After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance
by Kenneth Hamilton
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kenneth HamiltonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-12-07
ISBN: 0195178262
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance
Book Review: How we got here from there
Summary: 5 Stars
In its relatively concise length, Kenneth Hamilton's book deals with several related questions concerning the history of piano performance in a remarkably comprehensive fashion. Beginning with the broadest questions, such as where and for whom pianists customarily performed in the nineteenth century, the author, himself a distinguished pianist, continues with issues such as the length and composition of concert programs, the role of improvisation in public performances, memorization, and the eternal problem of fidelity to the printed score and respect for the composer's intentions.
It is inevitable that the figure of Franz Liszt would take center stage in a book that asks whether there was indeed a "golden age" of pianism. One of the singular virtues of Hamilton's work is that the great pianist and composer is presented as the complex, multifaceted figure he was. His public performances were very different from piano recitals today, with assisting artists, improvisation, so-called "preluding," and above all, vocal and frequently riotous audience expression. In fact, they were quite a bit like popular music concerts are today. How we got from those lively, frequently lightweight and sloppy, but exciting events to the solemn, reverent affairs that piano concerts are today is a central, though hardly the only, topic of Hamilton's discourse. He shows us that although something has arguably been gained by this transformation, something also has been lost.
There are some tedious stretches in the book--it is difficult to enliven, for example, a chapter that is basically a recitation of concert programs played by this or that pianist--and not all of the author's observations are fresh. It is hardly news to read, for example, that modern recording technology has altered both performer's attitudes toward and audiences' expectations of live performance. Nevertheless, Hamilton's perception and frequent sharp wit serve to make "After the Golden Age" an engaging and entertaining read, despite copious footnotes and documentation.
Summary of After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance
Kenneth Hamilton's book engagingly and lucidly dissects the oft-invoked myth of a Great Tradition, or Golden Age of Pianism. It is written both for players and for members of their audiences by a pianist who believes that scholarship and readability can go hand-in-hand. Hamilton discusses in meticulous yet lively detail the performance-style of great pianists from Liszt to Paderewski, and delves into the far-from-inevitable development of the piano recital. He entertainingly recounts how classical concerts evolved from exuberant, sometimes riotous events into the formal, funereal trotting out of predictable pieces they can be today, how an often unhistorical "respect for the score" began to replace pianists' improvisations and adaptations, and how the clinical custom arose that an audience should be seen and not heard.Pianists will find food for thought here on their repertoire and the traditions of its performance. Hamilton chronicles why pianists of the past did not always begin a piece with the first note of the score, nor end with the last. He emphasizes that anxiety over wrong notes is a relatively recent psychosis, and playing entirely from memory a relatively recent requirement.
Audiences will encounter a vivid account of how drastically different are the recitals they attend compared to concerts of the past, and how their own role has diminished from noisily active participants in the concert experience to passive recipients of artistic benediction from the stage. They will discover when cowed listeners eventually stopped applauding between movements, and why they stopped talking loudly during them.
The book's broad message proclaims that there is nothing divinely ordained about our own concert-practices, programming and piano-performance styles. Many aspects of the modern approach are unhistorical-some laudable, some merely ludicrous. They are also far removed from those fondly, if deceptively, remembered as constituting a Golden Age.
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