I Forced Myself to Play 100 Years of Piano Exercises

0:00I spent a good chunk of the summer

0:02doing some long overdue housecleaning,

0:04and buried in my basement,

0:05I found this box filled with old piano

0:08exercise books.

0:09I inherited this box 20 years ago and never actually bothered

0:12looking through it.

0:17this one was

0:18heavily used by the previous owner.

0:21pen and pencil markings, gold stickers,

0:26This one is old.

0:33This one's nicknamed

0:34the Child's Hanon,

0:36which I have some questions about.

0:40red and blue and silver stickers,

0:43gold stickers.

0:45I don't know if that means

0:46they did a good job,

0:47or if it's the one they're supposed to work on.

0:49Exercises were never a huge part

0:51of my own piano training,

0:53and I was unfamiliar

0:54with a lot of the names in here.

0:55Loeschhorn, Loeschhorn, Loeschhorn...

1:00So I thought I'd finally open them up

1:03and see what they're like.

1:05Schmitt.

1:06Preparatory exercises.

1:12The instructions say

1:13to repeat each exercise

1:15at least 10 or 20 times.

1:17Wait, is 15 too many or not enough?

1:20Increase the tempo gradually

1:22as the fingers acquire the necessary

1:24strength and flexibility.

1:31This keyboard is not going to... Fortunately, I've got a guy upstairs.

1:40The instructions

1:40continue:

1:41Practice each hand separately,

1:44then both together.

1:45Always keeping the hands

1:47steady and quiet.

1:49Schmitt appears to have just spent

1:51several pages notating every permutation

1:55of a five-finger scale set.

1:59Schmitt’s

1:59exercises are single-celled

2:01organisms, spinning in circles until they reproduce

2:04and transpose step by step

2:05across the chromatic spectrum.

2:07And there's 213 of these microbes.

2:10213 exercises containing

2:12234 total bars, repeated 20 times

2:14across all 24 keys, equals

2:17112,320 iterations of Schmitt,

2:21at which

2:22at an average of 64 note beats

2:23per minute, takes 124.8 hours,

2:26or just over five days playing nonstop.

2:29Oh, and if you miss a note,

2:30you should probably start over.

2:34All that

2:34Schmitt really gets you ready for showtime.

2:37The exercises of Carl Czerny, a name

2:39that has become synonymous

2:40with piano boredom.

2:42This is just selected Czerny studies.

2:44So how many are in here?

2:4670 something of

2:48Czerny's 100 million

2:51piano exercises.

2:57Hey! Why'd you stop?

2:59Oh, right.

3:02After repositioning Benji's wristbands,

3:05I chose to keep the pencil

3:06bite block in.

3:08I'm told Leon

3:09Fleisher recommended it to his students

3:10to control jaw tension.

3:16The bunny sticker on this page

3:18seems to indicate the previous owner's

3:20predilection for what's called exercise ten.

3:22In this particular volume of selected Czerny studies,

3:25Is the bunny sticker meant to be

3:26an expressive indication

3:28added by the teacher? Left

3:29hand should hop like a bunny.

3:37On the page,

3:38before, we find a flamingo

3:40perched atop a right hand

3:41five-finger pattern

3:42frequented by our little John or Jane Doe.

3:47You know, there's

3:47nothing particularly flamingo-like about this one.

3:50So I'm just gonna assume those stickers

3:52are there to help the medicine go down.

3:54the same anonymous mid-century

3:56piano student was prescribed

3:57other children's chewable

3:58besides Czerny.

4:00Like Duvernoy.

4:01Opus 176.

4:03This one's got a big spider next to it.

4:05Benji, play the tarantella.

4:10Many of these musical children's

4:11vitamins come encased in the pale yellow

4:14and neoclassical trim

4:15of the iconic Schirmer edition.

4:17The Rx bottles of 20th century North American

4:20youth piano instruction.

4:21The Easiest Studies

4:23in Velocity of Gurlitt,

4:24Op. 83, are here prescribed once daily,

4:28sometimes split-dosed. Okay, Benji,

4:32it's time to gargle your Gurlitt.

4:39Usage instructions

4:40inform the patient to practice

4:41very slowly at first.

4:43Afterwards, gradually accelerate

4:45the tempo.

4:46Faster. Move

4:51Come on!

4:54Pick up the pace.

4:57In addition to pediatric

4:58materials, Gurlitt

4:59also manufactured larger

5:01adult swallowables, such as his Op.

