Down With Scales

Few youngsters have heard of Tobias Matthay, but many have cause to thank him. Lank, long-jawed, white-maned "Uncle Tobs" is the man who took the drudgery out of piano lessons. He now lives in the English countryside, nearing 84. In Manhattan last week 50 teacher-members of the American Matthay Association met to discuss Matthay-style teaching.

Dame Myra Hess, Duo-Pianists Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson, Manhattan's Ray Lev are among Uncle Tobs's famed virtuosos. To plain people, the chief point of the elaborately philosophical Matthay principle (Matthayites hate the word method) is: no dry, mechanical finger drilling. Matthay-trained teachers are still a distinct minority among the 100,000 piano-marms of the U.S., but Matthay-like ideas are moving in. About one-third of the nation's 1,500,000 piano students are no longer subjected to those scramble-noted exercises composed by implacable Karl Czerny, who is widely believed to have hated children.

Newest piano methods, which can be used even on three-year-olds, combine singing, harmony, composition, teaching by rote. Instead of learning a showpiece by playing it over & over, a student plays many pieces, however sketchily. Most widespread modern system is the Oxford Piano Course, developed at Northwestern University by Osbourne McConathy, Gail and Charles Haake. Many an Oxfordized tot startles his mother by asking how to find the dominant seventh in four sharps--a key which the oldtime piano-marms kept for their star pupils.

Chicago's Helen Curtis has a system comparable to the Oxford. Boston's Phil Saltman, in a more brash, jazzy way, and Oakland, Calif.'s E. Robert Schmitz, in a more highbrow way, have pioneered in teaching new methods. Though teachers like these are busy teaching other teachers, the oldtimers are still in the majority, and most U.S. piano-moppets must still struggle with Czerny.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.