Manifestly, our power of communicating the verdicts given by our musical feeling and knowledge,
and by our artistic-judgment, is strictly limited by the extent of our power to make the instrument respond to our wish with exactitude, and in the end unconsciously.
In other words, any artistic-judgment, musicianship, or feeling that we may possess will not be expressed, unless we also possess the ability to draw the sound-effects, required from the instrument.
These sound-effects are to be communicated with accuracy and certainty.
Here we are face to face with a training which is unique to the particular instrument chosen.
It is this special training, this latter characteristic of the executive side of playing,
the Art of Tone Production at the Pianoforte
represents the very basis of expression with which the present work proposes to deal.
In the next module, we will look a little more closely to consider what is meant by this
Art of Tone-production,
and how this art is to be acquired.
The uncultivated ear often fails to distinguish between good and bad tone-production.
There are plenty of minds, otherwise "musical," who yet seem quite content to comply silently in the rawest of tone qualities, and paucity
[1] in variety.
No doubt this arises from ignorance that there is something better to be obtained from the instrument than what they are accustomed to.
Also, there is no doubt that those few, who are
gifted executively (meaning they possess natural technical talent),
are not content with such
raw tones, but do strive to discover the ways of good tone, as a consequence of the discomfort caused to their
sensitive ear.
Hence, also, the popular fallacy (popular even amongst musicians) that beautiful tone-production necessarily denotes "rationality" on the performer's part. Because the methodology of tone production for piano playing has not been agreed upon by various institutions,
it has been only the gifted ones, who have arrived at beauty and variety of tone. Good tone-production is not to be measured by mere quantity of sound. Noise and tone of good volume and beauty are two quite distinct things.