Book Description
The accounts of Chopin's pupils, acquaintances and contemporaries, together with his own writing, provide valuable insights into the musician's pianistic and stylistic practice, his teaching methods and his aesthetic beliefs. This unique collection of documents, edited and annotated by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, reveals Chopin as teacher and interpreter of his own music. Included in this study is extensive appendix material that presents annotated scores, and personal accounts of Chopin's playing by pupils, writers, and critics.
Customer Reviews:
Chopin: Pianist and Teacher: As Seen by his Pupils.......2007-02-14
I satisfied with this book very much.
Must have for anyone seriously studying Chopin.......2006-07-14
To the general public Chopin is famous for his beautiful piano music. However, in his days he also was a renowned piano teacher with some revolutionary ideas (at least for his time) about piano technique. His students included rich, aristocratic ladies (he had to make a living) and some very talented students.
Luckily many of the things Chopin told his students during their lessons have been preserved in various diaries and notes by his students and have now been compiled in this book.
Also, Chopin made a start with a piano method (which he did not complete). This method is also included in this book.
If you are a piano student this book is simply a must-have.
If you are not a pianist, but seriously interested in Chopin's ideas about (his own) music and teaching you also should buy this book.
JJ Eigeldinger wrote more excellent books about Chopin which unfortunately are still only available in French.
A must have.......2004-06-06
AAA++++...a must have book if you are serious about playing Chopin. A wealth of valuable information. Very highly recommanded.
You need this if you play Chopin.......2004-02-15
You need this book if you play Chopin. There is a wealth of information on playing Chopin's music directly from the composer and his pupils. It has answered many questions and cleared up some misconceptions I had about this music.
great book on how to play Chopin.......2002-08-17
For those of us who bungle at the keyboard and can always use more guidance, this book offers a great start in understanding Chopin's music. Probably the most difficult piece to play in public is Chopin Ballade No. 4, and Chopin offers some incredible insight into how he wanted it played. As you know, the music notation on the sheet cannot cover every intention of the composer, much like writing cannot capture everything, but most of what we want to say. This book supplements your understanding of the music. I would not be surprised if your great piano teacher pulls material out of this book in order to advise you on how to play Chopin.
Book Description
This second edition of the best-selling piano pedagogy book provides future piano and keyboard teachers with the essential tools to meet the challenges the next century. Fundamental to every keyboard teacher, the text examines current learning theories, offers a historical overview of keyboard pedagogy, reviews educational materials, and describes specific teaching techniques. It also discusses specific repertoire and technique for beginning, intermediate, and adult students.
Customer Reviews:
I think all piano teachers should own this book.......2002-08-16
This is a great reference for teachers at all levels. In it's well layed out pages it explores differant methods, types of students and gives practical advice on running a studio. I don't own it, but have checked it out from the library 3 or 4 times!
Book Description
This holistic approach to the keyboard, based on a sound understanding of the relationship between physical function and musical purpose, is an invaluable resource for pianists and teachers. Professor Fink explains his ideas and demonstrates his innovative developmental exercises that set the pianist free to express the most profound musical ideas. HARDCOVER.
Customer Reviews:
The Real Deal.......2006-03-17
This book has a separately available video which GREATLY adds to the overall value. This book is the product of 30 years of teaching and study of the subject. The teaching is super-concentrated. I somehow passed on this book in the bookstore a few years ago, maybe thinking it was too detailed or too complicated. But now that I see it (and the video), I see Professor Fink demonstrating and explaining EVERY type of piano movement I have ever seen, by every pianist! This teacher has studied and codified ALL piano playing movements, has invented a vocabulary to describe them, and he teaches you exercises to learn them. Wow. (Well, possibly there are a FEW Keith Jarrett movements he does not cover! And possibly some Thelonius Monk moves are not in here! But every other piano playing movement, he does demonstrate and explain!) Great, unique resource for students, teachers, and performers.
missing the most important ingredients.......2005-08-19
This book describes mainly the kinds of movement we need at the piano. Indeed we (or most of us) will be benefited from a proper understanding and training of the physical part of piano playing, so I admire the attempt of the auther. The problem with this book is, however, that it is far from complete and actually it misses some of the most important ingredients of piano techniques.
