With the modern avidity for
exterior as well as interior analysis, Mikuli, Reinecke, Mertke
and Scholtz evidence little sympathy. It is then from the
masterly editing of Kullak, Von Bulow, Riemann and Klindworth
that I shall draw copiously. They have, in their various ways,
given us a clue to their musical individuality, as well as their
precise scholarship. Klindworth is the most genially
intellectual, Von Bulow the most pedagogic, and Kullak is poetic,
while Riemann is scholarly; the latter gives more attention to
phrasing than to fingering. The Chopin studies are poems fit for
Parnassus, yet they also serve a very useful purpose in pedagogy.
Both aspects, the material and the spiritual, should be studied,
and with four such guides the student need not go astray.
In the first study of the first book, op. 10, dedicated to Liszt,
Chopin at a leap reached new land. Extended chords had been
sparingly used by Hummel and Clementi, but to take a dispersed
harmony and transform it into an epical study, to raise the chord
of the tenth to heroic stature--that could have been accomplished
by Chopin only.
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