Daniel Steibelt

I am including in my YouTube channel one or two pieces by the German pianist-composer Daniel Steibelt (1765?-1823).  I thought it would be interesting, to supplement the excellent Wiki page on him - by reproducing here the preface by the New York music critic W.J. Henderson (1855-1937) to an 1890s compilation of sonatinas and rondos.

"Daniel Steibelt was at one time regarded as a rival of Beethoven as composer and pianist. He was born in Berlin, but the date of his birth is uncertain. It is generally said that he was born in 1755 or 1756, but the French historian Fétis says he knew Steibelt to be 36 years old in 1801. It will readily be understood from this uncertainty as to the date of his birth that little is known about his early life. His musical gifts reached the ear of the Crown Prince Frederick William, who became his patron and placed him under the instruction of Kirnberger. There is no record of the length of time during which young Steibelt studied under Kirnberger, and nothing is known of any other instruction which he may have received at this period. His studies were interrupted by a term of service in the army, and in 1784 he left Berlin.

In 1788 he was in Munich, and in 1789 he gave concerts in Saxony and Hanover, in 1790 he took up his residence in Paris, where he made his advent as a matured composer and performer. Hermann was the popular pianist of the day, in the French capital, but Steibelt speedily displaced him. Hermann was an old-fashioned harpsichordist, but Steibelt, whose father was a piano-maker, thoroughly understood the resources of the instrument of his day and wrote for it accordingly in a style far in advance of that of Hermann. The newcomer was in a short time the reigning virtuoso.   But of course no composer could be regarded as great in Paris, unless he wrote for the stage. So Steibelt wrote a "Romeo et Juliette", which was produced at the Theatre Feydeau, Sept. 10, 1793. The work pleased the public, and it was successfully performed outside of France. 

Steibelt's position in Paris was now assured, and his pupils were numerous and of high social position. But he sold to Boyer, the publisher, as new works, some sonatas previously published in Berlin, and the discovery of the fraud made it necessary for him to leave Paris. In 1796 he went to London, where he wrote his third concerto, containing the once famous "storm rondo", and where he learned to prefer the English piano. In 1799 he returned to Germany, where he met with a warm reception. He challenged Beethoven to a public competition in playing, and met with a sound defeat. He returned to Paris in 1800, and procured the first performance there of Haydn's "Creation". He produced a ballet of his own, but he was not comfortable in Paris, and in 1802 went again to London. For six years he oscillated between the two cities, producing works for the stage and piano music, including the two concertos in E-flat and several of his best sonatas. He also published his Method and his " Etude", a collection of 50 studies, probably his best piano-works. In 1809 he went to St. Petersburg, where he wrote additional works for the stage, and his sixth, seventh, and eighth piano-concertos. He died, after a lingering illness, on Sept. 30, 1823.

Steibelt was unquestionably a remarkable man. He was arrogant, vain, affected, and even dishonest; yet his abilities were so great that he was welcomed everywhere. It is not at all surprising to find that the best qualities of his piano-playing were those dependent upon dash, vigor, and brilliancy. He was a dazzling performer; but it is beyond doubt that he was deficient in the deeper and subtler power of art. He seems to have been aware of his own weakness, and seldom played an adagio, and even more seldom wrote one. Most of his sonatas consist of an allegro and a rondo. When he does write an andante or adagio, it is usually very brief, and often constructed on the theme of some popular song of the day. In his sonatas for violin and piano the melodies of the slow movements are given to the violin, while the piano generally has a facile tremolo accompaniment. 

Indeed, the critics of the day censured him for excessive use of the tremolo. It may be added that his technic was not fully developed, his left hand being weak. Pedals were just coming into use, and Steibelt studied their effects, which he was prone to exaggerate. It is generally conceded, however, that despite all its faults, Steibelt's playing had a good deal of originality and was very influential with audiences. His writing follows the general bent of his inclinations as a performer. The decline of the popularity of his works is inevitably attributed to their lack of high organization. One searches in vain among Steibelt's sonatas and concertos for the compact, closely knit, intellectually developed structure conspicuous in all Beethoven's compositions. Steibelt had the fatal gift of facility.  Many of his movements show a fine gift for melody, but the bulk of his composition seems to have been the product of the fancy of the moment, and not the result of careful thought.

