By Debra Brubaker Burns, Anita Jackson and Connie Arrau Sturm – IAWM Journal (2002)
In 19th-century England and America, playing the piano was considered the perfect hobby for a well-bred lady. While women were encouraged to entertain their families and guests by playing beautiful music at the piano, they were equally discouraged from professional music aspirations, and even from taking their musical studies too seriously. In a fascinating analysis of female pianists as portrayed in 19th-century English fiction, Mary Burgan concluded that the piano was “not only an emblem of social status, it provided a gauge of a woman’s training in the required accomplishments of genteel society.”1 Barbara Berg noted that a 19th-century American lady was “allowed to work provided that what she does is perfectly useless! She may embroider, but not make a dress.…She may make music, but not coffee!”2
Playing the piano was predominantly a female pastime in both countries, yet pursuing a musical career was frowned upon for women. In 1839, the editor of the English journal, Musical World, wrote that music was “too laborious a profession for women.”3 Another English author more accurately expressed the social stigma associated with women entering the public sphere when he described “those to whom it would be almost annihilation to witness the performance of a daughter, a sister, or a mistress [that is, wife] in public.”4 Nevertheless, many articles and books that debated women’s legal rights, their place in society and their education appeared in England around the 1830s. Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne in 1837 also marked a significant milestone for women, since she was the first female monarch in England in over a century.5
Emboldened by these developments, more women decided to use their musical skills to gain income and thus greater independence. Census figures for England and Wales reveal that the number of professional female musicians more than tripled between 1852 and 1881.6 Rohr7 outlined several reasons for the growing participation of women in the music profession. First, the rising popularity of piano playing and other music study for girls created an increased demand for teachers. By 1861, 20 percent of all musicians and 60 percent of all music teachers in London were women. Secondly, the growing number of concerts and music festivals created more socially acceptable performance venues for women; performing in the concert hall was less taboo for women than in the theater, or in a church with its all-male traditions. Lastly, the second half of the 19th century saw the establishment of several new music schools that admitted women. With the founding of the first English music academy in 1823, The Royal Academy of Music, came the admission of women, though they were restricted to the study of piano, voice or harp. The Guildhall School of Music, established in 1880, catered to middle-class girls studying piano or voice. The Royal College of Music, established in 1880, included in its first scholarship recipients 17 pianists, 14 of whom were female. Finally, the overwhelming majority of candidates for the new Trinity College of Music exams and ABRSM exams were female.8
Despite lingering prejudice against female music professionals, several British women began to achieve international success as pianists. In 1909, the American journal, The Etude, published an article entitled “Who’s Who Among Famous Women Pianists and Violinists,”9 and profiled several English pianists including Arabella Goddard and Katherine Goodson. Goddard, who studied with Kalkbrenner and Thalberg, debuted in London in 1850. She then toured Europe, America, Australia and India with great success. Goodson trained at the Royal Academy of Music, and also studied with Leschetizky, who considered her one of his best pupils. After making her debut in London in 1897, she also toured extensively.
Female musicians in late 19th-century America began to seek the same professional status as their British counterparts. According to census data, the percentage of American women employed in music grew from 36 percent in 1870 to 66 percent in 1910.10 Various articles, advertisements and announcements in The Etude magazine from 1900 to 1920 confirm that American women gained employment in a surprisingly wide variety of piano-related occupations: concert pianist, accompanist, pianist for the movies, instructor at conservatories and public schools, music administrator, composer, author, workshop clinician and lecturer, concert manager, piano tuner, and manufacturer and seller of piano music, books and records.11 This diversity of professional achievement was significant since women were not even granted the right to vote in America until 1920.