5:0485, Studies on Scales and Arpeggios.

5:07It's recommended number 18 be taken

5:09just half on any one day.

5:11Stop there.

5:13This alternative Schirmer

5:15cover actually kind of

5:16looks like the classic

5:17orange prescription bottles.

5:19It's labeled 106 Greatest Piano Studies.

5:22And boy, what a lineup!

5:25Names.

5:25Brands like Czerny, Gurlitt,

5:27Hanon and Burgmüller are all there,

5:30as are lesser-known étude manufacturers

5:32such as Streabbog

5:36and Wohlfahrt.

5:40And two of my favorites,

5:41Ludwig Schytte and Gustav Damm,

5:44seemingly named after

5:45the exclamations their etudes

5:47elicit during practice.

5:57The collection is filled

5:58with several more advanced manuals

6:00dedicated to targeted technical training,

6:02with an emphasis on octaves.

6:05is The School of Octave

6:06Playing by Kullak.

6:08According to the American pianist Amy Fay,

6:11who studied with him in the 1870s,

6:13Kullak was a kind of autocrat

6:15who preached repetition

6:16in practice and nagged

6:17you until you got it right.

6:20Like:

6:21Gleichmäßig

6:22spielen!

6:24Gleichmäßig.

6:24Nein,

6:25noch einmal. Nein.

6:28Noch einmal.

6:36Falscher Ton! Falscher Ton!

6:40Sie sind zu schwach!

6:45Falscher Ton!

6:47Some of the books have precise dates

6:49penciled in by the teacher,

6:50allowing us to place these piano lessons

6:53in historical context.

6:54May 7th, 1968.

6:56The very week French students

6:58and workers mobilized a general strike

7:00turned outright rebellion

7:01against the establishment,

7:03declaring all power to the imagination.

7:05a Pennsylvania preteen drills James H.

7:07Rogers, Octave Velocity No. 11,

7:10Resolute.

7:16October 1st, 1968.

7:18A week after Vladimir

7:19Horowitz exposed his unorthodox

7:21octave technique on national television,

7:23local syndicates returned

7:25to regularly scheduled programming.

7:32And if our unknown piano student

7:34practices the creepy crawly

7:35chromatic octaves of Rogers No. 12,

7:37he's allowed to stay up late

7:39to watch reruns of his favorite show,

7:41The Twilight Zone.

7:43You unlock this door

7:43with the key of imagination.

7:45Beyond it is a dimension of sound.

7:48You can use four on the black keys.

7:51Oh, by the way, Benji and I went through

7:53way more of this box than I could

7:55possibly fit in this video,

7:56so we're putting a lot of that

7:57extra stuff that didn't make the cut over

7:59on my Patreon.

8:00Plus, I show all of the research

8:02I did for this video. And

8:04Gold tier members get my weekly video commentaries

8:06where I practice and discuss lots of music, including increasingly

8:08more Beethoven as 2027 approaches.

8:09If you're interested, link below.

8:11The more I dug through the box,

8:13the more I realized I wasn't just looking

8:15at a bunch of old exercise books

8:17I had in my possession.

8:18A representative cross-section of 19th century

8:21European keyboard training

8:22methods as experienced by the 20th century

8:25American piano student.

8:26They range from innocent

8:27beginner studies like Köhler

8:29to mildly interesting practice

8:31pieces like Heller to demoralizing

8:34drill books like Wieck,

8:37Clara Schumann's

8:38mean piano teacher dad.

8:42One more wrong note out of you,

8:43and you're going to bed without supper.

8:45What appears to be

8:46the oldest book in the collection

8:48is this pre-World War I

8:50caramel-colored, cardstock-

8:51bound edition of Isidor

8:53Philipp's Preparatory School of Technique.

8:55Just above exercise 13

8:57is the penciled-in date

8:59of December 20th, 1918.

9:02The Great War was over.

9:04Allied troops had entered

9:05the Rhineland, and American piano students

9:08had returned to their prewar

9:09practice regimens.

9:11Philipp's drill manual is very specific.

9:14Press down silently

9:15The keys represented by the whole notes

9:17then sustain through each exercise.

9:19The sergeant stipulates

9:20that each exercise should be repeated

9:23Repeat. And beside exercise four...

9:31This sustained-note

9:32technique is the linchpin

9:34of Philipp's most famous manual,

9:37Exercices de tenue,

9:40Exercises in Sustained Notes

9:42for Developing the Evenness of Fingers,

9:45which features

9:46detailed drill commands to be applied

9:48serially to an exhaustive

9:50five-note chord catalog. Attention!

