The origins of the étude (or study) lie as far back as the fifteenth century, in pieces of music written to help organists develop their technique. Similar compositions for the harpsichord followed in the sixteenth century, and JS Bach's two and three part inventions are studies of a kind. A collection of thirty short contrapuntal pieces, they were intended to further the musical education of his children and young students. Like the Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues, they didn't appear in print during his lifetime but were widely disseminated in manuscript form and have been used for teaching ever since.
The term 'study' really came into its own in the nineteenth century when, thanks to the piano's increasing domestic popularity, composers such as Clementi, Cranmer, Czerny and Reicha applied the name to educational pieces which addressed aspects of technique such as octaves and trills. Studies (and exercises, which tend to be shorter) are just as relevant today. Many books provide helpful technical insights. Two of my favourites, for both their practical advice and brevity, are Tankard & Harrison's Pianoforte Technique on an Hour a Day and Jeffrey Whitton's The Art of Practicing the Piano.
When you've worked your way through those you might like to explore Hummel's little-known Grande Études, Op. 125. Attractive character pieces full of drama, melancholy and playfulness, they are challenging but not beyond the abilities of most skilled amateurs. They are also excellent preparation for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, whose sonatas are full of scale runs, broken chords and arpeggiated patterns. A number of later composers succeeded in writing études worthy of the concert hall, and if your technique stretches to the likes of Chopin or Liszt you will be richly rewarded by the music you find.
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
Clementi was born in Rome but died just a few miles from here, in the Worcestershire market town of Evesham. Variously a composer, pedagogue, conductor, publisher, editor and piano manufacturer, his musical output is devoted almost entirely to the piano. Indeed Clementi stands as a point of reference for the pianists of his day, and his contribution to the development of piano technique was so great that nineteenth century enthusiasts referred to him as 'the father of the piano'. He did much to establish the methods on which piano playing was to develop, during the time of the new instrument's initial popularity.
Today he is chiefly known for the sonatas and sonatinas that were so admired by Beethoven, but Clementi was a highly regarded teacher and should also be remembered for Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps toward Parnassus). Published in three volumes between 1817 and 1826, the work comprises one hundred pieces and is one of the first significant collections of piano études. Most of the exercises, as he called them, are grouped into suites of three to six pieces in the same key. They demonstrate a variety of genres and styles, including sonata movements, preludes, scherzos and capriccios.
As you progress through the exercises, musical concerns come to take precedence over technical issues. There are very few dry or mechanical movements, but when Carl Tausig edited the work he preserved only the least musical examples. Tausig's edition was widespread in Debussy's time and inspired him to write Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum (from Children's Corner, 1908), a musical satire of mechanical practice. While its length and disparate nature remain obstacles to Gradus adParnassum's public performance, many of the movements are expressive and virtuosic and deserve to be heard in concert.
Carl Czerny (1791-1857)
Czerny was a precociously gifted young pianist. He had his first lessons with his father, and made his first public appearance aged just nine (performing Mozart's Piano Concerto K491). He went on to study with Beethoven, and would later give the first performance of the Emperor Concerto. At the tender age of fourteen, Czerny followed in his father's footsteps by teaching the piano. Before long he had established himself as one of Vienna's most sought-after teachers, no mean feat a city awash with pianists of the highest order. His pupils included Liszt, Thalberg and many others who went on to become famous.
As a composer, Czerny was remarkably prolific. His compositions numbered well over eight hundred by the time of his death, and included sonatas, duets, variations, transcriptions and many shorter pieces. His dismissal as a composer of primarily didactic works is increasingly being challenged, but it is still for his studies and exercises that he is best remembered. Unlike Clementi he often had a mechanical approach to technique, but pianists still train their fingers with his music today. For beginners they are like an ABC for the keyboard, and every pianist will have encountered them at some stage.
His works cater for players of all abilities, and offer an almost infinite variety of manual gymnastics. Many volumes are devoted to speed, for example the Forty-Eight Studies in the form of Preludes and Cadenzas (Op. 161), the School of Virtuosity (Op. 365) and the Art of Loosening the Fingers (Op. 699). Czerny also emulated Clementi in composing a new Gradus ad Parnassum (Op. 822), and his Grand Study Sonata (Sonata No. 10 in B flat, Op. 268) features every kind of technical challenge imaginable. To the theory of music, he contributed a translation of Reicha's Traité de haute composition musicale.
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Chopin wrote twenty-seven études in total, two sets of twelve (Op. 10, 1829 - 1832, and Op. 25, 1832 - 1836) plus three without an assigned opus number, in 1839, as his contribution to the piano manual Méthode des Méthodes by Ignaz Moscheles and François-Joseph Fétis. By combining studies of piano technique with music that married virtuosity and musicality, Chopin established the genre of the concert étude. In his hands the study was transformed from a merely utilitarian exercise into a cornerstone of the concert repertoire, and in this respect his compositions really were Revolutionary!
In letters to his pupils, Chopin revealed many of his ideas about music and piano playing. For example, he once wrote that every student, however advanced, should study Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum. His own creative stimulus was the individually shaped hand, with its arrangement of muscles and tendons, and it is the mechanical difficulty of the Études that produces the music. While each one adheres to the basic principle of the genre, training and refining a specific aspect of technique, it has its own story to tell. And as with all of his compositions, there is an emotional aspect that transcends the notes.
