Friedrich Wieck - Teaching Career

Teaching Career

His home was a meeting place for his piano students and other musicians. Not only his wife, his children, and his close friends, but also his business associates were affected by his drive to success. Felix Mendelssohn supported his becoming professor of piano at the Leipzig Conservatory, although the post went to Ignaz Moscheles.

His methods appear progressive, flexible, nuanced, emphasizing the individuality of the student and leading the student on by means of the enjoyment of music-making rather than harsh discipline and drills. For him, mere finger dexterity was not the focus, and he did not advocate monotonous, mechanical exercises. He emphasized evenness of tone, a beautiful, song-like legato, and expressiveness. While including finger-stretching exercises to increase the student's span, he was careful to avoid fatigue by limiting the number of hours of practice per day and insisting on long walks and fresh air. Overall musical development was essential, achieved by lessons in theory, counterpoint and composition, and regular exposure to the best possible musical performances.

In practice, however, he might not always have lived up to the ideals he described in the book Piano and Song: How to Teach, How To Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of Musical Performances. When Robert Schumann was living and studying in the Wieck household, he reported seeing Wieck punishing his nine-year-old son, Alwyn, for playing the violin poorly, tearing at his hair and yelling, "You wretch, you scoundrel, is this the way you try to please your father?" Clara seemed unconcerned at the violent scene. Shocked, Schumann wrote in his diary, "Am I among human beings?" Besides the book he published some studies and exercises for the piano, a number of pamphlets, and edited various piano works.