The Pianist's Dictionary (review)

Abstract

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, PERFORMERS, AND PERFORMANCE The Pianist's Dictionary. By Maurice Hinson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. [x, 221 p. ISBN 0-253-344050-0. $39.95.] Bibliography. For more than 30 years industrious Maurice Hinson, professor of music at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has produced a steady stream of reference dealing with all aspects of classical piano literature. All have appeared under imprint of Indiana University Press. Some, notably his 1972 Guide to Pianist's Repertoire, have undergone one or more revisions or expansions. Hinson's latest contribution is attempt to compile a dictionary of names, terms, and titles pertaining to entire field of pianism, embracing composers, compositions, performers, teachers, publishers, and piano makers. This is information I have worked on while teaching piano for almost 60 years, Hinson states in his preface. (Disclosure: my name is included, once, in a list of former pupils of Hinson's colleague Margaret Saunders Ott.) However laudable Hinson's aims may be, published results quickly eliminate this volume from serious consideration. Its 220 pages, lacking illustrations and with only six small musical examples (and at a rather exorbitant hardcover price of $39.95), contain a nearly unbelievable profusion of factual errors, misspellings, and misleading statements-more, in fact, than I have ever encountered in a reference book. For example, a sonata, according to Hinson, contains two to five contrasting movements (despite his references elsewhere to some of numerous one-movement piano sonatas). The defining characteristic of Zortzico, unmentioned by Hinson, is quintuple meter. Curiously, a definition is provided for natural, but none for sharp, flat, or accidental. Any reader seeking meaning of atonality will be told, incorrectly, that it is an organizing harmonic system. Habanera and Seguidilla are defined, in both cases, with unspecific references to the aria from Bizet's Carmen. When we turn to names of pianists, errors begin to proliferate. Ania Dorfmann becomes Dorfman, and her teacher Isidor Philipp's first name is misspelled Isidore. Philipp is said to have written books on instrument (not so), but no mention is made of his famous, nearly countless technical exercises. Vladimir Horowitz's year of birth (1903) is erroneously given as 1904, while Emil Sauer was really born in 1862, not 1863, and Artur Schnabel was born in 1882, not 1881. The year of death for Frederic Lamond is 1948, not 1945. Wanda Landowska was born in 1879, not 1877. A reference to Christian Ortiz (p. 182) should be to Cristina Ortiz. On page 202, Zadel Sokolovsky should be Skolovsky. The onearmed pianist Paul Wittgenstein was brother, not cousin, of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In four separate references, Hinson perpetuates frequent misspelling of Leon Fleisher's last name as Fleischer. The contemporary composer Lowell Liebermann has become Liebeman. The teacher of Daniel Pollack was Ethel Leginska, not Leginsky, and Hinson's entry for latter (spelled correctly!) should have mentioned that her name was originally Liggins. Ossip Gabrilowitsch's first name is given here as Osspi. The wife of pianist Eugene List was Carroll Glenn, not Glen. Rudolf Serkin (born 1903) is described as a Czech pianist, but Czechoslovakia did not exist then; Serkin was born in a German-speaking region of Bohemia. The choices of front-rank pianists given brief, two- or three-sentence, biographical sketches seem arbitrary at best. Many famous performers are represented, but a few of significant names excluded are Simon Barere, Gina Bachauer, Abram Chasins, Francis Plante, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Harriet Cohen, Tamas Vasary, Emanuel Ax, Sergio Fiorentino, Moura Lympany, Jorg Demus, Georges Cziffra, Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Julius Katchen, Robert Levin, Samuel Feinberg, Vladimir Sofronitsky, Maria Yudina, Geza Anda, and Stephen Hough. …