It is sometimes helpful to isolate the movements and be conscious of the movements. However, this book tells you (mainly) only the external movements, and not much about the much more important "internal activity" which is invisible from whatever companion video or pictures. It is easy to teach external movements-- you don't actually have to buy this book, just find a DVD played by any good pianist. But everyone knows the (seemingly) paradox: different external movements can be used to play the same difficult passage. And many people learn the same external movements intentionally,and they succeed in making their movements very much the same as those of the masters, but still they fail to produce a comparable effects of these masters. Why?? This is so puzzling for the teachers. That's why some people came up with a conclusion: There is no "superior" way of playing a passage. Everyone have a different needs. While this is to some extent correct, it should not prevent us from seeking a good technique intentionally.
The paradox is due to a mixing up of objective and subjective experience, as well as an ignorance about the inner activities of our bodies. While you can learn the movements for sure, the difficult and important part is the invisible inner activity; the integrity of hand structure. You need these internal organization to enpower your movements. That's the crucial difference between you in first few piano lessons(with possibly already "correct" movements as enforced by your teacher) and you at the present moment. We got better in our organization of motions in the first few years, but most of us stop somewhere. All these inner things cannot be learnt from pictures, videos, normal piano teachers. The author does know the crucial point. However, he was not able to explain how you can get there. He can only show you the eternal movement and sometimes describe vaguely the correct feeling.
I can find a number of books which describe the inner activity involved. But up to now the most practical book on this is "the craft of Piano Playing" by Alan Fraser. This book is full of practical advices and innovative exercises to help the readers, rather than providing only general theory. It aims more at improving your hand functions than hand shape, movements, etc..
This "mastering piano technique" can be useful if you learn the more important points first. Also, occasionally, it does provide some helpful advices on eradicating certain bad habits. But still the movements can only give you some suggestions. Improving your hand functions is the first and foremost, and the movements serve this purpose. Aim at functions, not movements.
An excellent work, invaluable to all pianists........2005-06-08
I studied with Mr. Fink throughout my high-school/college preparatory years and so experienced his technical work first-hand. After studying piano at the university level, I finally got around to picking up a copy of his book. Reading through reminded me of the many exercises we went through. I think that Mr. Fink's suggestions on technique are of good resource for all serious pianists. As others have pointed out here, a literal interpretation of the illustrations is not the intended point. It is most useful to use the techniques illustrated as a guide and then adapt them to your own particular usage.
A MUST for the Pianist.......2004-08-31
This work of Mr. Fink is absolutely magnificant. For the aspiring concert pianist, for the serious student, or for piano lovers who would simply like to improve their fluidity and definition at the keyboard. Having owned the volume for about a week now, I'm at the point where I think Seymour FInk's book should be in every School of Music, USA as a textbook. THe ten physical exercises done away from the piano are so complimentary and helpful. Mr. FInk seems to be a physiologist and anatomist of the human body, as well as a piano master, and this combination makes his perspective superior. Mr. Fink takes the mystery out of fine piano technique and brings exact motoral and muscular distribution matters to light in plain view, solving scores of execution difficulties pianists incur. Highly detailed! Buy this and begin using it, but the reader will not exhaust this volume in a few weeks. It is a referance volume for a lifetime. God bless Seymour Fink! In reply to the negative reviews, I would say there could be some difficulty of appreciation to the novice pianist who is at early stages of familiarity with the piano keyboard. This volume is extremely helpful to those of us who take the piano seriously and are intent on mastery.
an extremely helpful and original work.......2002-06-13
As a pianist I've read MANY books regarding piano technique. Seymour Fink's Mastering Piano Technique is a well thought out and extremely helpful addition to the literature. It is similar in content to the classic technique book by Abbey Whiteside. Based on total understanding of the pianist's physiology, both authors are in favor of utilizing shoulder, arm, torso, legs, etc. in conjunction with fingers to produce sounds. Various parts of the body work as levers - each logically taking more or less responsibility based on the demands of the music. This reduces the chances of developing tension. Fink's ideas make for better music making by having the pianists movement absolutely linked to phrasing and articulation. As with the Whiteside book, it is not always easy reading....but it is worth the effort in the end.