Despite the advancement of professional female musicians, professional respect did not necessarily follow. Male chauvinism extended far beyond the arena of music. For example, the behavior of British suffragettes was analyzed by “experts” on female hysteria.12 Additionally, an article in the 1894 London Orchestral Association Gazette claimed “the average lady player is inferior to the average male player for all orchestral purposes.”13 The author justified this irrational prejudice by citing physiologists’ claims that women were missing a critical arm muscle; he also noted that professional female musicians take jobs away from men, may be subjected to “unguarded language” in music halls and theaters, and risk safety when walking home alone after performances.14 Female music professionals in America faced similar prejudices; a columnist in The Etude magazine warned that piano tuning “almost invariably affects the brain” and requires a “quietness of nerve [which] is not the natural endowment of woman.”15
Not surprisingly, with such prejudice came financial consequences. Some boarding schools in England in the late 19th century advertised that piano instruction from a master cost one guinea, while piano instruction from a lady cost five shillings.16 In America, Amy Fay, the noted concert pianist, student of Liszt and author of Music Study in Germany,17 complained about the preference for male piano teachers. She said that it was “almost impossible for a woman to get a good position in the private fashionable schools in the city,” claiming that if women could obtain such positions, they were usually “under-teachers” and “poorly paid.”18
Much to their credit, female musicians banded together to improve their situation. A wonderful example of this in England was the establishment of the Royal Society of Female Musicians.19 Before the protection of musical trade unions (which began in the 1890s), many musicians, especially women, ended their careers in unemployment and abject poverty. The Royal Society of Musicians functioned as a benefit society for male musicians; while they gladly accepted the gratuitous performances of women at their fund-raising concerts, they refused to admit women to their group, thus denying aid to destitute female musicians. In 1839, a group of women musicians founded the Royal Society of Female Musicians, one of the earliest of a growing number of organizations for working women in Victorian England. This group included mostly singers and pianists who worked as private teachers and performers. They attracted many notable patrons including Queen Victoria, the Duchess of Cambridge, and the Duchess of Kent, and held fund-raising concerts that included performances by such renowned musicians as Clara Schumann and Anton Rubinstein. In fact, this group was so successful at raising funds that by 1866, its financial strength was sufficient to break down the barriers to membership in the male Royal Society of Musicians, and both societies merged.
In America, women banded together in women’s music clubs to promote music in their country. In 1918, the president of the National Federation of Music Clubs estimated that about 1,425 women’s music clubs existed all across the country, with a total membership of approximately 300,000.20 These clubs sponsored young performers (male and female); supported public school and community music programs; developed Plans of Study and examinations for music teachers; and promoted American music, American composers and American teachers (male and female).
Having described many important achievements of British and American female musicians since the mid-19th century, the remainder of this article will profile the accomplishments of selected women who made significant contributions to piano teaching and performing during this era.
Annie (Jessy) Curwen (1845-1932) was an influential piano pedagogue and leading figure of the Tonic Sol-Fa teaching system in England. She anticipated 20th-century pedagogical trends by applying progressive educational principles in her classroom teaching, keyboard instruction and innovative piano method series.
Curwen attended the Royal Academy of Music and taught piano in Dublin before moving to Scotland. Here, she encountered the Tonic Sol-Fa system,21 (a teaching method promoted by the music educator, Rev. John Curwen), and incorporated its principles into her school teaching. After marrying Curwen’s son, she published a series of books and music supplements for young children, including The Child Pianist (1886), teaching materials of Mrs. Curwen’s Pianoforte Method (1885- ca.1920) and Psychology Applied to Music Teaching (1920).22 Her method was sold in Canada, America and Australia, and also sold successfully in England well into the 1970s. After World War I, Curwen method specialists continued to train music teachers and give examinations from her books.23
Mrs. Curwen’s Pianoforte Method included teachers’ guides and training programs, which incorporated principles of Sol-Fa teaching and Herbartian psychology. Curwen and others following her method were innovators in classroom music teaching, primarily in areas of theoretical training that required observation alternated with actual music making.
The teacher’s manual is one of the most extensive of its time, presenting learning objectives for each lesson and practical guidance for teaching children. Curwen emphasized psychology and some physiology, covering topics such as perception, mental images, creativity, conceptualization, language connotations and denotations, student attention, habit and memory, methodology and teaching materials.24 The progressively ordered lesson plans and teaching materials integrated sight-singing, off-staff music reading and ear and rhythmic training. She advised pupils to begin with a singing course, and then take piano lessons until at least the age of 14, because piano study allowed the greatest field for observing musical pitch, range and rhythmic development.25 Her teaching objectives included making musical training enjoyable; promoting intellectual, spiritual and physical growth; developing intelligent listeners; and discovering talented musicians.26
Curwen’s educational methodology has significantly impacted music pedagogues since its inception. Some of the teaching practices of Annie Curwen and Rev. John Curwen significantly influenced the work of Zoltán Kodály (with hand signals in vocal instruction), the authors of the Oxford Piano School (with the song approach) and many other 20th-century music educators.
A prominent music educator and keyboard musician for over 50 years, Kate Sara Chittenden (1856-1949) served as dean and head of the piano department for several music schools; lectured for the New York Board of Education and national musical organizations; taught piano; and wrote articles, piano instruction books, hymns and teaching pieces.27 After studying piano at Helmuth College in London, Ontario (where she received the Dufferin Medal for Art), she moved to the New York City area, which became the base of her musical activities for the next 50 years. From 1892 to 1900, Chittenden taught at the Metropolitan College of Music, where she collaborated with Albert Ross Parsons, her former teacher and head of the piano department, to write the principal book of their Synthetic Method for the Pianoforte (1892).28 The method was one of the first American piano instruction books to use a multi-key approach with pieces in five-finger patterns, and to encourage a more experience-based learning approach.
