Frases de Hans von Bülow

“In the intellectual market the quantity of the demand rises in proportion to that of the supply, but its quality does not keep pace with this increase. For example, the Old Testament of pianoforte players, Bach’s “Wohltenoerurtes Klavier” is perhaps in almost as many hands as the New Testament, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, but in few more heads than it was in former years, when it could only be had for six times the present price. Doubtless, its leaves are somewhat oftener turned over, but now, as then, about the sixth part, likely enough just the first sixth, is all that is studies in the real meaning of the word. Here truly is little more gained than a merely superficial acquaintance with the great father of German music.”

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Hans von Bülow

Preface to Instructive ausgabe. Klavier-Etuden von Fr. Chopin, 1880.

“Here Chopin has the conviction that he has lost his power of expression. With the determination to discover whether his brain can still originate ideas, he strikes his head with a hammer (here the sixteenths and thirty-seconds are to be carried out in exact time, indicating a double stroke of the hammer). In the third and fourth measures on can hear the blood trickle (trills in the left hand). He is desperate at finding no inspiration (fifth measure); he strikes again with the hammer and with greater force (thirty-second notes twice in succession during the crescendo). In the key of A flat he finds his powers again. Appeased, he seeks his former key and closes contentedly.”

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Hans von Bülow

On Chopin's E major Prelude Op.28 No.9, quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists.

“The editor of this selection from Chopin’s Pianoforte Studies has, however, no such intention; on the contrary. he wishes to make some of them, which owing to their difficulty have hitherto remained unpopularised, more accessible, particularly to the amateur, by pointing out the way to their correct study. And thus, on the basis of the technical facility to be acquired through these pieces, to enable even the non-professional to enjoy a more intimate acquaintance with those works of the classical romanticist, which, though representing the best and most undying side of his genius, have found till now but a small, though daily increasing circle of admirers; for the “Ladies’-Chopin”, which for forty years has blossomed in the pale and sickly rays of dilettantism; the “talented, languishing, Polish youth” to whom the most modest place on the Parnassus of musical literature was denied by the amateurish criticism of German professors, is as little the genuine entire Chopin, as is the Beethoven of “Adelaide” and the “Moonlight Sonata”, the god of Symphony. Truly a span of time must yet elapse before the matured and manly Chopin, the author of the two Sonatas, the 3rd and 4th Scherzos, the 4th Ballade, the Polonaise in F# minor, the later Mazurkas and Nocturnes etc., will be completely and generally appreciated at his full worth. At the same time much may be done by preparing and clearing the way; and one of the best means towards this end is sifting the material, and replacing favourite and unimportant works, by those less known though more important.”

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Hans von Bülow

Preface to Instructive ausgabe. Klavier-Etuden von Fr. Chopin, 1880.