What Was It Like Being Liszt’s Student?

by Emily E. Hogstad

Pianist Amy Fay was born in Louisiana in 1844. She began studying piano as a child and quickly proved to be very talented.

She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in the 1860s and, in 1869, took the daring transoceanic journey to further her studies in Germany.

While in Europe, she studied with Liszt’s student Carl Tausig, as well as Liszt himself.

Her letters to her sister served as the foundation for her book Music Study in Germany, which was published in 1880, and offers a tantalising glimpse into what it was like to be around Liszt in the 1870s.

Today, we’re looking at some of the best stories from Fay’s book.

Amy Fay

Liszt could flirt and watch a play simultaneously.

Last night I arrived in Weimar, and this evening I have been to the theatre, which is very cheap here, and the first person I saw, sitting in a box opposite, was Liszt, from whom, as you know, I am bent on getting lessons, though it will be a difficult thing I fear, as I am told that Weimar is overcrowded with people who are on the same errand.

I recognised Liszt from his portrait, and it entertained and interested me very much to observe him.

He was making himself agreeable to three ladies, one of whom was very pretty.

He sat with his back to the stage, not paying the least attention, apparently, to the play, for he kept talking all the while himself, and yet no point of it escaped him, as I could tell by his expression and gestures. 

Liszt was “the most striking-looking man imaginable.”

Hermann Biow: Franz Liszt, 1943

Liszt is the most interesting and striking-looking man imaginable.

Tall and slight, with deep-set eyes, shaggy eyebrows, and long iron-grey hair, which he wears parted in the middle.

His mouth turns up at the corners, which gives him a most crafty and Mephistophelean expression when he smiles, and his whole appearance and manner have a sort of Jesuitical elegance and ease.

His hands are very narrow, with long and slender fingers that look as if they had twice as many joints as other people’s. They are so flexible and supple that it makes you nervous to look at them.

Anything like the polish of his manner, I never saw. When he got up to leave the box, for instance, after his adieux to the ladies, he laid his hand on his heart and made his final bow,—not with affectation, or in mere gallantry, but with a quiet courtliness which made you feel that no other way of bowing to a lady was right or proper. It was most characteristic.

Liszt didn’t actually think of himself as a teacher.

Sophie Menter

He asked me if I had been to Sophie Menter’s concert in Berlin the other day.

I said yes. He remarked that Miss Menter was a great favourite of his…

I asked him if Sophie Menter was a pupil of his. He said no, he could not take the credit of her artistic success to himself.

I heard afterwards that he really had done ever so much for her, but he won’t have it said that he teaches!

Later, Fay writes:

He says “people fly in his face by dozens,” and seems to think he is “only there to give lessons.”

He gives no paid lessons whatever, as he is much too grand for that, but if one has talent enough, or pleases him, he lets one come to him and play to him.

Liszt inspired and encouraged his pupils to develop their own artistic identities.

Nothing could exceed Liszt’s amiability, or the trouble he gave himself, and instead of frightening me, he inspired me. Never was there such a delightful teacher! and he is the first sympathetic one I’ve had.

You feel so free with him, and he develops the very spirit of music in you. He doesn’t keep nagging at you all the time, but he leaves you your own conception.

Now and then, he will make a criticism, or play a passage, and with a few words give you enough to think of all the rest of your life.

There is a delicate point to everything he says, as subtle as he is himself. He doesn’t tell you anything about the technique. You must work this out for yourself.

When I had finished the first movement of the sonata, Liszt, as he always does, said  “Bravo!”     

Liszt was a difficult artist to turn pages for because he sight-read so quickly.

He made me come and turn the leaves. Gracious! how he does read!

It is very difficult to turn for him, for he reads ever so far ahead of what he is playing, and takes in fully five bars at a glance, so you have to guess about where you think he would like to have the page over.

Once I turned it too late, and once too early, and he snatched it out of my hand and whirled it back.    

We know exactly what Liszt’s quarters in Weimar looked like.

It is so delicious in that room of his! It was all furnished and put in order for him by the Grand Duchess herself.

The walls are pale grey, with a gilded border running round the room, or rather two rooms, which are divided, but not separated, by crimson curtains.

The furniture is crimson, and everything is so comfortable—such a contrast to German bareness and stiffness generally.

