{"id":376,"date":"2010-01-25T06:23:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T06:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp\/2010\/01\/costly_imitation\/"},"modified":"2018-01-14T17:15:14","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T22:15:14","slug":"costly_imitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/2010\/01\/costly_imitation.html","title":{"rendered":"Costly Imitation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I listen to others play the piano, as I eat, or walk down the sidewalk &#8212; all I think of is the passage of music I struggled with yesterday, a passage I have been playing at least for 25 years.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI consider it from many angles, rolling it over in my mind. To be completely cognizant and conscious of every detail in a complicated scripted piece that&#8217;s played by memory is to be safe.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIs it after all a misguided act? To reprise these publications, these products crafted for the middle-class home-user? That we should toil to replay them for large audiences in large rooms? Again and again? What kind of flattery?\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/BusoniAJ.doc\">From Des Moines in 1910, Ferruccio Busoni wrote these lines:<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Considered from the viewpoint of a traveling virtuoso, the concert yesterday was very satisfying. &#8212; The heat had reached the highest point of the year. I was dead tired. But, a beautiful piano, good acoustics, and the great expectations of the audience hypnotized me for the two hours I spent on the platform&#8230;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;At last, I have learned how to engage with the first movement of the &#8216;Waldstein&#8217; Sonata that never quite blossomed before. And I have played it almost thirty years!!\n<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;&#8230;From the viewpoint of a thinking artist, no longer young, it was an unpardonable and unrecoverable waste of energy, of time, and thought, to make an impression of no importance for a brief moment on an insignificant glob of people.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"BusoniDenver.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/BusoniDenver.jpg\" width=\"280\" height=\"307\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left; margin: 6px 450px 10px 0;\" \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nBusoni in Denver, 1910<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I listen to others play the piano, as I eat, or walk down the sidewalk &#8212; all I think of is the passage of music I struggled with yesterday, a passage I have been playing at least for 25 years. I consider it from many angles, rolling it over in my mind. To be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,265,264,266,267,66,62,268],"class_list":{"0":"post-376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-beethoven","9":"tag-busoni","10":"tag-des-moines","11":"tag-ferruccio","12":"tag-practice","13":"tag-practicing","14":"tag-repetition","15":"tag-waldstein","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4624,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/4624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}