Descriptive Analyses of Piano Works

The material comprised in the following pages has been collected for use in book form by the advice and at the earnest request of the publisher, as well as of many musical friends, who express the belief that it is of sufficient value and interest to merit a certain degree of permanency, and will prove of practical aid to teachers and students of music. A portion of it has already appeared in print in the program books of the Derthick Musical Literary Society and in different musical journals; and 12 nearly all of it has been used at various times in my own Lecture Recitals.
The book is merely a compilation of what have seemed the most interesting and valuable results of my thought, reading, and research in connection with my Lecture Recital work during the past twenty years.
In the intensely busy life of a concert pianist a systematic and exhaustive study of the whole broad field of piano literature has been utterly impossible. That would require the exclusive devotion of a lifetime at least. My efforts have been necessarily confined strictly to such compositions as came under my immediate attention in connection with my own work as player.
The effect is a seemingly desultory and haphazard method in the study, and an inadequacy and incoherency in the collective result, which no one can possibly realize or deplore so fully as myself. Still the work is a beginning, a first pioneer venture into a realm which I believe to be not only new, but rich and important. I can only hope that the example may prompt others, with more leisure and ability, to follow in the path I have blazed, to more extensive explorations and more complete results.