The critics of his day declared that the "Etude" was his best work, and this judgment seems to have been well grounded. It has been noted as an interesting fact, that Nos. 3 and 8 are a close approach to the style of Mendelssohn's " Lieder ohne Worte". Like almost all other composers, Steibelt has been accused of a lack of originality. It appears, however, that his modulations were much more free than those of his predecessors. He is credited with the invention of the tremolo for piano, which he used to excess. He also made very free use of the pizzicato in chamber-music. He showed some boldness for his day in his orchestral writing, and in his eighth piano concerto he introduces vocal parts.  All that he did, however, bears the stamp of superficial brilliancy. There is nothing profound or moving in Steibelt ; but he made some steps in the progress of piano-playing. He wrote 81 sonatas and sonatinas, 117 rondos, 8 concertos, and a large number of other compositions."
W. J. Henderson.

Russian composer names

Owing to the generosity of the Eastman School of Music Sibley library online collection, I have had the opportunity recently to play lots of Russian music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  However, it has been quite a task to research the little-known composers represented.  This arises from the fact that in the late 18th and early 19th century, the use of French language was pervasive amongst the Russian nobility and higher echelons of society - see http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003331.php for more on this.  Although the Russian language seems to have gained ground in the later 19th century, music publishers often used French nomenclature and titling in their scores (eg, Jurgenson, Beliaeff) - presumably because this was what their privileged clientele would have expected. 

Most information on Russian composers available on the Web is in Russian (from online editions of Russian encyclopedias etc., often originally compiled in the Soviet era).  Therefore, as a non-Russian speaker, I have to work hard to move from French transliterations to native Russian, and then to modern English transliterations for my video descriptions.

Here are two examples, which might be helpful to anyone else trying to research Russian music or literature.

1 - Léocadie Kaschperow

This is the composer name used by Jurgenson for some attractive pieces by a significant female composer.  However, if you search for that name on Google, you will find little information (eight entries in all, referring to German texts, mostly about another person with the same surname).  So what I did was to put the name into Google Translate (changing it on the way to Leocadia Kaschperov because that is more in line with modern transliteration of Russian names) and seek a version of that in Russian script.  I then searched Google with the derived name in Russian - леокадия кашперова, and found many hundreds of entries, including this one, which gave me the facts I needed: http://www.persons-info.com/index.php?p=2&v_ddb=16&v_mmb=5&res_mode=740&sort=yb&sord=d&pid=71914

2 - Etienne Mirzoeff

I was interested to find out something about this person, as he was the dedicatee of a set of studies by Leonid Knina.  A Google search on this name gives nothing at all other than the Sibley catalogue entry.  Knowing that Etienne is the French equivalent of the English name Stephen, and that the Russian version of that is often transliterated as Stepan, I entered into Google Translate Stepan Mirzoev (changing the two ff's to a v in accordance with current practice) and ended up with Степан Мирзоев .  Even that was not enough, as I came up with a present day person with the same name.  I then tinkered around, adding the word 'piano' in Russian, and eventually arrived at Степану Гавриловичу Мирзоеву, the name of the head of the Russian Musical Academy in Tbilisi at the turn of the last century.  I knew this was the right person, because I knew that Knina lived there.  The following web page gave me exactly what I needed to know: http://www.senar.ru/memoirs/Andrianova-Ryadnova/ . 

Of course, having found the Russian web pages, Google Translate then does an excellent job of translating them back into English, and providing convincing English transliterations of the names, which I then use on the videos and descriptions!

MusicWeb International article

You can see an article I wrote in April 2012 about the genesis of my YouTube channel on MusicWeb International.  Click this link to read it.

Scanning music scores (revised January 2019)

I make big use of score-sharing websites - IMSLP and others - to get hold of public domain scores that I would never have found in the second-hand music shops or music libraries I used to visit in the UK.  Most have, alas, now closed down or restricted their activities.  However, although much music is now available from these sources, few people contribute new scores.  I encourage anyone who has old scores that are not already available online to scan and upload them before they crumble away.

