Excerpt from School of the Piano Pedal: Containing Explanations of the Best Usage, and Fully Illustrated by Numerous Selections From the Works of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Franz, Heller, Liszt, Schumann, Tcha kovsky, and Many Original Studies
The Pedals of the Pianoforte are a vital part of the tone-controlling mechanism, since they add to the tonal effect elements which cannot be put there from the keyboard. To pedal well requires long practice, close hearing, and constant and many-sided attention. To pedal a piece well is more difficult than to write out a really artistic fingering for an individual hand.
The pedals are the more indispensable because, since Chopin, composers do not generally write the notes in all instances as they are meant to sound, but as the hands have to play them. The remainder is left to the uncertain indication of an occasional here and there in the music. Artistic pedaling, there fore, is not only a question of making the playing sound better, but often of bringing out an idea which but for the pedal would not be heard at all. Pedaling is an art requiring as careful and as systematic study as scale-work, arpeggios, or any element of the technic. Fine playing is impossible without the pedals.
Pedal technic requires to be taken up very early in the course, during Grade II at latest. During this grade all the manners of using pedals explained in Chapters III, VII, VIII, IX, and X have to be carefully mastered, including the theoretical explanations appertaining to them. The pupil is to learn all of the pieces of this grade. During Grade III he begins again and reviews all the matter and the easy music in all the chapters, including Chapter XI. In Grade IV he again reviews all the theory and the pieces and adds those of Grade IV. In Grade V, the same. Thus at the end of the book he will have completely covered the usual pedal uses at least three times, and should begin to have a degree of taste and discretion in this direction, too often wanting.
Every piece studied must be thoroughly memorized and by reviewing kept in memory. In Chapters VII, VIII, and IX the pedal is begun with the first study. In Chapters X and XI the notes are first learned.
Every lesson is intended to sound like a piano recital even when the pieces are easy. It is not a ques tion of How much? Or How many? But How?
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