9:54C-sharp half-diminished, series 2.11B.

9:57Non legato. Hut!

10:00Light hand.

10:01Supple hand.

10:03More force,

10:05more speed.

10:07Step up.

10:08I should mention that Philipp

10:10was widely respected and taught

10:12some of the great musicians of the 20th century.

10:13And I've also found that

10:15when used sparingly,

10:16this diminished seventh

10:18exercise can absolutely be helpful.

10:20in stabilizing the palm

10:22and preparing your hand

10:23for whatever piano gymnastics you want to do.

10:26but when applied routinely

10:27and systematically,

10:28it can turn the piano

10:29into an instrument of torture.

10:32Come on, son.

10:32Gotta power through it.

10:33No pain, no gain.

10:35One of the pioneers of such sustained-

10:38note torture techniques was,

10:4160 Progressive Exercises

10:42were billed as a kind of

10:44finger calisthenics,

10:45but earned a reputation

10:47for causing more injuries

10:48than they prevented.

10:50just look absolutely miserable.

10:52One of my Juilliard teachers, Jerome Lowenthal,

10:54once said, “Pischna is poison,”

10:56which is both good cautionary advice

10:59and the beginning of a haiku.

11:06It's okay, Benji, just keep it slow.

11:09Lento.

11:10Fortissimo, though.

11:13Yeah, fortissimo.

11:1912 makes me want to die.

11:21Benji.

11:22Play 12.

11:29This one's

11:29sort of like doing this thing.

11:34These are hard just to look at.

11:36Now, I never practiced.

11:38But growing up, I did own

11:40this book called The Little Pischna,

11:43which

11:44I guess is meant to prepare you for Big Pischna.

11:46The Little Pischna

11:48sounds about as inviting as the Junior

11:51Waterboarding Club.

11:53And in a similar vein.

11:55highways in a land

11:57which is nicknamed the Child's Hanon.

12:00which is odd because the first exercise actually

12:03looks more awkward than the first adult Hanon.

12:06If Philipp and Pischna are manuals

12:08of torture, Hanon’s

12:09The Virtuoso Pianist is

12:11a directory of tedium.

12:12Page after page of drying

12:14Paint a slightly off

12:16white coat of C major.

12:17This is my Hanon book,

12:19which in college I spent an entire summer

12:22drilling in different articulations

12:24and incremental metronome markings.

12:27Hanon No. 1 is alluringly

12:29simple: a five-finger pattern that leaves a gap

12:31for the thumb to step up

12:33and is accessible to any novice.

12:35the same pattern in Gurlitt, Op.

12:3785 number three,

12:38published a few years after Hanon,

12:41as well as Schmitt, Op. 16,

12:43published a half century beforehand.

12:46What is unique to Hanon

12:48is the mesmerizing monotony of parallel

12:51lines spiraling upward

12:52like a barber's pole.

12:54Hanon's popularity

12:55can be traced back to 1878,

12:57when the virtuoso pianist

12:59somehow won a silver medal

13:00at the Paris Exposition.

13:02It was then quickly adopted

13:04by conservatories around Europe and Russia,

13:06and eventually imported

13:07to the United States.

13:09Hanon exercises

13:10were even endorsed by Rachmaninoff.

13:12in a 1910 interview

13:14published by The Etude magazine.

13:15Okay, but if Rachmaninoff drove

13:18his Cadillac off a cliff,

13:19would you also drive off a cliff?

13:21The Virtuoso Pianist

13:23culminates in six pages of tremolo,

13:26which pianist and writer Walter Ponce

13:28calls the ideal

13:29background music for a film showing an

13:31electric chair execution.

13:39Ponce has this book

13:40called Tyranny of Tradition in Piano Teaching,

13:44which is both tragic and hilarious,

13:47The book's worth it for the roast of Hanon alone.

13:50But also Ponce traces these

13:52vapid, soul-crushing exercises

13:55back to Clementi, numbers 16

13:58and 17 from his Gradus ad Parnassum,

14:01which means something

14:02like Steps to Mastery.

14:03But for Clementi, they were more like steps

14:06to sell more sheet music.

14:07According to Ponce.

14:08In the age of booming

14:10domestic piano sales

14:11and lots of challenging new music on the market.

14:14there was born a new kind of snake-oil salesman,

14:17who devised countless

14:18opuses of cockamamie keyboard drills

14:20that could have been composed by a housecat.