Other novelties of this method included an extended grand staff paper chart placed behind the piano keyboard, and staffless notations using Roman numerals and ties, or note values and note names with octave identification. The course was used at the Metropolitan College and at least 15 other schools in New York, among them Rutgers Female College. June Weybright, who studied with Chittenden, later wrote her own method, Course for Pianists, in 1949. Like Chittenden, she advocated the creation of educational materials that focused on children’s understanding and ability.
Chittenden headed the piano departments at Catharine Wiken School in Stamford, CN (1890-1914) and at Vassar College (1899-1930), and served as the dean of the Institute of Applied Music (1900-33), the successor to the Metropolitan College of Music. She influenced many other music educators over the years, lecturing for the New York Board of Education (1892-1919) and for musical organizations such as MTNA. She actively participated in state and national music teachers’ associations, played organ at Calvary Baptist Church in New York (1879-1906), co-edited The Calvary Hymnal (1891),29 composed Christian hymns and wrote several articles for music periodicals.30
Nellie C. Cornish31 (1876-1956) was one of the most influential music educators in the western United States during the early 20th century. In Seattle, she established a music school, which became a leading innovative college of interdisciplinary art studies.32 A celebrated music educator and arts’ advocate in Seattle, her influence extended to co-founding the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) in the late 1920s, managing a children’s radio program in New York and directing a music school in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Growing up in Nebraska, Oregon, California and Washington, Cornish studied piano whenever she could. Her teachers included Ebenezer Cook, a student of Lowell Mason (1792- 1872), and Alfred Venino, a student of Theodor Leschetizky (1830-1915). In 1890, during an economic depression, the 14-year-old Cornish began teaching piano in people’s parlors to help support herself; ten years later, she opened a teaching studio in Seattle. Her interest in further musical training led her to study the Fletcher Music Method (having Montessori methodologies) with Evelyn Fletcher-Copp in Boston in 1904, and to further study music pedagogy seven years later with Calvin Brainerd Cady (1851-1928), an early advocate for music curricula in American college education.
In 1914, she founded the Cornish School of Music in Seattle, which boasted 600 students by the end of its third year. Local media praised the school’s events, educational programs, and energetic director for their positive influence on Seattle’s artistic life.
Nellie Cornish embraced new and less traditional pedagogical techniques in her own teaching, as well as that of her faculty. She explained, “As three generations of my ancestors were pioneers, I just had to be a pioneer; life always forced me to use my own initiative.”33 She maintained that music and art should enrich everyone’s lives; that creativity should be developed in all people; and that teachers should inspire, encourage and guide a student’s self- expression.
Under her leadership, the school added drama, dance and visual art programs. Cornish encouraged curricular innovation including Dalcroze eurhythmic classes; a radio school (1930s); and the Cornish Soirées, which presented high art and bohemian performances. “Miss Aunt Nellie,” as her students called her, frequently invited groups of students to her home for social gatherings and informal meetings with famous guest artists. Until 1939, she served as the school’s director, advocating creative approaches to teaching and hiring innovative faculty, including both her mentor, Calvin Cady, and the young John Cage. Her work has influenced thousands of music students, including directly the students of Cornish College of the Arts,34 and indirectly, all those who have attended NASM-accredited colleges and universities.
Florence Price (1887-1953) was a true pioneer and trailblazer for her contributions to American music.35 A pianist, composer, organist and educator, her influence, along with African-American male composers such as Nathaniel Dett and William Grant Still, promoted the understanding of the relationship between African-American musical expression and the totality of American music.
Price began piano lessons with her mother, and first performed in public at the age of four. Her first composition was published when she was only 11. She entered the New England Conservatory in 1903 and received her diploma in piano performance and organ in 1906. Later, she returned to Arkansas, her birthplace, to teach at Arkadelphia Academy and Shorter College. In 1927, Price and her family moved to Chicago; there she continued her studies, teaching and performing at the University of Chicago, the American Conservatory, Chicago Teachers College and other schools throughout the Midwest.
Price’s compositions range from intermediate to advanced levels of difficulty, and are recognized as suitable for both teaching and performing. They reflect a thorough grounding in Western European traditions, yet demonstrate immense variety in their original treatment of thematic material, clarity of line and rhythmic content.36 Her compositions, including The Old Boatman, Dances in the Canebreaks, The Gnat and the Bee, At the Cotton Gin and Fantasy Negre, depict a wide variety of subjects. Price’s manuscripts, papers and other artifacts are housed at the University of Arkansas Library in Fayetteville and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. She died in 1953, leaving a legacy of more than 300 compositions.