There are many different methods for scanning, and many different programs and apps to help you do it.  My own technique for scanning music (as of January 2019) is:

Method 1a - for iPad/iPhone:

• Use the excellent Scanbot app (available in free or paid versions) to photograph/scan the black and white pages (I use the middle quality setting on the paid version).  I then set the filter to Black and White, and then crop the pages - I usually only leave a small margin, as much old music was printed on large sheets of paper, and most end-users will want to print onto A4 or read on a tablet.  Then you set the title and save the document.  Note that with this app you need to be careful not to save until you have completed all these steps: once the document has been saved and processed, you can only rearrange pages and add new ones.  
• Download and install the PDFOptim app (it is not free, but not expensive).  Then share your scan from Scanbot as a pdf to this app, and optimise it to monochrome at 300dpi quality.  This will produce a good printable/readable black and white score with file sizes around 30kb per page
• Share the resulting optimised file with your preferred cloud drive.  I use Google Drive because it has an efficient app, but there are plenty of others.
• Add the work directly to IMSLP.  To do this you will need an online cloud manager that will provide links with .pdf filetypes (which Google Drive doesn't do).  I therefore access it via StorageMadeEasy in my browser.  You can get free access to a limited number of cloud drives using its file manager, and it will give you a shareable link that you can drag and drop onto the IMSLP 'Add Scans' page (using modern skin).
• If you have colour title pages that you want to make available, I think it best to scan and save them as separate files - not everyone will want them.  It is possible to merge them with the compressed B&W score pages using ILovePDF or similar apps.

Method 1b - for Android tablets/phones

• Use the Android Scanbot app, as above (note that you save individual pages rather than mark them 'Done'), but save the PDF files to device - unless you have the option to share directly with a PDF compression app.
• Instead of PDF-Optim (which I don't think is available for Android) I use the IlovePDF which uploads to its own servers and then sends the files back, rather than doing the work within the device).  Using the 'Recommended' configuration you can reduce the files to around 300kb  per page, and you can save them on device or on a cloud drive. 

Method 2 - the method I used before I had a smartphone or tablet - which will give the best quality for A4 scores that will easily lie on a flatbed scanner:

• Scan the plain title pages and music sheets with a setting of Black and White (not grayscale) at 300dpi - this gives a readable output, and keeps the file sizes down.  I use a standard A4 size scanner, but would use a larger one if I had one!  It can be difficult to position large-size sheets on the scanner to get all the content in - and for those, Method 2 is better.
• If there is some good cover art, scan this and upload as a separate page in colour so that people have a choice of whether to view or download the larger file.  Note that one of the major score contributors, the Eastman School of Music Sibley Library does this, as here.  You can see from the stats on this this example page how many more people download the music than the cover art.
• I have the excellent PaperPort software (an old version that came with the scanner) to manage the scanning process and process the scanned pages.  The features I use are:  
• rotating the pages (sometimes you have to scan pages upside down); 
• erasing marks on the scanned pages and black areas around the edges of your scans.  Remember that printing ink is one of the most expensive fluids on the planet.
• aligning the pages vertically where they have been scanned crookedly.
• putting the pages in the correct order (stacking them).
• After doing this I end up with a stack of sheets on the Paperport desktop.  I then print this stack using a virtual PDF printer.  I use the free PDFCreator which will create a single PDF document out of the stack, that is ready for uploading.  Note that the printer settings should match the scans - so set the printer quality as  Black and White, 300dpi.  This is really important as you will otherwise end up with a far larger file than you (or the end user) need.
• If you follow my suggestions, other than the colour cover art page(s) each black and white sheet should add no more than about 70Kb to the file size (eg, a recent scan of a six-page 19th century salon piece which I did resulted in a file of 384Kb).  Again this is important as making the files too big wastes bandwidth (for uploading) and space on servers and local storage media.
• Finally, when naming files, put the composer's surname first, followed by the work and opus number if possible - eg.  'Grieg - Piano Sonata Op. 7.pdf' .  This will help anyone downloading the file to their digital collection to identify it.  File name lengths are not as restricted as they once were.

Method 2 - for large pages and scores bound in books which cannot fit a flatbed scanner:

• Using wireless digital camera (or camera fitted with Eye-Fi card), photograph pages of score using text setting.
• Upload to computer or tablet.  I use an Android tablet with the excellent MDScan app.
• Import photos into scanner app and crop, then process as black on white.
• Upload processed scores to cloud storage via wi-fi (if processing done on tablet)
• Process using A-PDF to Black/White (see below) to reduce file size.

