{"id":426,"date":"2010-12-12T17:19:28","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T17:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp\/2010\/12\/jacob_lateiner_1928-2010\/"},"modified":"2018-03-07T18:52:59","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T23:52:59","slug":"jacob_lateiner_1928-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/2010\/12\/jacob_lateiner_1928-2010.html","title":{"rendered":"Jacob Lateiner (1928-2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacob Lateiner<\/a> died this morning in New York. He was 82. The following passages are from my 1998 essay about his teaching<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"JLschaafAJ.jpg\"“In a sense, Jacob Lateiner does not give piano lessons. The piano is a tool for him. It’s a means or an obstacle to singing, speaking, and (fuga!) flying. In lessons, Jacob aims to be neutral. Part Socratic (or Talmudic?) questioner, part Freudian analyst (to the exactly punctual end of each session), Jacob allows his students their own paths and destinations. He is catalyst, guide, and dowser. And when his students do make music through the piano, Jacob bears witness…<\/p>\n

“How much of Jacob’s teaching was intuitive and how much the result of careful consideration? In the end, I believe, it is like his relationship to music itself. Intuition leads to questions and understanding which reinforces the intuition he starts from … Jacob rejected the notion that interpretive ideas could be copied from famous performers. He was a leader in a generation of pianists who regarded the composer, represented by the musical text, as its highest authority. Jacob’s well-known argument with Serge Koussevitzky<\/a> is evidence of the way the performer’s role was evolving. During rehearsals for his debut with the Boston Symphony in 1947, the nineteen-year-old Jacob disagreed rather \"Lateiner1959AJ.jpg\"fiercely with the celebrated conductor about the tempo for the second movement of Beethoven’s so-called “Emperor” Concerto. Jacob wanted the movement to be in two, as Beethoven marked. (The “tradition” of playing this music with four slow beats in each measure was reinforced by the erroneous 4\/4 meter marking found in the orchestral parts then widely in use…<\/p>\n

“There are many times I feel that everything I understand about music or piano playing springs from Jacob Lateiner — was colored and ennobled by him. How can I ever express adequate thanks or gratitude? No words will do it. Perhaps, if some of my performances (or even fleeting moments of them) suggest the level of aspiration he revealed, or approach the intensity and range of musical communication he cultivated, then that might be worthy tribute. I try to offer it every time my hands touch the piano to make music.”<\/p>\n

\"Lateiner1947AJ.jpg\"
\nJacob Lateiner with Serge Koussevitzsky at Tanglewood,1947<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jacob Lateiner died this morning in New York. He was 82. The following passages are from my 1998 essay about his teaching: “In a sense, Jacob Lateiner does not give piano lessons. The piano is a tool for him. It’s a means or an obstacle to singing, speaking, and (fuga!) flying. In lessons, Jacob aims […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605,"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":[47,48,43,45,44,42,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-beethoven","9":"tag-emperor-concerto","10":"tag-jacob-lateiner","11":"tag-juilliard","12":"tag-koussevitzky","13":"tag-lateiner","14":"tag-piano-teaching","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","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=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4761,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions\/4761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}