Myra Hess (1890-1965) has been described as being “among an elite of pianists who approached their instrument as a means of conveying music as a spiritual experience.…Her enlightened playing transformed even what sounded as passage work into significant musical statements.”37 This distinguished English pianist, widely acclaimed for her interpretation of the music of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schumann, was regarded with greatest admiration and affection because of her series of daily lunchtime recitals at the National Gallery in London during its closure throughout World War II (1939-46).
After studying with Julian Pascal and Orlando Morgan at the Guildhall School of Music, the 12-year-old Hess entered the Royal Academy of Music as a scholarship student, and was significantly influenced by her teacher there, Tobias Matthay. Five years later, she made her debut performing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto under Sir Thomas Beecham in Queens Hall, London, and thereafter was perennially identified with this concerto.38 In 1922, she made her American debut in New York, which led to other successful performances throughout the United States and Canada.
For her noontime recitals at the National Gallery in London, Hess performed solo recitals and also collaborated with artists such as Pablo Casals, Pierre Fournier and Joseph Szigeti. She often performed without fee and sacrificed lucrative work in order to organize these concerts, which expressed beauty and hope amidst war and devastation. The series ended only because the art collection returned for public view after the war. In recognition of her service to her country, Myra Hess was made Dame Commander of the British Empire by King George VI in 1941.39
Dame Myra Hess demanded high technical standards of both herself and others, but she believed that the music was more important than the performance. During the early years, she cultivated an intimate chamber music style, but later developed a more powerful performance style. Philosophically, Hess often believed that far too much stress was placed on memorizing, thus endangering a more musical performance. Although possessed of a remarkably secure memory, she once gave this explanation to an audience when she played while reading the score: “I really do know my music, but I know you want me to be comfortable.”40 Slow, meticulous practice, for Hess, was the key to musical preparation.
While illness in her last years limited her concerts, Hess still made occasional broadcasts from the BBC studios. This extraordinary musician died in 1965 in London. Included in her legacy in America are the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, which showcase young solo and ensemble performers.41 Autographs of her piano transcriptions, her concert programs from 1907 to 1962, and the files of the National Gallery Lunchtime Concerts, 1939-46, were bequeathed to the British Museum, and numerous performances are preserved on CDs.
Adele Marcus (1906-95) sustained a remarkable musical career as a performer, lecturer and piano teacher to two generations of outstanding pianists.42 Few could have predicted that this Missouri-born, 13th child of a Russian rabbi would influence thousands of pianists. During her adolescence, Marcus and her sister took piano lessons, formed a piano duo, and purchased a small grand piano with proceeds from their performances in people’s homes.43 After studying with Desider Josef Vecsei and Alexis Kall,44 the16-year-old Marcus became Josef Lhévinne’s pupil for four years, and subsequently his assistant for the next for seven years. She also studied piano for two years with Artur Schnabel in Berlin.
Marcus made her debut at New York’s Town Hall in 1929 as the 1928 winner of the Walter H. Naumburg Foundation Award. During the next decade, she gave solo recitals and performances with orchestras throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. Marcus also worked with Stravinsky in 1940, performing his two piano concerti and introducing his Capriccio with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In 1940, she married Fritz Kitzinger, a vocal coach and conductor; when they moved to Dallas, she gave up a large part of her own work. After Kitzinger’s death, Marcus returned to the New York area and resumed a full-time career.45 When asked why fewer women worked in the arts, she reasoned that it had nothing to do with ability, but rather, the demands of family life and daily living.46
Marcus made teaching the center of her career. She began giving piano lessons in 1939 and taught children exclusively for ten years, a time she considered her apprentice period, one she thought critical to her development as a teacher.47 From 1954 to 1990, Marcus taught at Juilliard; her full teaching load sometimes included Temple University (Philadelphia) students and private students in addition to her Juilliard pupils.48 Her reputation as a piano pedagogue led to her presentation of hundreds of master classes and lectures around the world. She also served on international piano juries (e.g., for the Marguerite Long and Munich International Piano Contests), and taught at the Aspen Musical Festival and the Temple University Festival. In 1980, she established her own summer piano festival in Norway.
Marcus asserted: “teaching is hard work, but in my teaching the end result has to be good. I don’t like poor piano playing.…I never leave students feeling that they can’t do it, but rather that they can’t do it now.”49 She also thought that a good teacher should “not teach by stereotyped formulas”; she should direct her creative prowess “toward handling the potential of each student…and should discuss with the student how the two of them will go about building a road toward development and rewarding progress.”50
Her students have described her passion in helping them to produce beautiful tones, understand a piece’s structure, respond emotionally to music, listen carefully to their playing and develop their own musical interpretation and style.51 Marcus discouraged imitating other players’ performances, stating, “If you want to imitate recordings, study with RCA Victor.”52 Although known for her wit, Marcus advised students quite seriously; she often discouraged them from reaching singularly for a performing career, recognizing the severe demands of becoming concert artists.53 Once asked about the value of debuts, she answered, “It’s one thing to launch a ship. It’s another to make it sail.”54
Apparently many of her students did launch successful careers, including Horacio Gutierrez, Byron Janis, Jeffrey Swann, Santiago Rodriguez and Neil Sedaka.55 In 1997, 17 of her students gave a concert inaugurating the Adele Marcus Foundation, which awards scholarships to promising young pianists. Today, a significant number of her former students hold faculty positions at American colleges and universities.
