Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire, third edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the Second Edition In this edition I have updated Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire, edited by Irwin Freundlich, which was published in 1973, and its Supplement of 1979. Not only is there a large amount of new material but also much of the material from the earlier versions has been re¤ned and enlarged. For instance, in this edition the J. S. Bach section has more discussion of individual works; each sonata by Beethoven and each major opus of Chopin is described; more of the sonatas of Haydn, Scarlatti, and Soler are treated in detail; and there is more focus on separate pieces of the major composers. It seems only natural that in the intervening years—in teaching, performing, and listening to all kinds of piano music—that my ideas about certain pieces have changed, particularly with respect to grading. The purpose of this book is still the same: to make available in one practical listing the important solo piano literature. It is designed as a basic textbook for college piano literature courses and as a special reference book for performers, teachers, librarians, music dealers, and all those interested in this rich and enormous repertoire. In selecting works for this listing I have tried to cover all the standard composers thoroughly and to introduce contemporary composers of merit, especially those of the United States (over 450 appear in this edition). I have included only published works and only those that I have been able to play through and analyze. A number of works previously listed have been dropped because they are no longer readily available; although some known to be out of print are still listed because of their merit. Some of them can be found in secondhand music stores, in the larger university or municipal libraries, or, more especially, in the Library of Congress. The time span covered is mainly from 1700 to the present, but a few works dating before 1700 are included because of their special musical interest. The listing contains some music composed before the invention of the piano, but most of this literature is effective when performed on the piano. Transcriptions of music originally written for other instruments, as a rule, are excluded, unless the arrangement was made by the composer, or, in my opinion, is highly effective. Certain outstanding ragtime works are described, as this type of music is a unique American contribution to the piano repertoire. A certain amount of subjectivity is unavoidable in a book of this nature, but I have attempted to be as fair, objective, and clear as possible in the descriptions of the pieces. For many of the works discussed in this volume, knowledge of the compositional processes that go into their writing would help memorization and lead to a more authentic performance. As Leonard Bernstein wrote in The Unanswered Question: A piece of music is a constant metamorphosis of given material, involving such transformational operations as inversion, augmentation, retrograde, diminution,modulation,the opposition of consonance and dissonance, the various forms of imitation (such as canon and fugue), the varieties of rhythm and meter, harmonic progressions, coloristic and dynamic changes, plus the in¤nite interrelations of all these with one another. These are the meanings of music. xi I have tried to point out these elements from a pianistic viewpoint as an aid to understanding and appreciation. We live in an urtext age—with good reason—and this consciousness of a ¤ne text has made us much more sensitive to the composer’s intentions. Facsimiles of autographs (manuscripts) are not dif¤cult to come by these days (those of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, etc. are fairly common); and I am amazed to ¤nd, when encountering a piece in manuscript form for the ¤rst time, how all the layers of “tradition” peel away, so that one sees the piece fresh for the ¤rst time. I have been careful to indicate when and where facsimiles are available.The Vienna Urtext edition has introduced a masterpiece series for piano that contains a clearly printed, well-edited version for performance plus a facsimile of the autograph. Since the 1960s (when I ¤rst began writing this book), music and, more speci¤cally, piano music, has undergone some interesting developments. Composers of serial music, which seems to have peaked during the 1970s, now recognize their obligation to attempt to develop musical material and to unfold certain aspects of the composition. And beginning in the 1960s, many traditional composers enlarged their...