England's Piano Sage

Pianist and teacher Tobias Matthay (1858-1945) believed that science could unlock the secrets of artistic success, and his revolutionary theories, first expressed in his 1903 landmark study The Act of Touch, soon began to attract worldwide attention. Eventually, at London's Royal Academy of Music, and at his own internationally famous school on Wimpole Street, he trained some of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century, including Dame Myra Hess, Irene Scharrer, Sir Clifford Curzon, York Bowen, Harriet Cohen, Eileen Joyce, and Dame Moura Lympany. By 1925 his towering status in Britain had reached across the Atlantic with the founding of the American Matthay Association and the adoption of his ideas by prominent voices at Yale and Juilliard. From these heights, Matthay's reputation would experience a precipitous fall-from his forced resignation from the Royal Academy to a barrage of criticism attacking his theories.

In this new Revised Edition of his highly acclaimed biography, Stephen Siek offers a richly detailed portrait of a remarkable man whose achievements still await greater understanding and appreciation. This meticulously researched study draws on archival documentation, including dozens of letters that have never before seen print, and it now features an annotated, highly detailed discography chronicling the newly available recordings of Matthay and his pupils-over 50-released since the book's first publication in 2012.

As a lucid exposition both of a great theorist and the history of the theoretical tradition of piano technique, England's Piano Sage has long been of interest to music historians, piano enthusiasts, and professional musicians. But now, the Revised Edition, available in both trade paperback and eBook format, makes this landmark work even more accessible to students and teachers. In addition, Siek's narrative is written in elegant, highly readable prose, accessible to the non-professional. In the words of one critic: "He allows the reader to feel immense warmth and sympathy for a man who many have never heard of, or, like myself imagined as a frosty pedagogue in his ivory tower."