The American pianist, Rosalyn Tureck (1914- ), is one of the most widely acclaimed artists of our time. She is deeply devoted to the music of Bach, but not to the exclusion of music by other composers.56 Tureck described a performer’s contribution as follows:
[M]usic, the most abstract and intangible of the arts, does not lend itself to the notation of many nuances of phrasing, dynamics, harmonic implications, and sense of form, nor of the feeling about all these things, which an artist expresses in actual performance....[A]s long as one remains human there will remain nuances of all sorts and as long as music remains an art and not a mechanical reproduction, there will always be more than one possibility in details…all of them good.57
After making recital and orchestral debuts in Chicago while still very young, Tureck later studied with Olga Samaroff at the Juilliard School of Music, graduating in 1935. A New York debut, followed by a much-praised series of Bach recitals (in which she performed all 48 preludes and fugues and the Goldberg Variations), helped to establish her as a Bach specialist. Her playing is distinguished by clarity of line, sharply defined rhythms and considerable intensity of feeling.58 Perhaps due to Tureck’s notably small but flexible hands, she described her technique as basically a finger technique.59
Tureck lectured and taught at Juilliard, Columbia University, Oxford University and other schools, providing her arenas in which to widely disseminate her philosophy. In addition to her teaching, she has published numerous articles and a three-volume anthology, Introduction to the Performance of Bach, and has recorded all of Bach’s major keyboard works. The recipient of five honorary degrees, Tureck remains actively involved in prominent international programs, which seriously influence the lives of innovative thinkers. The Tureck Bach Research Foundation, organized in 1993, is an autonomous charitable organization devoted to the presentation of research by distinguished creative minds in the sciences, the humanities, and the arts, with significant attention to expanding musical horizons.60 Boston University currently houses Tureck’s papers and manuscripts, while tapes of her lectures, recitals and master classes are housed in the New York Public Library Archives at Lincoln Center.
With her accomplishments as a performer, teacher, lecturer, author and founder of two international professional music organizations, Carola Grindea has made a significant impact on the field of piano teaching. A graduate of the Academy of Music in Bucharest, Grindea moved to London in 1939, and then studied piano with Tobias Matthay from 1941 to1943. From 1950 to 1967, she taught piano at the French Lycee in London, and in 1968, assumed a professorship at the Guildhall School of Music and Dance, where she taught for 21 years.61 Grindea has performed solo and chamber music concerts in England and Europe, and published several books,62 yet her biggest influence on the field has come from the two international professional societies she founded: the European Piano Teachers Association (EPTA), and the International Society for Study of Tension in Performance (ISSTIP).
Founded in 1978, EPTA now boasts chapters in 38 European countries. Through its conferences, workshops, recitals, master classes and publications, EPTA has directly affected teaching and performing standards. As a writer for the London Times observed,
The rising standards in music teaching must also be attributed in part to the work of the professional associations…the European Piano Teachers Association. The latter has been running for only three years but has already done much, through its journal and its meetings, to give teachers information and support. Rising standards here inevitably lead to rising standards among pupils: of those 39,000 who took grade 1 in 1979, more than 12 per cent passed with distinction, compared with less than 9 per cent in 1975.63
Grindea observed that the “teachers attending [EPTA] conferences absorbed new ideas, new approaches.” They “had the opportunity to listen to internationally acclaimed masters performing and teaching the piano repertoire and this resulted in enormous strides in the standard of teaching—thus of performance.”64 EPTA, therefore, has not only promoted interaction among European pianists and teachers, but also between its members and those of other professional music organizations throughout the world. Additionally, EPTA has established affiliations with important piano teacher associations in Japan, Hong Kong, Latin America, Canada and the United States, and has hundreds of Associate Members (individual pianists and teachers) who live outside of Europe. The founding of the Piano Journal, first published by the United Kingdom chapter of EPTA in 1980, encouraged further interaction among pianists and piano teachers throughout the world. Grindea, who edited this journal until 1996, noted that “important articles on teaching published by the journal were of great value to teachers in remote areas, in small towns in India, Pakistan, African states, or in countries which did not allow communication with the West.” She noted that EPTA arranged “shipments of music, books, etc. to these teachers” and assisted in obtaining “grants or scholarships for some of the teachers and their pupils to attend [EPTA] conferences and courses in the UK and in other European countries.”65
The work of the International Society for Study of Tension in Performance (also founded by Grindea) has helped many pianists and other musicians overcome performance problems and injuries related to physical and psychological tension. Grindea feels that “total musical communication” can happen only when the body and mind are free of any negative tensions, and muscles and breathing can function unhindered.66 She described her “Grindea Technique” as follows:
This technique brings perfect alignment of head, neck and back by correcting any imbalance in the body and its stance; it allows freedom of breathing—through long, slow exhalations—the body reaching an ideal state of balance (not relaxation). The musician experiences an exhilarating sensation of lightness, of almost floating, and there is stillness in the body and in the mind. This is the state of body and mind when a performer experiences…“peak performance.”67
Grindea’s work for ISSTIP, and her books, lectures, workshops, and videotapes that deal with tension have not only helped musicians learn how to overcome tension-related problems, but have also encouraged music teachers to understand how to train future generations of “healthy” performers. Grindea, called “the most famous piano teacher in England,”68 is internationally renowned for her work in raising standards in the fields of piano teaching and performing.