When handling scores scanned by others, you may find that they have not followed the above suggestions, and you may be forced to use a file that is much larger than it need be.  A particular problem is with scans done in colour where the background comes out as cream or yellow.  This makes them very hard to print in black and white.  I recommend processing the file before printing with the interesting A-PDF to Black/White software which will analyse the files and convert the backgrounds to white.  You will need to test each file out to get the right setting so that you do not lose any faint content or convert areas of scanned 'dirt' or shadow turned to black.  This software is also very useful for processing scanned manuscripts where the composer has written in pencil or a colour other than black.

" Why do my wrists hurt when I play piano? "

A viewer to my YouTube channel posed the following question "Why is it that sometimes when I play the piano for over an hour my wrist hurts,especially when I play that song [a Clementi sonatina]? Most of the times I play once a week. Are the pain in my wrists normal? I am 38 years old."  

I have suffered from short-term wrist pains once in a while.  For me there are only three causes:

• Hitting the piano too hard.  Many years ago I accompanied an operatic society chorus singing 'With cat-like tread' from Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Pirates of Penzance', which has sudden loud chords.  I was playing a Steinway in a large theatre, and I hit the chords harder than I would on smaller pianos, and had a wrist-ache for a month afterwards!
• Sitting at the piano at the wrong height.  I always play so that my lower arm rests very slightly lower than the top of the keys.  Others will like different heights.  I am very particular about getting this right, else I certainly would suffer from a wrist ache after only a short practice session.
• Having stiff shoulders.  I like to play with the whole arms - there is a balletic aspect to music making whatever instrument you play.

If you think about each of these points maybe you will find the answer.  Wrist pain is certainly not normal at 38.

Is every piece of music a song?

Looking at the comments on the (mainly classical) pieces recorded on my YouTube channel, I am struck by how common it is for young musicians to refer to every piece they play as a ' song '.  A common comment I get is 'I'm learning this song', and a teenage violinist called me the other week to ask if she could rehearse with me some 'songs' she was learning (they were all classical pieces).  This is a very recent linguistic development, and probably stems from marketing blurb for digital downloads.  For example, the iTunes website has the following: "The music you love (and have yet to discover) is just a click away. You’ll find millions of high-quality, DRM-free songs on the iTunes Store all for just 69¢..."  (my emphasis)

So, for many, music = songs.  Perhaps the late Henryk Górecki saw this coming when in 1976 he subtitled his 3rd symphony 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'!  There is no harm in it at all but it maybe shows that people are losing sight of the context of music they listen to or play.  The lack of contextual knowledge often shows up when I accompany student violinists at music festivals.  They will typically announce their piece like this: 'I'm going to play Concerto in A Minor by Vivaldi' - when actually they are only playing a single movement from a three-movement work.

For those going on to study music as a profession at universities or conservatories, it must be a steep learning curve to get the background knowledge needed to write dissertations, programme notes etc., when it does not seem to be provided in many schools (certainly in UK).

The X Factor

Well, this is a long way from the so-called 'classical' music in which I specialize, but I am interested in all aspects of live performance.  I follow both the UK and USA versions of the show, and am on the lookout for the really individual act with the potential to do more than bland covers of pop songs.   I guess I would like to see the next Björk emerge.  I do have some gripes with the format of the show, and in particular:

• The amount of 'padding' (clips from past shows, backstage material etc.) and commercial breaks is enormous, and seems to grow as the number of contestants declines.  I try to avoid watching the show live, and instead record it and fast-forward through everything except snippets from any interesting acts and the judges' comments.  That way I save at least an hour per show, and I am sure plenty of others do the same.
• There seems to be a difference between the demographics of the people who vote for contestants on the shows and the people who buy records, and I have always felt that the telephone voters are mainly women, which probably favours the male contestants - analysis of the published voting figures for part series of the UK shows supports this theory.  The same does not seem to apply to recording sales and downloads - for example, the Billboard.com Digital Songs chart for the week of November 26, 2011 showed four female solo artists and three male solo artists in the top ten.
• I am irritated by the 'arena-type' costuming and choreography (particularly on the UK show) - when the aim of the show is apparently to find a top recording artist, who only needs to perform well in a studio rather than a stadium.  The best shows are the final audition shows where the contestants perform with just piano or a very small band, and can show their intimate side.
• Finally, can the producers please use live bands for all the shows (like American Idol).  If that's expensive, just reduce the judge's fees to compensate.  I'm sure there are lots of celebrities out there who would do the job for next to nothing just for the publicity!