Jósef Hofmann once said that the pianist who could perform each Chopin étude equally well never existed. That hasn't stopped nearly ninety pianists from recording them since Wilhelm Backhaus first traversed the works in 1926, and they are certainly the most frequently encountered examples of the genre. However, I often suggest that students begin with Moszkowski's Études de Virtuosité, Op. 72. They are excellent preparation for tackling the Chopin Études, as are Moscheles' capricious Studi O Lezioni di Perfezionamento (Studies for Perfection, Op. 70), which Chopin both studied and taught.
On CD: Études (Op. 10 & Op. 25), Maurizio Pollini (DG 413 794-2)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
I've written about Liszt's perilous virtuosity before and how, after hearing Paganini play in April 1831, he vowed to exceed on his Érard any mortal-defying challenge that the great violinist could throw down on his Stradivarius. The Studies after Paganini (S.140) were composed in 1838. An adaptation of Paganini's caprices for solo violin, they are some of the most technically demanding pieces ever written for the piano and place huge demands on anyone brave enough to attempt them. The six Studies make full use of the instrument's potential, including extremes of register and diverse tonalities.
In contrast, the melodic charm of the Trois Études de Concert (S.144) pays tribute to Chopin. While undoubtedly helpful for the development of technique, Liszt's études differ from Chopin's in that they lack his relentless focus on a specific aspect of technique. Indeed, Liszt's études can be less taxing in terms of sheer endurance, though many contain concentrated difficulties that exceed anything Chopin wrote. The Transcendental Études (S.139), which he dedicated to Czerny, are a case in point. The ultimate test of technique, they demand absolute mastery of the piano's eighty-eight keys.
Aside from being the greatest piano virtuoso of his time, Liszt was a composer of enormous originality and gave the instrument a rich, orchestral sound. The final version of the Études are revisions of a set of pieces published in 1837, and these, in turn, were an expanded reworking of a youthful set of études that he had composed in 1826. Despite these simplifications, Schumann still declared that they were playable by no more than 'ten or twelve players in the world.' And yet, however technically demanding they may be, the Transcendental Études reach extraordinary musical heights in the right hands.
On CD: Piano Works (Volume 8), Jorge Bolet (Decca 417 523-2)
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Debussy is often dismissed as a sensualist composer, but in the last decade of his life his music became much more austere. Indeed, his works appeared more often in Schoenberg's private concerts in Vienna than those of any other composer. The Études (1915) were his last major piano works and, like Chopin before him, he considered the demands of contemporary piano technique very carefully before producing beautiful works of art which surpassed their technical objectives. Perhaps a little too abstract for contemporary tastes, it seems remarkable now that they were initially dismissed as dull.
Debussy's studies are amongst the very best examples of the concert étude, and primarily the preserve of the professional pianist. They are extremely taxing and more than a little intimidating, addressing challenging musical problems such as dynamic contrast, rhythmic grace, fast physical transitions, tone production and finger articulation. The composer himself expressed his relief upon their completion, saying: "Last night, at midnight, I copied the last note of the Études. OUF! The most detailed Japanese print is child's play compared to some of the pages, but I am happy. It is good work."
He intended the Études to be 'a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands'. Besides being musical tone poems, with moods which vary from tenderly introspective to ferocious, they deal with a variety of technical challenges including repeated notes, ornaments, arpeggios, chromaticism, thirds and octaves. They also exhibit unorthodox structures and sharp contrasts, and many concentrate on sonorities and timbres peculiar to the piano. Of the twelve, I think the first (d'apres Monsieur Czerny), sixth and eighth are probably the most accessible.
On CD: Piano Works (Volume 2), Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Decca 460 247-2)
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Rachmaninov wrote two sets of Études-Tableaux (Picture Études). The first, Op. 33, was composed in 1911 and the second, Op. 39, between 1916 and 1917. (The latter were his final compositions in Russia. He left in December 1917, following the Revolution, and never returned.) Of the nine pieces composed in 1911, only six were originally published under this opus number. The fourth was withdrawn and revised, and became the sixth Op. 39 Étude. What we now know as Études three and five were published posthumously, which has resulted in a sequence that was probably not what the composer intended.
Rachmaninov's characteristic writing, at times commanding and at times subtle and understated, has ensured their continued popularity. But he found the Études hard to write, on the back of several large-scale works such as the Second Symphony and Third Piano Concerto. "To say what you have to say and say it briefly, lucidly and without circumlocution is still the most difficult problem facing the creative artist", he once said. He also refused to explain the imagery behind the pieces: "I do not believe in the artist disclosing too much of his images. Let them paint for themselves what it most suggests."
The unity of the six works originally published as Op. 33 has been compared to Schumann's Symphonic Etudes (1837). The second set of Études-Tableaux is technically much harder than the first, demanding unconventional hand positions, wide leaps and tremendous physical strength from anyone playing them. Because of this I would suggest studying the preludes first, as preparation for their immense difficulties. The Op.39 set also marks a clear departure from Rachmaninov's earlier composing style, and shows the influence of younger contemporaries such as Scriabin and Prokofiev.
On CD: Piano Concerto No. 3 etc., Leif Ove Andsnes (Virgin Classics 5451732)
