Archive Article - Winter 1998

Index

Dr. Maurice Hinson is professor of piano in the School of Church Music at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he teaches graduate courses in piano literature, piano pedagogy, chamber music and private piano instruction. Dr. Hinson received his B.A. from the University of Florida and a M.M. and D.M.A. from the University of Michigan. He also studied at The Juilliard School and the Conservatoire National France. Dr. Hinson is the author of ten books, including Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire and numerous articles. He is also the editor of over seventy edition of piano music for Alfred, Belwin-Mills, Boosey & Hawkes, European American and Hinshaw Publishers, as well as the writer and presenter in six videos. Dr. Hinson is the founding editor of the Journal of the American Liszt Society, past editor for The American Music Teacher, and contributing editor for The Piano Quarterly. He records for Educo Records.

Dr. Hinson has been honored by each school he attended and all the professional organizations to which he belongs. Recently he was awarded the Liszt Commemorative Medal by the Hunarian Government for his research on themusic of Franz Liszt. He has given recitals, lectures and master classes on five continents and in forth-eight states.

MOL: Tell us about your musical background.

MH: My first piano teacher was Professor Claude Murphree of the University of Florida. I lived in Gainesville, Florida as a youngster, where the University of Florida was located. Murphree stressed technique -- technique -- technique -- and more technique: firm fingers and pliable wrists were very important in his teaching. His training had been in Paris, France with Marcel Dupre. Murphree also had me sight-read a great deal of repertoire and this is where I gained my insatiable appetite for piano repertoire.

MOL: When you recall your own teachers what are the first and best qualities you remember?

MH: My next teacher was Madam Olga Samaroff of the Juilliard School in New York City. She insisted that I "exhaust the printed score." I had to understand everything on the printed page. She also stressed knowing about the period in which the composer lived and understanding style in performance. Samaroff had studied in Berlin with Ernst Jedliezka who had studied with Anton and Nicholas Rubinstein at the Moscow Conservatory. My last teacher was Joseph Brinkman, head of the piano department at the University of Michigan. Brinkman had studied with and was an assistant to Artur Schnabel who had studied with Leschetizky, who had studied with Carl Czerny, who had studied with Beethoven. Brinkman taught me how to teach myself as he never imposed his own interpretations on me. He also stressed variety of tone color, individual and artistic phrasing, true feeling and personal magnetism.

MOL: Tell me about the music department in your school?

MH: The school where I teach is the School of Church Music at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. The philosophy of this music school is: a church musician must first be a fine musician -- then courses in church music are added to a solid musical foundation. I work in that area of the solid musical foundation and teach the great piano literature here just like I taught it at the University of Michigan or any other fine school. I have taught at this school since 1957.

MOL: In your opinion, what are the characteristics of the good teacher and the apt pupil?

MH: A fine teacher is one who helps the student to become his own teacher. A fine teacher spends more time on the spirit of the music than on just the notes, and in this way, teaches the student how to find the spirit of the music.

MOL: How do you select repertoire for your students?

MH: I select repertoire for my students by filling in areas where they are deficient. Since our school is a graduate school, I do not get students until they have finished an undergraduate degree. However, I find there are still plenty of areas of repertoire that need filling in when they come to study with me. Furthermore, I like to add that twentieth-century American piano repertoire is some of the best in the world. You must look far and wide to find composers who write any better for the piano than the American composers, such as, Barber, Bolcom, Copland, Crumb, Del Tredici, Liebermann and many others.

MOL: In your opinion, what are the weakness and strengths of today’s American music school compare to European conservatory?

MH: one of the major strengths of the music schools in the US is the broad approach to the repertoire. Pianists are taught a great deal of   Baroque repertoire right on through the twentieth century. I feel many European conservatories do not stress enough 20th century repertoire... at least that was my experience when I studied in Europe.

MOL: Your books are widely used as a reference world wide. MusicalOnline deeply appreciates your contribution to music world. Tell us about your books.

MH: My books -- all published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington, Indiana -- include Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire (solo piano music), Music for Piano and Orchestra, Music for More Than One Piano, The Piano in Chamber Ensemble, The Pianist's guide to Arrangements, Paraphrases and Transcriptions, and The Pianist's Bookshelf (about books, videos, dissertations and theses, all dealing with some aspect of the piano and/or its literature).

I am grateful that my books have helped so many piano students the world over. In closing, let me remind the readers that we are students all of our lives... we can never learn everything. I always remember what Robert Schumann said -- "There is no end to learning."

MOL:  I think we need to wrap up at this point. So on be half of MusicalOnline, we would like to thank you for your time and we wish all the success.

Interviewed on November, 1998