Piano Magazine

Our Experiences Writing for Piano Magazine

Written By Sarah Jenkins, Sarah Leonard, Piano Inspires

Every year, Piano Magazine offers students the opportunity to showcase their research and writing through the Collegiate Writing Contest. We are pleased to present the testimonies of two recent winners of this competition, in hopes that it will inspire other collegiate students to submit their manuscripts for a chance to be featured in Piano Magazine. The grand prize winner receives publication in an issue of Piano Magazine, and secondary prize winners receive publication on PianoInspires.com. This year, the contest runs until May 1, 2023. Learn more and submit an article here!

Sarah Jenkins, Winner of the 2020 Competition

Norwegian Folk Songs: Making Rhythmic Complexities Easy and Enjoyable, Autumn 2020

The date is April 27, 2020. I just turned in the final draft of my master’s thesis, and I am ready to call the semester over. It had been over a month since I left my apartment (and my cat) due to the pandemic. Then I received an email from my advisor along the lines of, “You should write an article and submit it for the Collegiate Writing Competition through Piano Magazine.” I’m sorry–what? The deadline was May 1, 2020. How was I supposed to write an article worthy of submission that close to the deadline while my brain (and soul) was recovering from finishing my master’s degree online? Well, if your advisor recommends that you do something, you do it. They know best…right?

So, I did it. I locked myself in my office and got to work. I might have become a little over zealous in the research stages of my thesis, so I certainly had plenty of content. I finally settled on a Norwegian folk song by Agathe Backer-Grøndahl. The hard part was trying to narrow the scope of my article. Why do other pianists and teachers need to know about this piece? What does it offer to students?

Let’s just say the first draft was definitely a rough draft. It was essentially a music theory paper. After some feedback from my advisor and one of my peers, I scratched the entire thing and started over. What made this piece special? Why did I choose it? Aha! The rhythms. I realized that Grøndahl used strong hand shapes and positions to allow students to focus on rhythmic complexities. Surprisingly, this version was the easiest to write. I found a topic interesting to me and beneficial to my students. That’s what this is about, right?

Throughout my adult life I have had conflicting feelings regarding generic inspirational quotes (i.e. “You’ll never know until you try…”). I always craved real and specific advice. Yes, I’ll never know until I try, but what do I gain from trying? What do I gain from failing? Why should I spend time and energy on something that might not benefit me? In this case, why should I put myself through the stress of writing (and rewriting) an article when all I want is my degree and a nap? The truth is simple: I did not know what I did not know until I tried. Read that again. I did not know what I did not know…until I tried. I learned where the deficits in my writing and my ability to talk about music were. I learned that I can write quickly when needed (and pushed). I learned that sometimes the greatest advice I can be given is to just try because I will discover the “why” myself.

So, my advice is just do it. Write an article and submit it. You’ll never know what you don’t know until you try. 

Sarah Leonard, Winner of the 2022 Competition

Dealing With Double Notes: Practical Solutions for Small-Handed Pianists, Autumn 2021

My master’s research centered around the underrepresented majority of pianists; those whose hands are considered small by late-Romantic standards. I was highly motivated to share what I had learned with the outside world, especially given how significantly it had helped me with my own teaching and playing, but I didn’t have a good way to do so outside of my school, LSU. Dr. Pamela Pike strongly recommended I take a portion of my research and turn it into an article for the Collegiate Writing Contest at Piano Magazine. Because I had spent several months writing about small-handed-piano technique, in both academic and lecture form, it was easy for me to quickly draft a 1,000-1,500 word essay.

I’m extremely thankful for my colleagues at LSU, who had heard me talk about my research throughout my entire project. Because they understood my thoughts and goals, they were able to help me revise my draft in a way that was approachable and fit the style of a Piano Magazine article. I might not have considered writing for a magazine if I hadn’t had that kind of support.

Submitting the article was a little scary because I had never done something like that before. However, I felt I had something to add to the conversation surrounding small hands, and I knew it would add authority to my CV and resumé for future job applications. Also, why not submit an article? I had done months of work and research. The worst thing that could’ve happened was that I’d have to try again in the future.

When I received the email that I had won the competition, it was so affirming! As a young person, I had never been recognized outside of my immediate circle of professors and colleagues. It gave me the confidence to present at the fall LMTA (Louisiana Music Teachers Association) conference, something else I had never done before. I look forward to continuing my academic journey, alongside my teaching career.

Back to Discovery Page

Book Review: Every Good Boy Does Fine by Jeremy Denk

Written By Ann DuHamel

Book reviews in each issue of the Piano Magazine provide readers with a sneak peek inside the latest publications on piano teaching, performing, and learning. The Autumn 2022 Piano Magazine review of Every Good Boy Does Fine by Jeremy Denk will have you running to your local bookstore to buy a copy. Fans of Denk will find this review by Ann DuHamel to be as inspiring, witty, and insightful as Denk’s own writing. We welcome you to read the complete review here and subscribe to enjoy more excellent reviews in Piano Magazine.

