PIANOFORTE MUSIC OF THE NEW SCHOOL.
As we are desirous that our readers, musical as well as poetical, should keep up with and profit by the march of improvement, we produce for their benefit a manual of the modern methods of pianoforte composi- tion and playing, condensed into a few very plain rules, which they will find it much easier to put in practice than they are probably aware of. Without a joke, the following recipe has been prepared.,by one of the greatest musicians and pianists of the age.
RECIPE FOR COMPOSING AND PLAYING A MODERN PIANOFORTE PIECE.
I. Select a fashionable Italian opera air by Rossisr, (or rather by BELLINI, DoNIZETTI, or some of Rossist's newest imitators,) as being now quite indispensable, by way of a subject.
2. Contrive to introduce a particularly long and noisy succession of straggling passages, with lifiger-board intervals of ece).,i,lerablc extension.
3. The said passages are to be executed with the utmost rapidity, and also with much motion of haul, arms, and body ; remembering, above all, to keep down the vibrating pedal the whole time with the right foot, in order to produce both grand and new effects. 4. The slow parts of this composition, (which nay now and then occur,) marked by the author as intended to be expressive of the senti- intonate, growth's'', or pathetic, to be performed with the most lan
expression of countenance, with occasional changes to a very fierce look, as expressive of intense feeling and deep thought.
5. In the course of the composition, take care to introduce a frequent tremolo with the thumb and fore-liver of' the right hand, as au accom- paniment to an insipid and unmeaning soi-disuni melody, to be played with the little finger of the same hand.
6. It is also most especially necessary that the appearance of the paper on which the music is written or printed should he as black and crowded with notes as possible, in order to give it the semblance of almost unconquerable difficulty.
N.B.—Should these observations be well attended to by any young composer and pianist, ambitious of both fame and profit, he cannot fail of becoming the rage among the general run of amateurs of the pianoforte.
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