Beyond The Art of Finger Dexterity
Reassessing Carl Czerny
Edited by David Gramit
Within the history of European music, Carl Czerny (1791-1857) is simultaneously all too familiar and virtually invisible. During his lifetime, he was a highly successful composer of popular piano music, and his pedagogical works remain fundamental to the training of pianists. But Czerny's reputation in these areas has obscured the remarkable breadth of his activity, and especially his work as a composer of serious music, which recent performances and recordings have shown to hold real musical interest.
Beyond "The Art of Finger Dexterity" explores Czerny's multifaceted career and its legacy and provides the first broad assessment of his work as a composer. Prominent North American and European musicians and scholars explore topics including Czerny's life and its context; his autobiographical writings and efforts to promote his teacher, Beethoven; his activity as a pedagogue, both as teacher of Liszt and as the authority held up to innumerable amateur women pianists; his role in shaping performance traditions of classical music; the development of his image during and after his lifetime; and his work in genres including the Mass, the symphony, the string quartet, and the piano fantasy.
This is the first English-language book on Czerny, and the broadest survey of his activity in any language.
Contributors: George Barth, Otto Biba, Attilio Bottegal, Deanna C. Davis, James Deaville, Ingrid Fuchs, David Gramit, Alice M. Hanson, Anton Kuerti, Marie Sumner Lott, James Parakilas, Michael Saffle, Franz A. J. Szabo, Douglas Townsend, and John Wiebe.
David Gramit (University of Alberta) is the author of Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770-1848.
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DETAILS
7 b/w illustrations
44 line illustrations
Size: 9 x 6 in
10 digit ISBN: 1580462502
13 digit ISBN: 9781580462501
Binding: Hardback
First published: 01/Apr/2008
Price: 75.00 USD / 40.00 GBP
Imprint: University of Rochester Press
Series: Eastman Studies in Music
BIC class: AVH
STATUS: Available
Details updated on 07/10/2008
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Reviews
The book is a good read and its subject, as Gramit says, of "genuine interest." . . . [In] Ingrid Fuchs's chapter . . . we see the significance of the man. . . . James Parakilas's claim of Czerny as "one of the important founders of the historical performance movement" is thought-provoking. . . . [Also notable is] Marie Lott's interesting look at two [unpublished Czerny] string quartets. . . . [The book is marked throughout by] usefulness, originality, interest and professionalism.-- Peter Williams, MUSICAL TIMES
A glittering array of scholars with David Gramit at the helm have much to tell us about a wide range of subjects autour de Czerny: his views on virtuosity vis-à-vis his student Liszt, the Vienna of Czerny's day, his role as a Beethovenian ambassador after the great composer's death, his ecumenical teaching of both men and women, the unfairly neglected corpus of serious, often large and ambitious works, and much more. This is an essential -- and fascinating -- scholarly work of restoration and reassessment. -- Susan Youens, University of Notre Dame
There are few figures who have exerted a comparable influence on the great classical tradition who have suffered such neglect. This is not only the first book to consider Czerny's various contributions to music -- as gifted performer, prolific composer of orchestral works, renowned teacher, and inventor of pianistic exercises worthy of recital performance -- it is likely to be the best book on Czerny for a very, very long time. The cast of scholars assembled here is stellar, and their contributions illuminate our understanding of the man, his world, and the fascinating matter of musical reputations. -- Leon Botstein, President of Bard College
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