Carl Czerny: Friend or Foe?

As much as I appreciate the classical recording industry, its woes notwithstanding, it's really getting out of hand, at least if you consider that record labels have turned to torturing poor pianists with the task of recording whole sets of Czerny and Hanon etudes. (Worse still is the thought that a pianist would propose such a project...)

I make no secret of my opposition to such studies. Young piano students the world over are forced to bust their fingers with whole volumes of empty detritus as a means of acquiring "technique," thereby subordinating and even disregarding musical expression, which is after all what making music is all about.

Sure, practicing finger exercises gives one a certain dexterity, but at what expense? More often than not, students learn to hate practicing as a consequence of Czerny and his ilk, and they disconnect their brains and hearts from actually expressing music. I call such mechanical, rote playing "typing" -- it doesn't matter how fast one can type, what matters is what one has to say. (I can't type terribly fast with my one able hand at the moment following my accident -- I'm thankful just to be alive.)

On the contrary, real technique is about the most careful listening, through which the inner ear and emotions direct the arms, wrists and fingers. To that end, it is best to build one's technique through musically valuable pieces, since not empty technique but expression not hindered by mechanical considerations is the true aim. Practicing piano thereby becomes artistic expression, and every moment of such practice reinforces that crucial connection of inner ear and playing mechanism.

Czerny etudes, with their questionable musical content, thus preclude the very goal they purport to attain.

While Carl Czerny (1791-1857) is indeed recognized as Beethoven's most famous student, and while he was indeed a competent if not imaginative composer, what most people don't know about Czerny is that he effectively "sold out." The Irish composer John Field reported on Czerny's veritable "composition factory" upon visiting his teaching studio in Vienna. Czerny would sit at a giant table together with his student assistants and have them plug in predetermined, formulaic chord progressions and melodic patterns as fast as they could move their pens (which, having suffered through their teacher's School of Velocity, must have indeed been fast), in order to satisfy the thriving amateur market and fatten his pocketbook. (It's too bad he did not attain that goal through the authentic service of art rather than at its expense.)

If you must play these etudes, it's best at the very least to transpose them into all keys so that they become exercises more for the brain and ear than simply for the fingers. After all, as a former professor of mine once proclaimed, an all C major technique is of extremely limited use!