Descended from the psaltery, a plucked instrument using feather quills and originally from the Far and Middle East, the piano is today made of “wood and cast iron, hammers and pivots, weighing altogether nearly a thousand pounds — and capable of sustaining twenty-two tons of tension on its strings (the equivalent of about twenty medium-sized cars.)” Along the path of piano development, we are introduced to wondrous and wacky keyboard creations, such as the “giraffe” piano with “an outlandish case that rises high above the keyboard” to a “convertible bedroom piano complete with foldout mattress and drawers.”
It is of course the players of the pianos who bring them to life, and, according to Isacoff, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was “the first piano superstar,” the child prodigy whose “concertos changed the piano’s standing.” Trotted around Europe for concert tours by his ambitious father, Wolfgang played for Pope Clement XIV, for monarchs, and for music masters like composer Johann Adolph Hasse, who lamented, “This boy will consign us all to oblivion.” Isacoff’s assessment of Mozart is that his art was centered on the ability of the piano’s tones to embody a living narrative, to express the human condition through the language of music, rather than merely to generate momentary excitement.”
Isacoff illuminates the lives and styles of many other great pianists and composers, whom he places in four loose categories: the combustibles, the alchemists, the rhythmitizers and the melodists. “No musician can be forced into just one of these types,” the author explains. “It’s often possible to place diverse artists who worked continents and centuries apart, and in vastly different genres, within these four basic rubrics.”
Relying on this quartet of catagories, Isacoff provides colorful descriptions, charming anecdotes and enlightening musical information. Franz Liszt, a combustible, often threw his gloves and handkerchief on the floor at the end of concerts, causing near riots as women rushed onstage to seize them. With self-described impudence, Liszt announced, “Le concert, c’est moi (I am the concert),” and he once denigrated a student with “You lack my personality!” The author tells us how “the iridescent harmonies of Debussy and Ravel became attractive fodder for [alchemist] jazz artists in the late 1950s who had grown tired of the brashness and showy virtuosity of the bebop style and sought a new direction.” In the chapter on the rhythmitizers, Isacoff evocatively writes, “Life is rhythm. We breathe out and in, our hearts beat a familiar tattoo, bodily fluids ebb and flow, and, in this, we join a natural world filled with cycles — from the orbits of the planets and the patterns on mollusk shells to the grinding regularity of cricket song. Such repetitive movement can become the respiration of a musical organism.” As for the melodists, Isacoff writes, “Melody is the part of the music we leave the concert hall humming. . . . But not all melodies are alike; some are cool and cultivated, others filled with passion and allure. Composers may create bouncy jingles, as effervescent as vintage Champagne, or stark, angular cries built of icy threads of sound.”
Isacoff analyzes the techniques and complexities of many male artists, including Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Art Tatum, Murray Perahia, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Jerry Lee Lewis. Until the 20th century, male pianists predominated. Even in the mid-19th century, “women were generally unwelcome in the domain of the professional musician.” Throughout his book Isacoff introduces superb female pianists from Clara Wieck to Marie d’Agoult to jazz icon Mary Lou Williams.
Passion and unstoppable enthusiasm are palpable throughout this beautifully written and illustrated book. “The piano is more than just an instrument,” the author enthuses. “It is . . . filled as much with hopes, yearnings, and disappointments as with strings and hammers and felt.” Isacoff’s heartfelt history of the piano will make you want to Stop! Read! and then go Listen!
bookworld@washpost.com
Eugenia Zukerman
is a flutist, the author of four books and the creator of the Verbier Vlog on musicalamerica.com.
Loading...
Comments