As I mentioned, Fink has categorized different movements which correspond with certain sounds and articulation. Ultimately these movements make playing imminently easier. Fink creates keyboard choreography which the pianist can keep coming back to as the demands of the music dictate. Fink's ideas such as "fingersnaps", "pronation" etc. satisfied a variety of musical and technical requirements.
In my experience no one book on technique can totally satisfy all of the technical demands of piano playing. That would be the same as claiming there is only one right interpretation for each piece of music. Fink's myriad ideas and solutions pertaining to piano technique make this book absolutely worth having: everyone can absolutely take something useful away from this book.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent! Considered the best text by many piano teachers........1999-09-15
This is a wonderful comprehensive instuction manual for teaching a child the art of piano playing.
Average customer rating:
- In her shoes.
- All the Hype
- the human bond
- A compelling pathology
- Gripping and strange.
|
The Piano Teacher
Elfriede Jelinek , and
Joachim Neugroschel
Manufacturer: Serpent's Tail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1852427507 |
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"The Piano Teacher , [winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature,] is an exploration of fascism, not so much in the political sense as in the personal. In Joachim Neugroschel's excellent translation, the language is simple yet full of imaginative, often-funny metaphors, the view of the world original, if at times almost painfully bizarre."-New York Times Book Review
"A dazzling performance that will make the blood run cold."-Walter Abish
"A brilliant, bitter, wonderful portrait of mother and daughter, artist and lover."-John Hawkes
"A brilliant, uncompromising book."-Publishers WeeklyErika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. But by night she trawls the porn shows of Vienna while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her.
Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies' man, Walter Klemmer. With Walter as her student, Erika spirals out of control, consumed by the ecstasy of self-destruction.
First published in 1983, The Piano Teacher is the masterpiece of Elfriede Jelinek, Austria's most famous writer. Now a feature film directed by Michael Haneke, The Piano Teacher won three major prizes at the Cannes 2001 Festival including best actor for Benoit Magimel and best actress for Isabelle Huppert.
Elfriede Jelinek was born in Austria in 1946 and grew up in Vienna where she attended the famous Music Conservatory. The leading Austrian writer of her generation, she has been awarded the Heinrich Boll Prize for her contribution to German-language literature.
Customer Reviews:
In her shoes........2007-02-04
This book depicts a woman who grew up in a company of a controlling mother, who kept her in rigid boundaries. She's been deprived of everything a normal girl has while growing up. No clothing, no games, no friends, no loving tender family. Thus she constantly has to suppress her feelings and sexual drives. This abuse forms her into a person with confused, hurt psyche, cut from the world, and totally disconnected from her own emotional world as well. And because she does not understand her own feeling, she has no empathy for other people at times as well. She torments her students and Klemmer, a man who happens to step into her life. Since her relationship with her mother is based on love and hate at the same time, she is used to being tortured by someone she loves. And she projects this pattern of relationship into her connection with Klemmer. She has an anomalous and confused understanding of a relationship. She expects to be hurt on one hand, and on the other hand she is terrified of being hurt. And so this confusion of hers develops into a tragedy. It does, because Klemmer is an ordinary guy with normal perception of the world. Just like a normal society responds to anomaly, so does he, with disgust. He's hurt himself and to restore his inner balance, he revolts and ends up acting violently himself.
I love this book, because not many creators manage to delve deep into a psychology of anomalous behavior so well. Jelinek makes her life personal. Society often mistreats abnormal people, responding to them with mistrust and repulsion. That happens because we do not understand them. This book is a chance to see up close what it is like to live a life of a deviant. Now we're in her shoes.
All the Hype.......2006-10-26
From a Nobel-Prize-winning novel, I expected a whole lot more than this. Am I amiss for expecting greatness? Instead, this novel is confusing and hard to follow, and not in an incompetent reader sort of way. The novel pushes the envelope with its hyperbolic discussion of male sexuality and the male tendency/necessity to gaze at the female. Maybe in the height of the feminist-crazed, literary world, this translation from German was all the hype.
Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens
the human bond.......2006-07-24
Elfirede Jelinek approaches her subject, the human bond, with a brutal honesty that cuts to the heart of what it is to be human. This book focuses on the social creature and its struggle to become reconciled with the inexplicable pull of human relationships. Jelinek pushes past the safe comfort zone as she delves into the psyche of a distrubed woman and explores the nature of the character's interactions and relations with others--namely, her mother and her lover. What she finds is that the bonds that create also often destroy. It is in this struggle to define the self through its ties with others that one moves into dangerous terrain where the lines easily become blurred, so that it is difficult to tell where one person ends and another begins, where trust becomes vulernability and love a violation.
A compelling pathology.......2006-06-13
This is a difficult book, though gruesomely compelling in its exploration of psychological and sexual pathology. Erika Kohut, in her late thirties, is a piano teacher at what is clearly the extension division of the Conservatory. A failed concert pianist, she has been brought up under the total control of her mother, who still shares a bed with her. But Erika has a fantasy life of her own, and when she attracts the attention of a much younger student, her fantasies and the young man's interests collide, dragging both down into a mire of perversion.
The first hundred pages are the most difficult, since they set up the background for what follows. Jelinek writes in a dense but colloquial prose style that mingles various strands of psychic monologue, sometimes dealing with the past, sometimes the present, sometimes occupying a dream world, sometimes almost literal, so that the reader is forced to let go of all normal landmarks. But by the time the actual narrative takes hold, one has been mesmerised into following the story from the inside of the characters' minds rather than as a series of external events. That in itself is quite an achievement.
Jelinek was herself a student at the Vienna Conservatory, so she knows what she is talking about in musical matters. Music is used as a constant frame of reference, though more frequently as a demanding taskmaster than a romantic escape. But while all this rings true to a professional musician (I am one myself), I do not think that the metaphors would be lost to those without a musical background. On the other hand, do not read this book expecting a window on a glamorous world; there is very little glamor in Erika's life, and her service to music is no exception.
Elfriede Jelinek was the 2004 Nobel laureate in literature, but I recall that it was a controversial choice. Though her voice is unique and compelling, it is difficult for an outsider to place her among the greatest authors alive today. So I suspect that this novel can also be read as a political statement, in terms of what the Nobel citation called "the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power." Unfortunately, I do not know enough about modern Austria to know whether the story of these three particular characters can be seen as an expressionist metaphor for the Austrian psyche, or as a lurid parallel to events in postwar history.
Gripping and strange........2006-04-28
Took me seven days to read this book, in the midst of living in two houses, working two full-time jobs, and exercising 2 days a week.
The author depicts Erika as a human, with needs and urges, as a child, with vulnerabilities, and as a teacher, a commanding force in the classroom.
The characterization is swiftly done, of the mother, Erika, and the student. She does a great job of switching back and forth between characters yet remaining in the first person.
A must read for anyone with a kinky side to them, as there is an intriguing edge to it sexually.
Average customer rating:
- A little bit of everything
|
A Symposium for Pianists and Teachers: Strategies to Develop the Mind and Body for Optimal Performance
Gail Berenson ,
Jacqueline Csurgai-Schmitt ,
William DeVan ,
Mitchell Elkiss ,
Seymour Fink ,
Phyllis Alpert Lehrer ,
Barbara Lister-Sink ,
Robert Mayerovitch ,
Norman Rosen , and
Dylan Savage
Manufacturer: Heritage Music Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Tanita BC533 Glass Innerscan Body Composition Monitor
ASIN: 0893281549 |
Book Description
Bringing together the unique perspectives of some of the top pianists and pedagogues, along with physicians specializing in the treatment and rehabilitation of performance-related injuries, this text is truly unparalleled. Reflecting the dedication of its contributors to pursuing new ideas and approaches to piano pedagogy, the collection covers such topics as developing an advanced technique, myofasical pain and its treatment, benefits of fitness, performance anxiety, a child's first lessons, mechanics of the piano, and musicality. The best of twentieth-century thinking on the subject, including references to the works of Matthay, Schultz, Ortmann, Whiteside, and others, is also organized and presented in accessible manner.
These broad-based subjects are included in one of five sections - Mechanical, Technical, Musical, Healthful (Mind and Body), and Pedagogical - and include goals and exercises clearly articulated in a concise manner. Although written by and intended for pianists, the universal concepts of wellness and musicality are equally insightful for all musicians. Collectively, A Symposium for Pianists and Teachers presents a holistic approach to healthful and effective piano technique, resulting in a significant twenty-first century resource for the serious student and teacher.