A splendid grand piano stands in one window (he receives a new one every year). The other window is always wide open and looks out on the park.

There is a dove-cote just opposite the window, and the doves promenade up and down on the roof of it, and fly about, and sometimes whirr down on the sill itself. That pleases Liszt.

His writing table is beautifully fitted up with things that all match. Everything is in bronze – ink-stand, paper-weight, match-box, etc., and there is always a lighted candle standing on it by which he and the gentlemen can light their cigars.

There is a carpet on the floor, a rarity in Germany, and Liszt generally walks about, and smokes, and mutters (he can never be said to talk), and calls upon one or other of us to play.

Liszt was fully aware of how his charisma affected his audiences.

Liszt knows well the influence he has on people, for he always fixes his eyes on some of us when he plays, and I believe he tries to wring our hearts.

When he plays a passage and goes pearling down the keyboard, he often looks over at me and smiles to see whether I am appreciating it.

Liszt enjoyed telling people about the time that Chopin put on a wig to impersonate him.

Frédéric Chopin

It was the first time I ever heard Liszt really talk, for he contents himself mostly with making little jests. He is full of esprit.

We were speaking of the faculty of mimicry, and he told me such a funny little anecdote about Chopin.

He said that when he and Chopin were young together, somebody told him that Chopin had a remarkable talent for mimicry, and so he said to Chopin, “Come round to my rooms this evening and show off this talent of yours.”

So Chopin came. He had purchased a blonde wig (“I was very blonde at that time,” said Liszt), which he put on, and got himself up in one of Liszt’s suits.

Presently an acquaintance of Liszt’s came in, Chopin went to meet him instead of Liszt, and took off his voice and manner so perfectly, that the man actually mistook him for Liszt, and made an appointment with him for the next day—”and there I was in the room,” said Liszt. Wasn’t that remarkable?   

Liszt actually played wrong notes, but he enjoyed doing so, and knew how to get out of them.

Liszt sometimes strikes wrong notes when he plays, but it does not trouble him in the least. On the contrary, he rather enjoys it.

He reminds me of one of the cabinet ministers in Berlin, of whom it is said that he has an amazing talent for making blunders, but a still more amazing one for getting out of them and covering them up.

Of Liszt the first part of this is not true, for if he strikes a wrong note it is simply because he chooses to be careless. But the last part of it applies to him eminently.

It always amuses him instead of disconcerting him when he comes down squarely wrong, as it affords him an opportunity of displaying his ingenuity and giving things such a turn that the false note will appear simply a key leading to new and unexpected beauties.

An accident of this kind happened to him in one of the Sunday matinees, when the room was full of distinguished people and of his pupils. He was rolling up the piano in arpeggios in a very grand manner indeed, when he struck a semi-tone short of the high note upon which he had intended to end.

I caught my breath and wondered whether he was going to leave us like that, in mid-air, as it were, and the harmony unresolved, or whether he would be reduced to the humiliation of correcting himself like ordinary mortals, and taking the right chord.

A half smile came over his face, as much as to say—”Don’t fancy that this little thing disturbs me,”—and he instantly went meandering down the piano in harmony with the false note he had struck, and then rolled deliberately up in a second grand sweep, this time striking true.

I never saw a more delicious piece of cleverness. It was so quick-witted and so exactly characteristic of Liszt. Instead of giving you a chance to say, “He has made a mistake,” he forced you to say, “He has shown how to get out of a mistake.”

Ten Greatest Women Pianists of All Time

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

From the time the piano became a popular instrument in the mid-eighteenth century, thousands of accomplished women pianists have taken to the stage.

So many women have done so that it’s impossible to make an objective list of the ten greatest women pianists of all time.

However, there’s nothing keeping music lovers from creating their own subjective lists.

Here’s one such subjective list, featuring some of the greatest women pianists who were born between 1751 and 1987.

Let us know who would be on your list!

Maria Anna Mozart (1751–1829) 

Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl during her childhood, was Wolfgang Amadeus’s older sister.

Their father, Leopold, began teaching her keyboard when she was seven years old. She immediately proved to be a prodigy and was a full-blown virtuoso by eleven.

Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni © madamegilflurt.com

When the Mozart family first began touring Europe, Nannerl was initially the bigger draw and was often given top billing over her brother.

