Complete Pianist Body, Mind, Synthesis

From the preface by Lorin Hollander: "...a remarkable piece of work by an equally remarkable teacher, philosopher, and healer. Ruth explores with wonderful clarity and thoroughness virtually every important aspect of the mind, heart, body, and soul of the creative person. This is truly a book for our age, and would make valuable reading for those pursuing most fields of human endeavor." This small book on a large subject, the culmination of many years of performing and teaching, offers piano students, teachers, and performers useful advice for many stages along the path to becoming a pianist. Friedberg explains the mystery of the connection between the body and the brain of the pianist. What exactly is the role of the body in establishing, helping, or hindering the pianist's process? How can the mind's unending activity be harnessed most effectively to facilitate this process? She explores relevant published information and new psychological insights into learning and how it operates, supplying extensive annotated bibliographies of books and periodicals published during the past fifty years. In the final section of the book she investigates the ultimate synthesis of musical activities of the body and mind, known as "performance." Paperback edition available 2002.

Ruth C. Friedberg, Director of Music and Professor of Piano, Incarnate Word College, San Antonio, TX, has also taught at Duke, the University of Texas, and the New School of Music in Philadelphia. She has concertized and given lecture-recitals throughout the US and Canada and was the keyboard artist of the San Antonio Symphony from 1976 to 1987. Her articles on 20th-century music and composers have appeared in many periodicals as well as in the New Grove's Dictionaries of Music, and Scarecrow Press has published her three-volume set, American Art Song and American Poetry (1981-1987).