Czerny

I approach Czerny with an element of despair. For several months I have been working on #14 from the School of Velocity. I have worked out a strategy for every little beat. Sometimes I remember all those strategies when I play the piece. Sometimes I can actually apply the remembered strategies. I am now bold enough to try to struggle through it with the metronome. It's marked "molto vivo e velocissimo." I play it largo. If I set the metronome at 40, there's not enough pulse to get me to the next beat, so I set the metronome at 80 and pretend it's written in 4/8 instead of 2/4. And even that speed is "aspirational" - - as in the ABA's generous statement that the expectation that lawyers will perform 50 hours a year of pro bono service is actually an "aspirational" standard. I can follow the beat for a while, and then I start getting behind. I imagine that an aspiring world-class tennis player might feel that way when playing a real champion - - he can keep up a volley for a while, and then he just loses it. When I start a new Czerny next time, I'm going to mark it for each time I play it - - as if I'm in prison, marking off the days of a sentence on the cell wall. And my aspiration will be that the succeeding pieces in School of Velocity will have fewer and fewer marks. Hope springs eternal.