During her career, she played for aristocrats and royal families in Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Britain.

After she turned eighteen and became of marriageable age, her family withdrew her from the concert platform. She was forced to watch from the sidelines as Wolfgang continued his travels and musical education in Italy without her.

She married a widowed magistrate in 1784 and moved to a home thirty kilometres from the family hometown of Salzburg. She had three children of her own and also helped to raise her husband’s five children from his previous marriages.

She continued to play the piano for multiple hours a day. Even after her husband died, she continued playing and teaching.

Maria Szymanowska (1789–1831) 

Maria Szymanowska was born to a wealthy family in Warsaw in 1789.

We don’t know for sure how she began her musical life, but it seems likely that she studied with Frédéric Chopin’s teacher, Józef Elsner. She gave her first public recitals in 1810, the year of Chopin’s birth.

She also married in 1810 to a man named Józef Szymanowski. They would have three children together, including a set of twins. They separated in 1820.

Maria Szymanowska

Szymanowska made several tours during her marriage, but her touring activities ramped up in the 1820s. During that decade alone, she appeared in Germany, France, Britain, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and Russia.

She composed works for piano that were deeply influenced by her Polish roots. (Some historians have argued that they influenced a young Chopin.) She became a great favorite in musical salons, and many composers dedicated works to her, including Beethoven.

During her visit to St. Petersburg, she was named First Pianist to the Russian Imperial Court. In 1828, she decided to settle in St. Petersburg, but she died in the 1831 cholera epidemic, cutting short a major career.

Clara Wieck Schumann (1819–1896) 

Clara Wieck was born in 1819 to piano teacher and music shop owner Friedrich Wieck. As soon as Clara was born, he decided he wanted to mold her into a great piano virtuoso.

Robert and Clara Schumann, 1850

Years of intense study followed. True to Friedrich’s prophecy, Clara proved to be one of the most talented pianists of her generation, male or female.

Her life – and classical music – was changed forever when, in the 1830s, she fell in love with her father’s student Robert Schumann.

Her father protested against the marriage for a variety of reasons, but as soon as she was legally able to, they were married in 1840.

The Schumanns had eight children together, but not even motherhood could keep Clara from continuing her performing career.

After Robert’s mental health collapsed and he died in 1856, Clara continued performing, both out of economic necessity and as a kind of therapy to guide her through her grief.

Throughout her life, she advocated for works by her husband, Chopin, Beethoven, and, perhaps most importantly, Brahms, among many others.

She also reshaped the role of the modern virtuoso, helping to popularize the modern recital format and playing from memory onstage.

Teresa Carreño (1853–1917) 

Teresa Carreño was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1853.

When she was nine, the family emigrated to New York City, where she began her concert career in earnest. When she was ten, she played for Abraham Lincoln in the White House.

She embarked on her first European tour in 1866. She spent years there, befriending many of the giants of the art: Rossini, Gounod, and Liszt, among others.

Teresa Carreño

In 1873, she married virtuoso violinist Emile Sauret and the following year gave birth to their daughter, Emelita. Sadly, the marriage didn’t last long, and Carreño and Sauret split up.

She would go on to remarry three more times, and have four more children (one of them, Teresita, would become a concert pianist in her own right). Her turbulent love life would become part of her legend.

During the 1870s and 1880s, she spent most of her time touring America, with a couple of trips to Venezuela sprinkled in. In 1889, she returned to Europe to great success. A final large tour to America took place in the 1890s. She died in 1917 in New York City.

Conductor Henry Wood memorably wrote about her:

It is difficult to express adequately what all musicians felt about this great woman who looked like a queen among pianists – and played like a goddess. The instant she walked onto the platform her steady dignity held her audience who watched with riveted attention while she arranged the long train she habitually wore.

Dame Myra Hess (1890–1965) 

Myra Hess was born in London in 1890 and began her piano studies at the age of five. She entered the Royal Academy of Music when she was twelve.

She made her orchestral debut when she was seventeen, playing the fourth Beethoven piano concerto under conductor Thomas Beecham.

Myra Hess

Her career plateaued in the late 1910s due to World War I, but she returned to touring as soon as it was over.

