Customer Reviews

Music-Study in Germany (Da Capo Press Music Reprint Series)

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The best portrait of Liszt I have ever read, as described by a young woman who studied with him in his later years. Though Liszt dominates this book, other characters from that era -- such as Tausig, one of the most talented pianists who ever lived, and whose life was tragically cut short at 30 -- also come alive. Amy Fay, a candid observor with a lucid prose style, brings to life a bygone era, when the old 19th-century ideals of European culture were in full flower, and music was perhaps the most beloved art form of all. All music-lovers should read this book.

Amy Fay was a young and determined American piano student whose quest for a concert career impelled her to travel to Germany, the center of European musical culture, in the 1870s. Miss Fay's delightful memoir of her years in Berlin and hamburg is illuminated by her charming and ingenuous personality and her passion for good music. Her tantalizingly brief period of study in the conservatory of Carl Tausig ended by the master's untimely death, she sought other teachers, and succeeded in obtaining an introduction to Franz Liszt. Her first-hand descriptions of the playing of Liszt, Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, Anton Rubinstein, the aging and eccentric Herr Wieck, and other figures of nineteenth-century music are a delight to read, as are also her sharp observations of German manners and Americans abroad.