Mikes Music Room – Music Articles

Introduction – Part 1

The aim of these series of articles will be to help the student of the piano to arrive at a clear perception of how to acquire that which is necessary in piano playing, namely, a good tone-production. It will be necessary for the student to observe, fully and precisely, as much of the mechanism of the instrument as possible.

It is only when observation is followed by careful experiment and accurate reasoning that a scientific knowledge of piano-touch can be attained, and no piano student, however musically gifted they may be, can, in these days of “higher development,” afford to depend solely on the aesthetic side of his nature for the cultivation of his technique.

If the technical study of the piano is approached in a spirit of calm inquiry, there is no reason why a study of the piano should not brace the mental system of the student, and do him as much good as would a careful study of grammar or geometry. And although this technical study is not sufficient of itself to make him an artist, still the benefit derived from it will be always at hand to help him to unravel many difficulties which otherwise would cause him much disappoint

English literature of the Middle Ages is full of references to minstrels and minstrelsy, and abounds in quaint and curious details of their life and manners; and for the present-day reader, desirous of information concerning the early music of this country, no better authority exists than Chappell

Music in the United Kingdom prior to the seventeenth century, or at any rate the latter part of the sixteenth, presents itself under very much the same aspects as on the Continent. On the one hand Church music, on the other Minstrelsy and latterly, the rise of a secular art, secular in spirit but hampered with ecclesiastical traditions.

English Church music of the pre-Reformation period necessarily moved on the same lines as that of the Continent, although probably existing in a far less advanced stage of cultivation. Minstrelsy, however, was greatly esteemed among English. Scotch, Irish, and Welsh; and among the Irish and Welsh the bardic caste enjoyed a degree of power and influence probably unknown in any other country of the world. Thus in Ireland the three grades of minstrels or bards of the legendary period

Woe betide the unlucky noble who was ridiculed or denounced by a Troubadour! In the first instance he might feel assured that before long every court and castle in Southern Europe would be laughing at him, and in the second, he might consider himself fortunate if he was not compelled to turn out and defend his life and property against the steel-clad paladins of a hostile neighbour, as had the Lord of Rossilho when Alfonso of Aragon laid waste his territories, as vengeance for the death of the Troubadour Guillem de Cabestanh.

To the Troubadours we owe the existence of various art-forms common to music and poetry, such as the ” Pastorela,” or ” Pastorela ” the shepherd’s song, whence the modern Pastoral or Pastorale; the “Alba”

The framework of the arm and hand consists of 30 bones: 1 for the upper arm, 2 for the forearm, 8 for the wrist, 5 for the palm of the hand, and 14 for the fingers and thumb. The hand and wrist are, strictly speaking, attached to only one of the two bones of the forearm. This may easily be proved. Let the right arm be loosely extended, and the hand made to-turn half round and back again without bending at the wrist, the fingers of the left hand during this motion touching lightly the

When Europe emerged from the turmoil, throat-cutting, and intellectual barrenness of the centuries immediately succeeding the fall of the Roman Empire, music presented itself in a twofold aspect, which might be typified in two representative figures, the Minstrel or Gleeman, and the Monk. The Monk living and working quietly behind the strong walls of his monastery. The Minstrel, hopping from town to town all over the land the plaything of fortune, a man mixing with all classes of society, the friend and favourite of every one, utterly destitute of all status, and a man whom it was scarcely a crime to defraud or kill. The letter of music dwelt in the monasteries, but the spirit of music, staggered drunk, sometimes quite literally, by the roadside.

The outcast, wayfaring class, typified by the Minstrel, and which, comprising Minstrels, Jugglers, Acrobats, Mountebanks, Quacks, &c., held such an important place in the social economy of the Middle Ages, is supposed to have been a direct survival of the gladiatorial caste of Imperial Rome. In addition, it is probable that the adverse attitude of the Christian Church at large, towards those whose business in life is the providing of amusement for others, was also an inheritance from the days of the decadent Empire.

With more peaceful times arose an art more entitled to the name of Minstrelsy than the rude efforts of the strollers who gave entertainments before castle gates and in market-places. For a long period, Provence was the most peaceful land in Europe: it appears to have lain out of the track of warfare and misery, and in that sunny land Minstrelsy was undisturbedly cultivated by high and low. From the eleventh century, the Troubadours were treated with honour and respect.

The history of the Troubadour as existing in Provenge, in the days prior to the Albigensian Crusade, forms one of the most striking and unique episodes in literary and musical history. The social position of the Troubadours was a curious one. Recruited, as was the order, from all ranks of society, the Troubadour might be the son of a knight, as was Guiilem de Cabestanh; or he might belong to the trading classes, as did Peire Vidal, the son of a furrier at Toulouse. In any sphere of life, however, the fact of being a Troubadour at once placed a man on a sort of equality with the greatest; for a Troubadour was essentially a privileged person.

To the qualifications of the minstrel, the man with whom at first sight he would appear to have most in common, he added the caustic tongue of the jester, something of the inviolability of the herald and the Churchman, and, as often as not, the lance and shield of the knight. Roughly, he combined in his person the elements of those two modern institutions, Public Opinion and the Press. Like the minstrel at large, he was a kind of peripatetic newspaper, for his compositions found their way through the land more quickly than the last news from the Crusades.

Extracts taken