However, arguably her greatest artistic triumph happened during World War II, when she organized nearly seventeen hundred concerts over the course of the conflict, playing in 150.

Concert halls had to be blacked out at night to avoid bombing by Nazi planes. So Hess organized lunchtime daytime concerts at the National Gallery in London.

If bombing prevented a performance from taking place, the series would be relocated temporarily, before returning to the gallery.

Over 800,000 people attended her lunchtime concerts, making it one of the most effective morale boosters of the war.

She suffered from a stroke in 1961 and died from a heart attack in 1965.

Alicia de Larrocha (1923–2009) 

Alicia de Larrocha was born in 1923 into a family of pianists in Barcelona, Spain. She began studying piano when she was three with teacher Frank Marshall, and gave her first performance when she was five. Marshall would remain her only teacher after the age of three.

She began touring internationally in her mid-twenties and enjoyed a vibrant performing career for decades thereafter.

Alicia de Larrocha

De Larrocha was especially celebrated for her advocacy of Spanish composers like Granados, de Falla, and Albéniz.

But her expertise didn’t stop there: her performances of the Germanic composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Mozart were also highly praised.

She even recorded Liszt, despite the fact that she was less than five feet tall and her hands were small.

She recorded extensively throughout her career and won four Grammy awards between 1975 and 1992.

She retired in 2003 after seventy-five years of public performances. She died in 2009, at the age of 86.

Martha Argerich (1941–) 

Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1941, to a Spanish-Russian family. She began learning the piano at the age of three and gave her debut concert at the age of eight.

In 1955, when Martha was fourteen, the Argerich family moved to Vienna. She began studying there with iconoclast pianist Friedrich Gulda. Two years later, she won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition.

Martha Argerich with The Philadelphia Orchestra, 2008 © carnegiehall.org

Despite her success, she found herself in a musical crisis, and she quit playing for three years. Thankfully, she changed her mind, returning to music, and she won the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965, when she was twenty-four. It was the kickoff to a decades-long performing career.

In the 1980s, Argerich revealed that performing solo recitals made her feel lonely, so since that time, she has focused on repertoire that includes other musicians, such as concertos and chamber music.

In addition to her storied career as a performing artist, she has worked as a teacher and mentor. She is the president of the International Piano Academy Lake Como and has appeared regularly on competition juries.

As of 2019, at the age of 78, she was still performing the Tchaikovsky piano concerto. As one critic wrote in 2016, “Her playing is still as dazzling, as frighteningly precise, as it has always been; her ability to spin gossamer threads of melody as matchless as ever.”

Mitsuko Uchida (1948–) 

Mitsuko Uchida was born outside of Tokyo in 1948. Her family moved to Vienna when she was twelve, and she began studying at the Vienna Academy of Music. She made her recital debut in Vienna at fourteen.

Mitsuko Uchida © Geoffroy Schied

In 1970, when she was twenty-two, she won the second prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition. The prize marked the beginning of a decades-long career.

She has become especially renowned as an interpreter of Mozart. She has recorded all of Mozart’s piano sonatas and concertos, a staggering accomplishment.

If that wasn’t enough, she decided to re-record the Mozart concertos, while also conducting. In 2011, she won a Grammy award for the first record in the series.

She is also famous for being the artistic director at the prestigious Marlboro Music School and Festival, a position she has held since 1999. (She currently shares the position with fellow pianist Jonathan Biss.)

Even today, in her mid-seventies, she is still performing and recording.

Hélène Grimaud (1969–) 

Hélène Grimaud was born in 1969 in Aix-en-Provence, France. She began playing the piano at seven.

She began studying at the Paris Conservatoire in 1982 when she was thirteen, and gave her recital debut in Tokyo five years later.

Hélène Grimaud

She gave important debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1995 and New York Philharmonic in 1999.

In 2002, she signed with the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label, and in the two decades since has released a number of well-received recordings.

She is noted for her wide interests outside of music. She is deeply involved with multiple wildlife conservation efforts and is also a member of Musicians for Human Rights.

She has also written or co-written four books. Her first, Variations sauvages (Wild Variations), published in 2003, is an autobiography. The cover features a photo of her being greeted by three wolves she has met through her wildlife conservation work.