Customer Reviews:
A little bit of everything.......2002-09-22
This book can be used by pianists and piano teachers (often isolated in small towns) to find up-to-date answers to recurring injury problems, inspiration for playing "from the mind and heart" as well as the hands, and, in general, just talking about piano (although a lot of the information works well for other instrumentalists as well--especially the exercises for flexibility and strength). It's like a "class in a book."
Book Description
Miss Wilma, the resident organist and piano teacher in the small Southern village of Swan's Knob has enough on her plate already, thank you very much, what with preparing the music for Lily Mae Strong's wedding extravaganza and fending off the pesterings of perennial bachelor Roy, who's got himself all worked up over plans for the July Fourth celebration that's months away.
But when her prodigal daughter Sarah returns with her young granddaughter Starling in tow, what can she do but enjoy the blessing of their unexpected visit? That is until Sarah's absentee husband Harper shows up on Miss Wilma's front porch a few short hours after a murder shakes the small community-and just two steps ahead of Jonah Branch, the longhaired stranger from Santa Fe who's become the number one suspect in the case. Suddenly, Miss Wilma's blessing begins to look more like a house full of trouble...
Customer Reviews:
Fine tuned.......2005-10-24
The writing evokes such a strong sense of place, time and character. The story builds up without rush, layer by layer, befitting the slower-paced Southern atmosphere--while at the same time, the characters' sense of their lives possibly passing them by, is developed. Of course, music plays a part in this story about a piano teacher. Like anticipating a coming crescendo in an exciting new piece of music, the various layers of the story-telling come together beautifully and don't disappoint.
A sweet, quiet novel.......2004-09-22
Fifty-something Wilma Mabry lives an ordered life--apron donned when preparing dinner, linen closet just so, and, always, the adoption of a supremely polite, even ostensibly indifferent exterior. This brand of southern gentility and a reliance on the comforts of routine have sustained Wilma--"Miss Wilma," the piano teacher of Lynn York's title--through marriage and motherhood and fifteen years of loneliness after her husband's suicide. But the price of maintaining equanimity has been a failure to communicate fully with the people closest to her. Wilma's relationship with her daughter Sarah, in particular, has suffered for it. During the course of the novel Wilma's ability to move through life seemingly unaffected is tested by a string of dramatic events: the unexpected attentions of a suitor, the murder of one of her Mayberry-sized town's policemen, and the unannounced appearance on her front porch of Wilma's troubled daughter and granddaughter.
Although its plot revolves in part around a nasty murder and its solution, Lynn York's The Piano Teacher is a sweet, quiet novel. In it the relationships between Wilma and Sarah, and between Sarah and her husband, are explored and, while we're watching, subtly altered. The characters--particularly that of Wilma--are well drawn, and life in a small community in which non-conformity is checked by the threat of scandal is nicely evoked. The book gets off to a slow start in its initial chapter, but readers who keep with the book will be rewarded.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
Southern Fun.......2004-09-03
This book reminded me of a very secular version of Jan Karon's books about the fictional North Carolina town of Mitford. Swan's Knob is a lot like Mitford, a small, friendly town where everyone knows everyone - and everyone's business. The characters are quirky and, well, characters.
York's story, like Karon's, focuses on family, the goodness we discover in our parents and children as we grow older, and the possibility of late romance. However, in this book there is also murder, adultery and other kinds of mayhem - as I said, I much more secular version of the South than the Mitford books. But just as enjoyable!
blonde wigs, luv hut, and one dead squirrel.......2004-03-30
This is a great summer read that tricks you into thinking it is more obvious than it really is. Anyone with an appreciation of southern nuance will love this book. The little details creep up on you and then you suddenly realize it is rich in subliminal character and context. It is interesting to see that the writer really taps into relationships wraped around the concept of a murder mystery. It's fun and the first scene with the dead squirrel totally cracked me up.
