Being Beethoven's scholar

[Anthina]

I've been away for a while being very busy with practising for various projects and a orchestra audition.
One day during lessons at music school it occured to me what an intimate thing music and playing together can be and the important fact of scholar and teacher feeling comfortable with each other.
If you play full hearted and put all your feelings in all your actions and try to understand the meaning of it, you reveal so much emotion and intimacy.
If you don't feel comfortable I doubt you are able to show your full emotions.

So having Beethoven as teacher I start to wonder what he was like then. How much did he reveal and what did he expect from his scholars? (I think I would have been scared to play one single note)

Are there any quotes by him and what did his scholars say about him teaching? female and male scholars?

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*~Ja, was haben's da scho wieder gmacht, Beethoven?~*

[This message has been edited by Anthina (edited 08-14-2006).]

[Peter]

Well Czerny is perhaps his best known pupil and he left us quite a detailed account of Beethoven's teaching. He insisted on obedience to the letter of the score, but most importantly it was the musical meaning and interpretation where he was most insistent.

By all accounts he was most patient, but then he generally only had pupils of exceptional ability.

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'Man know thyself'

[Fidelio]

Originally posted by Anthina:
I've been away for a while being very busy with practising for various projects and a orchestra audition.
One day during lessons at music school it occured to me what an intimate thing music and playing together can be and the important fact of scholar and teacher feeling comfortable with each other.
If you play full hearted and put all your feelings in all your actions and try to understand the meaning of it, you reveal so much emotion and intimacy.
If you don't feel comfortable I doubt you are able to show your full emotions.

So having Beethoven as teacher I start to wonder what he was like then. How much did he reveal and what did he expect from his scholars? (I think I would have been scared to play one single note)

Are there any quotes by him and what did his scholars say about him teaching? female and male scholars?

Beethoven was inevitably in demand as a piano teacher. He had given lessons since 1783 in Bonn. According to Frau Breuning ‘From his earliest youth Beethoven had an extraordinary aversion to teaching…….He would set out like a bad-tempered donkey because he knew he was being observed. However, he often turned round at the very door of the house, ran back and promised he would teach for two hours the next day, it was simply not possible for him to teach that day.

The early years in Vienna, Beethoven taught numerous young ladies from aristocratic, wealthy families who no doubt paid him generously. Not much is known about how the lessons were conducted or where they took place. He may have taught the Brunsvik girls on 16 consecutive days when they were in Vienna in 1799. As we know……….he would often fall in love with his pupils.

Only Archduke Rudolph (Beethoven also taught him composition) and Ferdinand Ries were formally acknowledged as pupils. By 1805, Beethoven had ceased to give piano tuition, although the Archduke’s composition lesson’s continued to 1824.

In a letter, Ries writes:

‘When Beethoven gave me lessons, I must say that contrary to his nature he was extraordinarily patient. I could only attribute this and his almost unfailingly amicable behaviour toward me, mainly to his love and affection for my father. Thus he sometimes made me repeat a thing ten times or even more. In the Variations in F, I had to repeat the last Adagio variation entirely 17 times. Still he was not satisfied with the expression in the little cadenza, even though I thought I played it just as well as he did. If I made a mistake somewhere in a passage, or struck wrong notes, or missed intervals – which he often wanted strongly emphasized – he rarely said anything. However, if I lacked expression in crescendos etc or in the character of a piece, he become angry because he maintained the first was an accident, while the latter resulted from inadequate knowledge, feeling or attention’……(Wegeler).

Even for Ries, Beethoven did not teach composition: ‘He said it required a particular gift to explain them with clearness and precision and besides that Albrechtsberger was the acknowledged master of all composers….’ (Thayer)

Beethoven had little regard for the piano methods that were around. He did keep Cramer’s studies because he believed they contained all the fundamentals of good playing.

Czerny’s comment that Beethoven ‘laid great stress on a correct position of the fingers is confirmed by Therese von Brunsvik, she recorded ‘ he never grew weary of holding down and bending my fingers, which I had been taught to lift high and hold straight’. (Thayer).

Countess Guicciardi supports Ries when she mentions that Beethoven insisted on the correct interpretation, right down to the last detail. It would seem that Beethoven was stricter when it came to interpretation than with technique.

[Rod]

Originally posted by Fidelio:
It would seem that Beethoven was stricter when it came to interpretation than with technique.

Judging from many of the lamentable performances I have heard, it seems the opposite is the case today.

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[PDG]

Originally posted by Peter:


By all accounts he was most patient, but then he generally only had pupils of exceptional ability.

And wealth!! But he does seem to have been a surprisingly relaxed teacher. Wish I'd had him for music at school.....

[Peter]

Originally posted by PDG:
And wealth!! But he does seem to have been a surprisingly relaxed teacher. Wish I'd had him for music at school.....

Yes, but I was thinking primarily of Ries and Czerny.

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'Man know thyself'

[Joy]

"As a teacher, Beethoven was selective, mentoring only a handful of students. One of them he discovered at age 10, already a composer and performer, able to play virtually all of Mozart from memory, as well as much of Beethoven's work. He taught this boy, who was of limited means, free of charge. The boy was Carl Czerny".
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrob...d=oid%3A258627

An interesting site about piano teachers you might like to check out.

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'Truth and beauty joined'