The British and American female musicians profiled in this article served not only as role models for other women of their day. They also helped improve the chances of success for future generations of women musicians.
1. Mary Burgan, “Heroines at the Piano: Women and Music in Nineteenth-Century Fiction,” Victorian Studies 30/1 (Fall 1986): 51.
2. Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism: The Woman and the City, 1800-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 99.
3. Musical World (April 11, 1839): 222.
4. Timotheus, “Vocal Science—of the Chamber,” Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review 2/6 (1820): 131.
5. Deborah Rohr, “Women and the Music Profession in Victorian England: The Royal Society of Female Musicians, 1839-1866,” The Journal of Musicological Research 18/4 (1999): 312.
6. Cyril Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth Century: A Social History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 235.
7. Rohr, “Women and the Music Profession,” 310-11.
8. Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain, 110-20.
9. “Who’s Who Among Women Pianists and Violinists,” The Etude 27/9 (September 1909): 628.
10. Judith Tick, “Passed Away is the Piano Girl: Changes in American Musical Life, 1870- 1900” in Women Making Music—The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, ed. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 326-27.
11. Frances E. Clarke, “Music as a Vocation for Women,” The Etude 36/11 (November 1918): 696.
12. Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain, 157.
13. Ibid., 158.
14. Ibid.
15. Fanny Morris Smith, “Women as Tuners,” The Etude 18/1 (January 1900): 26.
16. Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos—A Social History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 294.
17. Amy Fay, Music Study in Germany (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1880; reprint, New York: Dover, 1965).
18. Amy Fay, “The Woman Music Teacher in a Large City,” The Etude 20/1 (January 1902): 14.
19. The activities of this group are documented in an excellent article by Deborah Rohr (see note 5): 307-46.
20. A. J. Ochesner, “The Story of America’s Largest Musical Organization, The National Federation of Music Clubs,” The Etude 36/11 (November 1918): 701-02.
21. Tonic Sol-Fa, developed in England around 1840 by Elizabeth Glover and later improved by Rev. John Curwen, became the accepted method for teaching music reading in British schools; it gained limited acceptance in the United States in the 1880s. This movable-do system presented tones of a scale with a tone ladder or vertical modulator. Its staffless notation used Sol-Fa syllables; measures separated by bar lines; and meter and rhythm indicated by a system of dots, commas and dashes. Daniel Batchellor and Thomas Charmbury wrote an American version of the system, The Tonic Sol-Fa Music Course (New York: Oliver Ditson, 1884).
22. Mrs. Curwen’s Pianoforte Method, which includes the first book entitled The Child Pianist (1885), is a work with 12 graded parts, Teacher’s Guide for Steps I to VI, Pupils Books: Exercises and Illustrative Duets, C-Clef Exercise Book, Illustrative Tunes, Music Slates, Staff Cards, and Certificate Cards for Step Exams. Curwen Press of London issued all publications.
23. Examinations in Mrs. Curwen’s method for teachers and pupils were held in February and July under the auspices of the Curwen Method Office in London. Training classes were advertised regularly for “Mrs. Curwen’s Pianoforte Method: Ear Training and Sight Singing from Sol-Fa and Staff.” Herbert Simon, Song and Words: A History of the Curwen Press (London: George All and Unwin, Ltd., 1973), 71.