Yuja Wang (1987–) 

Yuja Wang was born to a musical family in Beijing in 1987. She began studying piano at the age of six and enrolled at the Beijing Conservatory when she was seven.

Yuja Wang, 2021

When she was fifteen, she moved to Philadelphia to study at the storied Curtis Institute of Music. She studied there with legendary pianist Gary Graffman for five years. We wrote an article about their teacher-student relationship.

She made her European debut in 2003, at the age of sixteen. Her North American debut came two years later.

Her breakthrough performance is widely considered to have happened in March 2007, when she replaced Martha Argerich at the Boston Symphony, playing Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto.

Since then, she has been in constant demand at the best orchestras and recital venues in the world.

In 2023, she made headlines for performing all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and his Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Ever a fashionista, she changed into a different dress for each concerto. She even played an encore!

In 2012, Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Yuja Wang is “quite simply, the most dazzlingly, uncannily gifted pianist in the concert world today, and there’s nothing left to do but sit back, listen and marvel at her artistry.”

The words were prophetic. The rich tradition of women pianists – as well as the broader tradition of pianism generally – is in good hands!

Ten Pieces of Musical Advice from the Great Composers

by Emily E. Hogstad  June 7th, 2025

The great composers left behind more than just great music: they also left behind advice for their fellow artists.

Much of that advice is still surprisingly relevant, even in our fast-paced digital age.

Today, we’re looking at ten pieces of advice from the great composers.

Johann Sebastian Bach

J.S. Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685, and sadly, not many verifiable direct quotes from him survive.

However, we do have a biography called Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work by Johann Nikolaus Forkel, published in 1802, half a century after Bach’s death.

While writing his book, Forkel drew from Bach’s obituary (a document known as the Bach Nekrolog) and corresponded with two of Bach’s sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.

This J.S. Bach quote appears in Forkel’s book:

I was obliged to be industrious; whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.

Did Bach really say this? He was among the most prolific composers in the classical canon, so it’s certainly possible!

Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

In 1776, a 44-year-old Joseph Haydn was asked to prepare a brief autobiography for a collection of profiles. He turned in a charming sketch that was published two years later.

In it, he writes about his childhood:

Proper teachers I never had. I always started right away with the practical side, first in singing and playing instruments, later in composing.

I listened more than I studied, but I heard the finest music in all forms that was to be heard in my time…

Thus little by little my knowledge and my ability were developed.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

When his opera Don Giovanni was being prepared and premiered in Prague in 1787, Mozart performed on the harpsichord. Composer, conductor, keyboardist, and all-around Mozart booster Jan Křtitel Kuchař worked alongside him.

Mozart explained to his colleague:

I have spared neither care nor labour to produce something excellent for Prague. Moreover it is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me.

I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven

It’s hard to imagine gruff Ludwig van Beethoven answering fan mail from children, but in 1812, he did exactly that.

A ten-year-old pianist named Emilie sent him an embroidered pocketbook as a gift, including an admiring letter.

He began his thank-you note with a heartwarming salutation: “My dear good Emilie, my dear Friend!”

He went on to write:

The true artist has no pride; unhappily he realises that art has no limitations, he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and while perhaps he is admired by others, he grieves that he has not yet reached the point where the better genius shall shine before him like a distant sun.

He also marveled at how music can bring people together:

If you wish, dear Emilie, to write to me, only address straight here where I shall be still for the next four weeks, or to Vienna; it is all one. Look upon me as your friend, and as the friend of your family.

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

Today, we usually think of Frédéric Chopin as a composer first and foremost, but he was also very active as a teacher.

He was especially popular with Parisian aristocrats and women students.

One of those students was a woman named Emilie Timm, also known as Emilie von Gretsch after her marriage.

In an 1844 letter, she relayed what Chopin told her at one of her lessons:

It seems to me that you don’t dare to express yourself as you feel. Be bolder, let yourself go more. Imagine you’re at the Conservatoire, listening to the most beautiful performance in the world. Make yourself want to hear it, and then you’ll hear yourself playing it right here…

I see that timidity and lack of self-confidence form a kind of armour around you, but through this armour I perceive something else that you don’t always dare to express, and so you deprive us all…

Be bold and confident in your own powers and strength.

The advice must have worked, as Timm went on to become a professional musician, teaching piano in St. Petersburg. 

