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MARIE JAËLL
MARIE JAËLL The Magic Touch, Piano Music by Mind Training
Catherine Guichard
Translated from French by Cyrille de Souza
Algora Publishing New York
© 2004 by Algora Publishing. All Rights Reserved www.algora.com No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976) may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 0-87586-305-1 (softcover) ISBN: 0-87586-306-x (hardcover) ISBN: 0-87586-307-8 (ebook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Guichard, Catherine. Marie Jaëll : The Magic Touch, Piano Music by Mind Training / Catherine Guichard. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87586-305-1 (soft : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-87586-306-X (hard : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-87586-307-8 (e) 1. Jaëll, Marie, 1846-1925. 2. Pianists—France—Biography. 3. Piano—Instruction and study. I. Title. ML417.J342G85 2004 786.2'092—dc22 2004010297
Front Cover: Marie Jaëll, courtesy of Bibliothèque National et Universitaire de Strasbourg
Printed in the United States
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks are due first of all to Ms. Ethèry Djakéli, a Georgian concert pianist. She studied with Eduardo del Pueyo, professor at the Royal Conservatory of Bruxelles, who, in turn, had studied with a student of Marie Jaëll. Piano teaching is a labor of love between teacher and student, and its mysteries are handed down directly across generations. Ms. Ethèry Djakéli rekindled my wonder for piano music and initiated me into the mysteries of Marie Jaëll’s pedagogy. My thanks are due also to Ms. Thérèse Klippfel, the sole legatee of Marie Jaëll’s non-published works. She has donated all of them to the University of Strasbourg so that musicians and researchers can have access to them. She has authorized me to use them freely. I also thank the Association Marie Jaëll, and its center for the training of piano teachers, from which I graduated and where I now teach. I am grateful to all who have helped me in the preparation of this book, from technical advice to assistance with the translation, especially Sheila and David Llewellyn; Prof. B. Jaulin, Professor at the Ecole des Etudes en Sciences Sociales; Prof. Ezzat Bakhoum, Professor of Physics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology; and Cyrille de Souza who helped put my “poetic” French into “orderly” English and who assisted me with research on musicology, piano acoustics and history and kept me abreast of new findings on topics related to music as reported in Nature, Science, The Economist and The New York Review of Books. This is not an academic book. My professional competence is strictly limited to piano pedagogy. I have freely drawn on the work of distinguished scholars of musicology, history, neuroscience, philosophy and aesthetics. The traces of their ideas and phrases are strewn throughout my book. A list of authors whose ideas went into its making will be found after the epilogue. Here, I must mention three whose work helped me formulate my argument. at About the time I was starting to write, Charles Rosen’s “On Playing the Piano” appeared in The New York Review of Books and discussed issues dealt with here. Anthony Hopkins’ Understanding Music explained the dynamics of European music. Finally, Five Lectures on the Acoustics of the Piano, edited by Anders Askenfelt, were of invaluable help in attaining a deeper understanding of Marie Jaëll’s pedagogy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
1
INTRODUCTION
5
1. MARIE JAËLL AND HER CENTURY HER HEART HAD WINGS MY ART IS A SCIENCE FROM THE HEART, LET IT SPEAK TO THE HEART CAN A WOMAN, CALLED TO CREATE, BE A WIFE? LISZT’S SCHOOL
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