24. Curwen prescribed 12 teaching maxims: (1) Teach the easy before the difficult; (2) Teach the thing before the sign; (3) Teach one fact at a time and the commonest fact first; (4) Leave out all exceptions and anomalies until the general rule is understood; (5) Teach the concrete before the abstract; (6) In developing physical skill, teach the elemental before the compound. And do one thing at a time; (7) Proceed from the known to the related unknown; (8) Let each lesson, as far as possible, rise out of that which goes before, and lead up to that which follow; (9) Call in the understanding to help the skill at every step; (10) Let the first impression be a correct one: leave no room for misunderstanding; (11) Never tell a pupil anything that you can help him to discover for himself; and (12) Let the pupil, as soon as possible, derive some pleasure from his knowledge. Interest can only be kept up by a sense of growth in independent power.
25. Mrs. J. Spencer Curwen, Psychology Applied to Music Teaching (London: Curwen Press, 1920), 294.
26. Ibid., 295.
27. Oscar Thompson, “Kate S. Chittenden,” in The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 5th ed. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1975), 952; and “Kate S. Chittenden Honored On Eightieth Birthday,” Musical Courier 113/16 (April 18, 1936): 24.
28. Each author issued subsequent books of the method separately. See Albert Ross Parson and Kate Chittenden, The Synthetic Method for the Piano-Forte: A Systematic Development of Notation, Rhythm, Touch, Technic, Melody, Harmony, and Form, 3 vols. (New York: Silver, Burdett & Co., 1892); The Synthetic Catechism. Five Hundred Thirty-eight Questions and Answers for Use in Connection with The Synthetic Method for the Piano-Forte (New York: Silver, Burdett & Co., 1894); Dispersed Harmonies (New York: Schroder & Gunther, 1900); and Manuscript Music Book (New York: Silver, Burdett and Co., ca. 1900).
29. The Calvary Hymnal (Silver, Burdett & Co., Boston, Mass., 1891) includes six of her hymns: “Hail! Glorious Morn, the Earth Resounds” (p. 73); “We May Not Climb the Heavenly Steps” (p. 96); “Christian, Seek Not Yet Repose” (p. 151); “Purer Yet and Purer” (p. 164); “How Good Thou Art to Me!” (p. 178); “God Made Me for Himself” (p. 185); and “Take My Life and Let It Be” (p. 195).
30. Chittenden delivered a paper at a session given by the Women’s Department of the M.T.N.A. See “Women’s Department,” Etude 15/7 (July 1897): 191, and 27/8 (August 1909): 516.
31. The middle name of Nellie Cornish, Centennial, marked the year of her birth, the centennial year of the United States.
32. For more information on the life of Cornish, see Nellie C. Cornish, Miss Aunt Nellie: The Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964); Mildred Tanner Andrews, Woman’s Place: A Guide to Seattle and King County History (Seattle: Gemil Press, 1994), 269-72; Richard Berner, Seattle 1921-1940: From Boom to Bust (Seattle: Charles Press, 1992), 247-52, 256; Berner, Seattle 1900-1920: From Boomtown, Urban Turbulence, to Restoration (Seattle: Charles Press, 1991), 92-94 and the website of Cornish College of the Arts, www.cornish.edu.
33. Cornish, 35.
34. Over the school’s 90-year history, its name has changed to reflect the expansion of curricula: from the Cornish School of Music, to Cornish School of Allied Arts (1920s), to Cornish School of Allied Arts (1940s), to Cornish Institute and finally to Cornish College of the Arts (1986). In 1977 it became a fully accredited college, offering Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees.
35. Helen Hill, Music of Black Women Composers (Bryn Mawr, PA: Hildegard Publishing Company, 1992), 5.
36. “Althea Waites Performs the Music of Florence Price” (cassette tape insert), (Lomita, CA: Cambria Records, 1987).
37. Allen Evans, “Myra Hess” (Arbiter Records website, October 15, 2001: http:// www.arbiterrecords.com/museum/hess.html, 1998).
38. Ibid.
39. William S. Mann, “Myra Hess” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 8, ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 534.
40. Joyce Grenfell, “Julia M.” in Myra Hess by Her Friends, ed. Denise Lassimonne and Howard Ferguson (London: H. Hamilton, 1966), 59.
41. Website of the Chicago Cultural Center, October 15, 2001: http://www.ci.chi.il.us/ Tourism/CulturalCenter/music.html. These concerts are founded by Al Booth and organized by the International Music Foundation at the Chicago Cultural Center.
42. Bernard Holland, “Adele Marcus Is Dead at 89; Taught Many Notable Pianists,” New York Times 144 (May 5, 2001): B7. Ellen Highstein, “Adele Marcus” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, ed. Stanley Sadie. Dean Elder, “Memories of Adele Marcus,” Clavier 34 (July/August 1995): 27-32.
43. Marcus, who considered herself an “omnivorous reader” in several languages, was primarily self-taught in academics, having attended only one year of high school. Ylda Novik, “On Being a Musician and a Woman: A Conversation with Adele Marcus, Claudette Sorel, and Anne Koscielny,” Clavier 15/2 (February 1976): 13.