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, 1839

In 1848, composer Robert Schumann wrote a long list of tips for young musicians to accompany his Album für die Jugend, or Album for the Young, which he wrote for his three young daughters.

Here are two of his tips:

Play strictly in time! The playing of many a virtuoso resembles the walk of an intoxicated person. Do not take such as your model.

It is not only necessary that you should be able to play your pieces on the instrument, but you should also be able to hum the air without the piano. Strengthen your imagination so that you may not only retain the melody of a composition, but even the harmony which belongs to it.

We wrote more about Schumann’s list of tips for young musicians.

Clara Wieck Schumann

Andreas Staub: Clara Wieck, 1839

In the spring of 1858, Robert Schumann’s widow, the pianist and composer Clara Schumann, visited one of her dear friends. soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient.

Devrient was one of the true divas of her age. She created several important Wagnerian roles, including Venus in Tannhäuser.

She was also known for her series of intense romantic relationships, and ended up in jail for the political stances she took during the 1848 Revolution.

The two women got along well, even when they disagreed. Schumann wrote in her diary in April:

A long chat with Devrient, who thinks me mistaken in asking Johannes [Brahms] and [violinist Joseph] Joachim for advice as to my playing… She declares that it makes one lose one’s self-reliance.

I say, “no”, a strong intellect will know how to pick out the good, or rather that which suits its particular individuality, and can only profit by so doing.

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms

Arthur M. Abell was a violinist, journalist, and eccentric. In 1955, he published a book called Talks with Great Composers. It included a purported transcription of a long conversation with Johannes Brahms.

Abell wrote that he had promised Brahms to wait fifty years after his death to share the transcript.

So is this quote entirely accurate? Maybe, maybe not. Take it with a grain of salt. But it’s still famous.

But don’t make the mistake…of thinking that because I attach such importance to inspiration from above, that that is all there is to it; by no means.

Structure is just as consequential, for without craftsmanship, inspiration is a ‘mere reed shaken in the wind’ or ‘sounding brass or tinkling cymbals’.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Émile Reutlinger: Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, 1888

Here’s the opening to our 2023 article about Nadezhda von Meck:

In 1877, Tchaikovsky received a letter that would change his life forever. It was from a wealthy woman named Nadezhda von Meck, who described herself as a “fervent admirer.” She commissioned some chamber music from him, and eventually, she began paying him the impressive sum of 6,000 rubles a year so that he could devote himself to composition…on one condition: they could never meet.

In March 1878, early in their arrangement, when they were both getting to know each other, Tchaikovsky wrote to her:

Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer’s soul when he is stirred by inspiration.

There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation.

We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.

A few days ago, I told you I was working every day without any real inspiration. Had I given way to my disinclination, undoubtedly I should have drifted into a long period of idleness.

But my patience and faith did not fail me, and to-day I felt that inexplicable glow of inspiration of which I told you; thanks to which I know beforehand that whatever I write to-day will have power to make an impression, and to touch the hearts of those who hear it.  

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Kubey-Rembrandt Studios: Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1921

Last but certainly not least, here’s a short and simple quote from pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff:

A technique must be built, just as a house must be built. It takes years to do this. There are no real short cuts.

Summing Up the Great Composers’ Advice

What should be the takeaways from these masters? Here are simplified summaries:

1. Be industrious. (Bach)
2. Always be listening, and attend the finest performances you can. (Haydn)
3. Be aware that making music won’t be easy, and that’s okay! Even Mozart had to work hard! (Mozart)
4. You’ll often feel very far from your artistic goals. Keep going. And make friends along the way! (Beethoven)
5. Be bold and confident. When you play, pretend you’re listening to the most beautiful performance in the world. (Chopin)
6. Play in time. Also, hum the music you’re working on, apart from playing it on an instrument. (Robert Schumann)
7. Ask trusted friends for feedback…but also trust yourself and your own judgment. (Clara Schumann)
8. Inspiration needs technique and craftsmanship to be fully expressed. (Brahms)
9. Don’t work just when you’re inspired; keep at it all the time. (Tchaikovsky)
10. When learning music, there are no real shortcuts. You have to put in the work! (Rachmaninoff)

We hope these tips from these great composers inspire you, no matter what stage of your music studies you’re in!