14:23Introducing Laude,

14:24The Magnificent Maestro

14:26in 69 progressive keyboard contortions.

14:28Exercise one.

14:30Remove the left index finger and tap each

14:32white key at least 10 or 1000 times.

14:39As easy as it is

14:40to make fun of piano exercises,

14:43don't they kind of work?

14:45least from what I've observed,

14:46successful concert

14:47pianist like to play down

14:49all the endless hours

14:50of toil and repetition they endured as kids.

14:52But the fact is, most of them

14:54practiced fanatically

14:55at some point in their lives,

14:57just to develop the strength and coordination,

14:59to execute the insane

15:01demands of the virtuoso

15:02piano repertoire.

15:07And sure,

15:07there was a tradition from Cramer through Chopin

15:10and Liszt of composing musically

15:11rewarding études.

15:12But at least according

15:14to Hans von Bülow.

15:15the road to get there still goes through

15:17Schmitt and Czerny.

15:20This one goes faster than that.

15:22Actually, I think Benji might play Cramer

15:24according to Whole Beat Metronome Practice.

15:26you going to play all your Chopin

15:27Etudes that slow too?

15:29And of course, you can always try

15:30to play dry exercises

15:32with musical intent,

15:36or you can skip the exercises

15:38and just build your chops

15:39by practicing real music.

15:43But either way.

15:44you're going to be repeating

15:45some more or less abstract

15:46figurations over and over

15:48and over again,

15:50if you're practicing everything

15:51in maximally healthy ways,

15:52guided by noble musical goals,

15:55the sheer repetition required

15:57for most students to achieve

15:58a virtuoso technique, not to mention

16:00the psychological pressure to stand up alone

16:02in front of an audience and perform

16:04your stunt, has probably sent

16:06generations of kids fleeing the piano

16:08and wishing

16:09their years of lessons could be wiped from their memories.

16:11island. Four years of piano lessons.

16:13Yeah, it looks pretty faded.

16:14You know what?

16:15Save “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul.”

16:17Get rid of the rest.

16:18especially in America.

16:19Piano lessons have weeded out

16:20millions of Rileys

16:22in order to discover the occasional Tom the Cat,

16:25that left a huge void

16:26in between that could have been filled with,

16:29I don't know, widespread

16:30amateur music making just to

16:32throw an idea out there.

16:38Most of those who do survive the gauntlet

16:40hardly end up playing with

16:41Tom's grand manner,

16:43having sacrificed some amount

16:44of their artistic potential

16:46in pursuit of mechanical perfection,

16:48So maybe the real culprit wasn't

16:50Schmitt or Czerny or Hanon

16:53or any of the teachers turned to drill sergeants

16:56who administered them.

16:57Maybe it's the assumption that lies behind all of them

16:59that music lessons are ultimately

17:01a kind of optimization process en route

17:03to becoming a concert virtuoso.

17:08And once that becomes the goal,

17:10all of this starts

17:12to make a lot more sense.

17:14that raises the bigger question

17:15of how the virtuoso became our model

17:18for what a pianist should be in the first place.

17:20And if you're going to go there,

17:22you can't fail to mention

17:23the rise of industrial capitalism, alienation of labor,

17:26deskilling and fragmentation of musicianship, the death of God

17:27and the sacralization of the musical work,

17:29the ideology of genius and

17:30the emergence of specialized performers

17:31to reproduce a hegemonic canon, valorization of instrumental music,

17:34the intersection of show business and relentless escalation of pianistic

17:36difficulty alongside a society increasingly obsessed

17:38with technological progress, speed, power, precision

17:40and the conquest of previously unthinkable limits,

17:42the role of commercial playback technologies

17:44in reinforcing an unattainable idea of technical perfection,

17:46music education as disciplinary apparatus.

17:48the conservatory as factory,

17:49the museumification of classical music,

17:51the divide between artists and audience,

17:52music appreciation a status symbol,

17:53concert attendance, conspicuous consumption,

17:55never ending quest for meaning, for transcendence,

17:57to belong to something bigger than you

17:58amid an unprecedented condition

17:59of generalized social isolation,

18:00amid the total annihilation of the human self

18:02the face of artificial general intelligence.

18:03Dear God, why can't we all just

18:05join hands and sing chorales and quodlibets lovingly together

18:07restore the collective dignity of the human...

18:10Benji!

18:13Benji!