Average customer rating:
- great buy
- A Decent Read - Interesting Offender Profile
- Okay...i guss
- The Piano Teacher: The True Storay of a Psychotic Killer
- The Piano Teacher The True Story of a Psychotic Killer
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The Piano Teacher: The True Story of a Psychotic Killer
Robert K. Tanenbaum , and
Peter S. Greenberg
Manufacturer: Pocket
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 0743432991 |
Book Description
Everybody has a dream. For aspiring actress Suzanne Reynolds, her dream ended in a gruesome encounter with eccentric New York artist Charles Yukl. Fooled by his choirboy looks, Reynolds had no idea the man who taught her the piano was a woman-hating recluse who spent his days lost in fantasies of perversion. As a result of the plea bargain for Suzanne?s brutal murder, Yukl soon gained his freedom due to a shocking series of legal errors -- and killed again.
A riveting dramatization of two horrific crimes and their aftermath, The Piano Teacher brilliantly portrays a madman set on fulfilling his own sadistic and homicidal dreams...and the flawed justice system that gave him the opportunities to do so.
Customer Reviews:
great buy.......2007-09-17
a great read I love every thing about amazon and the items they offer
thanks
A Decent Read - Interesting Offender Profile.......2007-07-18
THE PIANO TEACHER profiles the eccentric offender and two-time murderer, Charles Yukl. Raised by an unloving, punitive father, and a controlling mother, Yukl matured with deeply rooted feelings of inferiority, especially where his masculinity and sexuality were concerned. He managed to marry a strange woman, Enken, whom he met while attending college, but he later admitted during a psychiatric interview that during their 14 years of marriage, he and his wife had sex a total of approximately 10 times. Yukl was also quite fond of exposing himself to the unsuspecting students who came to his apartment for piano and voice lessons.
After murdering a young woman in 1966 and completing a rather short prison term, Yukl was paroled, having been described as a "model prisoner." Just 14 months after his release from prison, and still married to Enken, Yukl murdered again... unable to control his sadistic fantasies and murderous impulses.
The history of the offender is detailed and, in parts, riveting. Without spoiling any part of the story, I will state that Yukl implemented an elaborate group scam to bring young women to his apartment, settling upon a select few as potential victims. Two of these young women are lucky to be alive, having been out for the evening when Yukl made his final, fatal telephone contact with an unsuspecting woman who thought Yukl was a legitimate professional.
So, you may wonder, why only 3 stars? The author, a respected criminal trial attorney, is less than interesting when discussing himself. I found these portions of the book somewhat tedious and Tanenbaum's style of writing was, at times, arrogant. For example, on page 225, he writes: "I was attempting to design a mosaic: each piece in and of itself would not point inexorably to Yukl's guilt, but taken as a whole, my mosaic would relentlessly lead to the conclusion that Yukl was the killer." While I am not generally opposed to an author providing his or her impressions and observations of the murderer or describing his or her position as a key player, Tanenbaum managed to portray himself as a Know-It-All. (Perhaps he does know it all. However, he is less than humble and I am not fond of grandiose egos.)
In addition, the pace of the book slowed considerably following Yukl's second arrest for murder and ended rather anticlimactically with a plea to First Degree Murder. As a professional psychotherapist, I do not believe Yukl meets the criteria for Sociopathic Personality Disorder. However, he is or was a very sick individual lacking basic impulse control and rational judgment. Although Yukl often pleaded for psychiatric treatment, as if this could somehow have prevented another tragedy, Yukl fails to address the fact that he met with a psychotherapist WEEKLY for close to one year while on parole. Although part of him seemed to desire knowledge of himself and his impulses, he lied to his therapist on many, many occasions and did not once mention the cunning con he developed to lure young women to his home. As a rule, psychotherapy is not generally successful when patients skirt the truth.
In closing, Robert K. Tanenbaum has written many books. Having only read THE PIANO TEACHER, I cannot comment upon his total worth or talent as a writer. I speak only for myself when I say I probably will not read any other Tanenbaum books.
Okay...i guss.......2006-11-05
It is said a true story. We will never know what was in the killer's mind. And the author never attempt to guess either. Basically the author simply told us what happened. The book lacks of depth, in my opinion.
The Piano Teacher: The True Storay of a Psychotic Killer.......2002-10-11
Excellent writing. The author keeps you interested. By the end of the book I absolutely despised Charles Yukl. This is good reading for those who love true crime.
