A Piacere
Sir Hubert Parry advised students at the Royal College of Music to respect their teachers, but to think for themselves too.
1920
King George V 1910-1936
Sir Hubert Parry advised students at the Royal College of Music to respect their teachers, but to think for themselves too.
1920
King George V 1910-1936
In 1918, Sir Hubert Parry reminded students at the Royal College of Music that their teachers were not there to tell them how to play music, but to tell them how other people play music. Putting that knowledge to good artistic use must be, even for students, a very personal affair.
abridged
NO doubt you think you are all alike, but you are not, and I would much rather you were not. You have got to find out for yourselves; what applies to you does not apply to another. If I were to say, “You can’t play the piano well enough to play to any one unless you practise your scales,” most of you would say, “We do — we do”; and then I should have to remember that many of you play Beethoven and Mozart, and Brahms and Schumann, and even Bach, just as you play your scales — and I should be sorry I spoke.
The fact is that the dear good people who play their scales and their exercises are just those who by temperament and feeling will find it most difficult to play anything else; while those who feel music deeply, and are passionately eager to get to the works they can enjoy, have not the patience to develop their technique.