…that is the point of this book: a love for the steps, the joys of growing and outgrowing and being outgrown.

Jeremy Denk

I am secretly, or not so secretly, if you ask my husband or any student who has lived through my Piano from Bach to Jazz class, a huge fan of Jeremy Denk. Yes, he plays marvelously; but beyond his artistry at the keyboard, I’m completely, utterly enamored of his gift with words. Reading his (now archived) blog Think Denk was a frequent pleasure during my doctoral program. I found it poetic, poignant, humorous, and occasionally heartbreaking. When I learned of the publication of Every Good Boy Does Fine, I counted down the days until it arrived. The short review of this book is: if you haven’t already read it, purchase it immediately, and read it now. Do not pass “Go,” etc. Keep in mind, I’m an awkward and nerdy bibliophile who, like Denk, much prefers Brahms to Rachmaninoff, so I identify strongly with most every sentence in the book.

You, gentle reader, probably seek a more nuanced take beyond my exhortation. This memoir reflects on Denk’s life, pianistic and otherwise, through his doctoral work at Juilliard. He structures the narrative in three overarching sections, “Harmony” (pre-college), “Melody” (undergraduate years at Oberlin), and “Rhythm” (time in Bloomington, Indiana, studying with György Sebok, and after). Each section is subdivided into six or seven parts; musical lessons and commentary alternate with biographical chapters.

Denk describes every pianist’s foibles and tribulations in true and hilarious ways: “having two hands makes the piano impossible”1 and, “Will I ever be done with the thumb? The answer was No, never.”2 His aphorisms brilliantly sum up the importance of listening, frequently recalling his beloved mentor Sebok: “Remember…the music is not the notes. It is between the notes.”3

He illuminates the importance of the score and textual detail: “when the composer’s marking seems most insane is when you need to pay the closest attention”4 and, most marvelously, “the written page of music was a treasure map.”5

The musical observations merge with philosophy, undergirding Proustian reflections about how time, music, and memory intertwine. This is what I so enjoy about reading Denk: he is a philosopher and a poet, searching for deep meaning, giving voice to what we quest for in our lives. Music simply happens to be the metaphor he uses in his writing, from the Bach B-minor fugue of WTC I, “a journey from known to known, via unfathomable mystery”6 to the Chopin F-minor Ballade, which “…carries a truth: You do not decide where to go, and then begin going there. In real life, while you are deciding where to go, you are already traveling.”7

Lest you think it’s all heavy lifting, Denk’s wry humor is also on full display. In describing various musical elements, he utilizes wonderful and bizarre analogies—Wile E. Coyote, taxidermied squirrels, cars sliding into snow drifts, the wardrobe leading to Narnia. He pokes a fair bit of fun at himself too: what other kid proclaims the PBS opera album as their “new life soundtrack”8 or writes a “manifesto for a utopian society”?9 Even so, or because of this, when he reveals his epiphanies and shares his successes, you the reader rejoice along with him.

Jeremy Denk

At the top of each chapter, Denk offers a curated playlist, featuring the works he discusses within. These works range from Bach to Messiaen, Monteverdi to Elliot Carter, and include Barbra Streisand singing Gounod’s “Ave Maria” and Nina Simone. The annotated appendix provides greater detail, including his recommendations for recordings and the word “Bachitude,” which I have now added to my lexicon.

This is a coming-of-age story. It is also a love story, primarily to the teacher who serves as mentor and guru. Denk shares pages of uplifting anecdotes from Sebok: lessons about beauty, about ennobling oneself, about teaching and discovery, demonstrating the utmost importance of one’s teacher in molding the musician and the human being.

The book is, in Denk’s words from the opening Prelude,

“…the story of piano lessons: obsessive repetition, climbing toward an unknown goal that rewrites itself, once achieved. The truest realizations aren’t at the peak, but are discovered almost by surprise, and through release, by passing back down the old, same steps. …that is the point of this book: a love for the steps, the joys of growing and outgrowing and being outgrown.”10

And what a beautiful testimony to the steps this book is indeed. I find myself, in the days and weeks after reading the book, approaching my practice differently, through a Denk-ian lens. In the appendix, regarding Mozart K. 545, Denk poses the question, “How can you teach, and still be transcendental?”11 I daresay this book is a masterclass in exactly how to teach and still be transcendental. (Random House, 2022, 384 pages, $28.99 hardcover and other formats available).

NOTES

1 Jeremy Denk, Every Good Boy Does Fine (New York: Random House, 2022), 27.
2 Ibid, 47.
3 Ibid, 258.
4 Ibid, 178.
5 Ibid, 278.
6 Ibid, 104.
7 ibid, 107; Denk is specifically referencing the returning melody in mm. 134–135 with this quote.
8 Ibid, 23.
9 Ibid, 49.
10 Ibid, xi.
11 Ibid, 342.

Back to Discovery Page
Search
Piano Inspires logo featuring stylized diagonal stripes in orange, gold, and teal, next to the text 'Piano Inspires' in bold black lettering.