44. Vecsei was a recording artist for the Duo-Art Piano Roll; Kall (Kahl) lived in Los Angeles—Stravinsky frequently stayed at his home.
45. Novik, 12.
46. Novik, 10-11.
47. James W. Bastien, “An Interview with Adele Marcus,” How to Teach Piano Successfully (San Diego, CA: Kjos, 1977), 451.
48. Raymond Ericson, “A Teacher Takes Time Out to Play,” New York Times (January 5, 1975): II-17.
49. Dean Elder, “Adele Marcus: World Class Teacher,” Clavier 22/5 (May/June 1983): 15. Marcus interviewed other pianists in Great Pianists Speak with Adele Marcus (Neptune, NJ: Paganiniana Publications, 1979), and her interviews appeared in a number of articles and books, including James W. Bastien, “An Interview with Adele Marcus,” How to Teach Piano Successfully (San Diego, CA: Kjos, 1977), 447-52; Dean Elder, “Adele Marcus on Technique,” Clavier 11/9 (Sept. 1972): 12-23, 25-29; Dean Elder, “Adele Marcus: World Class Teacher,” Clavier 22/5 (May/June 1983): 12-16; Ylda Novik, “On Being a Musician and a Woman: A Conversation with Adele Marcus, Claudette Sorel, and Anne Koscielny,” Clavier 15/2 (February 1976): 10-13.
50. Bastien, 451.
51. Bastien, 448.
52. Cy Coleman et al., Piano & Keyboard no. 177 (November/December 1995): 24-30.
53. Bastien, 451.
54. Nadine Brozan, “Chronicle,” The New York Times (February 20, 1997): D22.
55. Other prominent students of Adele Marcus include Edward Aldwell, Thomas Schumacher, Stephen Hough, Cy Coleman, Panayis Lyras, Jon Kimura Parker, Ken Noda, Peter Orth, Norman Krieger, Jeffrey Biegel, Augustin Anievas and Jennifer Hayghe.
56. Jerry Siepmann, “Rosalyn Tureck—Short Biographical Notes,” Deutsche Grammophon, CD ROM insert, http://www.connectedglobe.com/tbf.tureck2.htm.
57. Rosalyn Tureck, Introduction to the Performance of Bach, Book 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 3.
58. Howard Schott, “Rosalyn Tureck” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 19, ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 260.
59. Siepmann, “Rosalyn Tureck—Short Biographical Notes.”
60. Connected Globe Website (see note 56).
61. “Grindea, Carola” in Who’s Who in the World 4 (Chicago: Marquis Who’s Who, 1978-79), 378.
62. Grindea’s books include Tensions in the Performance of Music: A Symposium (London: Kahn & Averill, and White Plains, N.Y.: Pro/Am Music Resources, 1995); The First Ten Lessons: a New Approach to Piano Teaching (London: Oxford University Press, 1964); and We Make Our Own Music (London: Kahn & Averill, and New York: Taplinger, 1982). Grindea also has two videos on the topic of tension in performance (http://www.musiciansgallery.com/ start/health/grindea_technique.htm), and is working on a new booklet, A Healthy Piano Technique, to be published by Theodore Presser.
63. Paul Griffiths, “Keyboard Instruments—Cheap Foreign Imports Challenge British Piano Makers,” The Times (February 2, 1981): 12.
64. Carola Grindea, interview by author (Connie Arrau Sturm), October 6, 2001.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Carola Grindea, “The Phenomenon of ‘Peak Experience’ or ‘The Flow’ in Musical Performance,” Piano Journal 22/65 (Summer 2001): 30.
68. Ysenda Maxtone, “The Piano Lesson,” Sunday Telegraph (January 16, 1994): 1.
Debra Brubaker Burns earned a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, and other degrees from Ohio University and Oral Roberts University. She recently received a Telecommunication and Networking Technology Certificate from San Jose State University. Her education has focused on music education, piano pedagogy, piano performance and web-based learning. For the past ten years, she has been researching the history of piano methods and pedagogy in the United States.
Anita Jackson earned M.Mus and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern University and a certificate from the Institute for Russian Musical Culture in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her articles have been published in The Journal of Research in Music Education, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, The American Music Teacher and the Mississippi Music Educator. Jackson is a professor of music at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.
Connie Arrau Sturm, Ph.D., NCTM, coordinates graduate and undergraduate programs in piano pedagogy at West Virginia University. The author/clinician of more than 65 publications/presentations, she won the MTNA American Music Teacher Article of the Year Award for 1998. Dr. Sturm has given presentations on women’s contributions to piano pedagogy at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, and at the European Piano Teachers Association (UK chapter) conference in Oxford, England.