I recently spent an afternoon digging through the Nicholas Slonimsky Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC to see if I could find evidence of correspondence between Ernie Stires and his beloved mentor.  I was pleased to locate a folder which contained several items.  Included with one of Ernie’s letters to Slonimsky was a Middlebury College Music Department program from 1988 presenting Stephanie Rogers, pianist, in recital performing the world premiere of Ernie’s Sonata in C.  A more intriguing discovery, however, was found written on the backside of the program:

ABOUT PIANOS…

Although tonight’s artist, Stephanie Rogers, will perform her entire program on a beautiful Mason and Hamlin grand piano, recent gift of recording engineer Sydney Stokes, the three sonatas we are to hear were conceived by their composers for three very different instruments.

Invented in Italy almost three hundred years ago by Bartolomeo Cristofori, the pianoforte was considered at first something of a musical toy. However, unlike its predecessor, the pluck-string harpsichord, a novel and ingenious system of striking hammers, dampers, and controls allowed this new instrument to be played soft (piano) or loud (forte) with infinite gradations in between, and spelled the doom of the two hundred year reign of the former as the premiere keyboard instrument for home and recital hall. It was to be almost seventy years before this new novelty came into general use in Europe but many composers, including J.S. Bach, were intrigued with it, and demand spawned a plethora of piano makers everywhere.

There were problems! Early pianos were built on harpsichord lines whose wooden frames simply could not support the much greater tension of more and larger strings of the new device which frequently warped and even collapsed under the strain, even in performance. Think of the additional strain on the nerves of those poor early pianists!

All manner of wooden and metal braces and reinforcements were tried, and by the time Haydn began writing tonight’s sonata (1789), a rectangular (so-called “square piano”) was in general use, a more-or-less stable instrument of six octaves and sustaining a total tension of several thousand pounds. The design persisted into the period of the Schubert Sonata in A (1828) but improvements were constant, and stronger cases allowed ever more tension with its attendant increased brilliance and resonance.

It is said that the enormous fire and energy of the piano music of Beethoven produced such a strain on pianos of this period that piano makers fell into something of a commercial panic trying to build ever stronger instruments. Cast iron frames were introduced, pedals went to the floor instead of the usual knee levers of earlier instruments, the general harpsichord-like shape returned for larger pianos, and by the time of the early romantic composers like Chopin and Schuman, tension of several tons was possible.

But it was not until the American piano builders, Steinway & Sons of Long Island City introduced their “patent grand” in 1859 that the modern grand piano was born. With seven and a third octaves (the legendary “88″) and supporting a total tension of some thirty tons (!) the Steinway grand became the standard of the world, changing forever the way the piano is written for and played. With minute modifications, this magnificent instrument remains to this day the model for all grand pianos, including the Mason and Hamlin we are hearing this evening. So intricate, varied and complex are its tonal and percussive elements that a piano is by far the most difficult instrument to record, and even the most sophisticated modern “state of the art” electronic synthesizing devices can only crudely approximate its true sound which approaches the orchestral in range of expression.

The Stires piece, Sonata in C (1988), a heavily jazz-oriented work, written on an 1897 Steinway grand, makes extensive use of the capabilities of the modern piano. The piece employs virtually every one of the instrument’s 88 keys from the lowest (A”) to the highest (c”"), and in the final movement depends heavily on the center or sostenuto pedal which permits the “holding” of a note or series of notes while the remaining are played in normal fashion.

Tonight’s program is being recorded by Sydney Stokes for broadcast early next year over the stations of Vermont Public Radio.

—Ernie Stires

” Every child should have an opportunity to learn to play some musical instrument and should be taught to sing. All schools, including the lower grades, should have teachers of music of high standard. For children with special aptitude for music, more intensive teaching should be provided, including the study of the counterpoint and form of Bach and Mozart, and more time for practice should be allowed.

The study of music greatly increases a child’s sensibility, his sensitiveness to balance and form and to beauty of every kind, and his consciousness of the more subtle meanings. The playing of an instrument demands concentration, coordination and self-control. In playing great music a child comes under the influence of men of the highest genius – men who arouse ideals, create standards, and inspire confidence. In playing in an orchestra or singing in a chorus he takes part in a work which demands perfect cooperation and the highest discipline.

Thus the study of music meets every requirement of education and can do its part toward preparing the child for the years of maturity. it will make his hours of work easier and more interesting (as all culture does), and will make his hours of leisure happier and more profitable.

Men who see our daily life as a sort of glorified prize ring, and who want their boys to be tough and aggressive, may get what they want, but they may not have the gratitude of their sons. Life is not a prize ring, and many a hard, tough character has found himself stranded in a society that had other standards.

The music of the great masters is not abstruse or obscure. it was written from the human heart in its more exalted and inspired state, with all the powers of expression at their very height, at white heat. These composers did not disdain their hearers, but with passionate honesty strove to reach them. They bared their hearts and poured out their feelings before all the world, and the finest and truest consciousness within them guided their music. They have communicated their sincerity to their interpreters, and thus this music stands inflexible in its purity, and inexorable in its demands on the nobility and rectitude of its hearers. In its presence all those who can hear are elevated and made whole. The consciousness of the ability to share in this wonderful art has had much to do with the development of self-confidence.

Music knows no limitations. A tune is a tune wherever born, and nothing can destroy its appeal. Regardless of barriers of race, space, and time, it travels cheerfully throughout the world and is loved everywhere.

There is more to music than many men, including many educators, realize. Teachers wish to arouse a love for lyric poetry: composers have done much to give lyric poetry a place in daily life. Teachers wish to instill a reverence for the higher forms of the drama: composers have given the drama new glories and verities. Teachers wish to develop nobility in their pupils: nowhere will they find greater help than in music. Great composers have given their lives for the expression of the noblest emotions of which man is capable. Educations have in music a tremendous power, ready to hand.

Every city and town should have a small fund for the higher musical education of those rare young people who show positive genius for music. The expense would be a trifle, but the returns would be enormous. A musical genius belongs to the people and should be educated by the people. To place the responsibility for the training of such children on their parents is wrong. Find performances of great musical works should be made possible, and they should be accessible to all. This, too, is a public responsibility.

We are slowly becoming aware of the fact that, if humanity does not insist on going right, it will go dangerously wrong. We are gradually acquiring a desire to cooperate with those men of genius of every kind who labored to elevate mankind. So long as we were not afraid, we were willing to keep art to ourselves. Exclusiveness had a glamour, and we fondly thought it enhanced art. But now we are afraid, and we want to use art for the softening and appeasing of all mankind. If we had begun earlier, perhaps we need never have known fear.

However, the business at hand is to use music in a great way. For that we need great artists; and fortunately we have them. But now is the time to prepare the artists of the next generation; in the enjoyment of what we have, we must not forget the future. Nothing is more fatuous than the easy assumption that we shall always have plenty of artists. We may not. Artists have a way of disappearing off the face of the earth so that all the King’s horses cannot find them. Liszt provided most of the concert pianists for the generation which followed him.

Men will ask: Will the outlay and effort necessary for great performances bring adequate return? Yes. Bayreuth, Salzburg, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Worcester, Massachusetts – to mention but a few of the smaller cities – have had great performances; and every inhabitant, down to the last man, has known what it has meant to his city. There need be no qualms. Art is the greatest investment the world has ever known. ”

- Sidney Homer (Ernie’s grandfather), 1939. Preface to his memoir My Wife and I: The Story of Louise and Sidney Homer