The Piano Teacher The True Story of a Psychotic Killer.......2000-05-02
I really enjoyed this book. It was intense, and very explainitory. It started with the terrible murder that happened in 1966 and the murder that happened after his parol in 1974. Then it went into Yukle's up bringing. It explained the lifestyles of his parents. They were both very good musicains. They taught Yukle music from a very young age and they were very strict with him. His mother was a perfectionist, and expected him to play every thing perfect. She would make him sit at the piano until he did. When his brother was born they weren't as strict with him. They let him do and be who he wanted. Soon his parents were divorced. He and his brother lived with their father and his new wife. He didn't see his mother for years after that. Yukle and his father weren't very close at all. His father was very cruel to him. He always made Charles feel unworthy. Yukle was a loner and kept to his music, the one thing he was very good at. His grades in school weren't that great except for music. He quit school to go into the army. He was still a loner there to. He was court marshalled and sent back home. He went back to school and met a young girl in band that he really liked. He moved to Chicago to go to school for photography. He felt like a different person behind the camera. Things didn't work out with the girl back home and soon he met his wife; she was one of two women that he was able to talk to, but he was never able to completly open up to her. It talks about the police reports and the events leading to his conviction. It was all very intresting. I like reading true stories rather than fictional, and this one kept me reading until the end.
Average customer rating:
- It's GREAT!
- The Title of This Book Is Utterly Misleading
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Harmonization-Transposition at the Keyboard for the Student and Teacher of Class or Group Piano, Private Piano, Music Education, General Education: Transposition at the Keyboard
Alice M. Kern
Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Piano
| Instruments & Performers
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
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Theory
| Theory, Composition & Performance
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
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ASIN: 0874870593 |
Customer Reviews:
It's GREAT!.......2002-09-13
I use this book in a university setting for music and music ed majors who need to pass a piano proficiency test. Being able to harmonize and transpose single line melodies WITHOUT CHORD SYMBOLS provided is part of the test. In preparation for this part of the test students need to practice harmonizing and transposing many examples. This book provides excellent examples for this purpose in many keys. I recommend it highly.
The Title of This Book Is Utterly Misleading.......2000-12-29
I waited quite a while for Amazon to procure this book for me, and it was with high hopes and expectations that I examined it, yesterday, when it finally arrived. The cover looked promising, as did the upbeat introduction. I began leafing through the book, and for the first 23 pages I was pleased. Then, alas, came a bottomless pit of worthless, un-explained, un-documented examples beginning on page 24 and continuing up to and including the last page of the book. From page 24 to the end of the book is utterly, totally useless. It consists of melodies, all lifted from the public domain and nearly all attibuted to composers such as Mozart. There are very few chord symbols notated on these melodies, and all of them are treble cleff only. Page 23 says to apply the lessons taught in the first sections of the book, to the practice material that ensues. This book is so useless, and unuseable, that it is actually hard to get mad at the authors. I can only assume that they are so totatlly, utterly out of touch with the real world that they truly don't understand that a huge amount of borrowed melodies with no explanation or examples of the correct way to harmonize them, is simply unacceptable to the vast majority of readers. There is nothing whatever in this book on the subject of transposition. I cannot imagine why the word "transposition" was part of the title. I say this somewhat authoritatively, as I have personally spent that last 6 months teaching himself how to transpose at the piano in all 12 keys. There are so many excellent books on keyboard harmony and voicing available through Amazon, that is is expecially ironic that this worthless book has a mis-leading title that will probably fool a lot of people into buying it the way I was. I cannot think of anything positive to say about this book. It should never have been published. The authors have not written enough of a book to even consider them real authors. It doesn't get any worse than this book. Any book, even a telephone book, is better than this book.
Product Description
These notebooks are sure to inspire some beautiful music! No one knows better than Matthew Teacher how to create a successful music journal-his first, The Musician's Notebook, sold more than 200,000 copies. Now, for the first time, he has developed notebooks for the two most popular instruments: the piano and the guitar. Each one will feature inspirational quotes, words of advice, and wisdom from leading players, along with pages of sheet music just waiting to be filled and a section for note-taking. And they're both elegantly designed with rounded corners, and priced attractively for the gift-giving shopper. Musicians will especially appreciate the user-friendly, lay-flat flexi-bind format that's easy to write in and to work with during a performance.
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