a pianist and teacher specialising in lesser known composers, thinks everyone’s got him wrong. Writing in a blog for Pianist in 2019, he gave three reasons why Czerny’s music deserves a second chance. First, he said, his exercises have real musical value. As an example, he cited the thirteenth exercise in the composer’s collection of 101 Exercises Op 261. ‘I am a firm believer that musicianship and technique should be developed collaboratively – this study accomplishes both efficiently,’ he said.

Second, said Huang, is the way Czerny’s use of scales, arpeggios and chords – the building blocks of Western music – provides a gateway to the music of Liszt, Chopin and Rachmaninov which many of us would prefer to play. And third, far from being merely a composer of exercises, the composer also wrote beautiful concert pieces including the Variations on a Theme by Rode Op 33. ‘No other composer comes close in fusing technique and musicianship together as well as Czerny,’ he concluded.

Listening for pleasure

Unfortunately, the cause of Czerny and the likes is not helped by the fact that they are so little recorded. Granted, there are plenty of amateur YouTube performances of their music, many by teachers earnestly demonstrating how to play them to the satisfaction of examiners but so precisely and respectfully as to be devoid of character and spontaneity, but very few by top-flight pianists. Still, on the rare occasions that you do come across them, you realise that Julian Lambert is correct when he says: ‘Dig in – there’s lots of music in these pieces.’

Dr Samantha Ege, a pianist and musicologist who was recently appointed Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, Oxford University, agrees. ‘I find Czerny really satisfying and appreciate the way his music and that of other composers such as Gurlitt and Kalkbrenner helped build my technique when I was learning. I think people should be encouraged to play them since it’s good to have variety. We can figure out what we enjoy as well as what is useful.’

Indeed, this voyage of discovery need not begin and end with these long-dead composers, as Dr Ege herself will demonstrate when she releases an album dedicated to the solo piano music of Florence Price (1887-1953), a once well-respected African-American composer whose music was, following her death, almost lost. Called Fantasie Nègre, the new album (Lorelt LNT144) features some first recordings including all four of Price’s virtuosic Fantasie Nègre showpieces. ‘As an accomplished keyboard player, Florence Price’s solo piano music exemplifies her command of the instrument as well as providing a snapshot of her unique compositional language,’ explains Dr Ege.

In common with her musical predecessors Kalkbrenner, Burgmüller, Cramer, Kuhlau, Diabelli and Gurlitt et al, Price sounds like the kind of composer whose music can stretch musical minds and help build technique. Examination boards please take note. ■