Making Perfect - sometime before Sept. 1877

July 22, 2010 9:40 AM

"Dr. Hans von Bulow is reported to have said," - and I've seen similar language credited to Paderewski, Rubinstein, Rostropovich, Nureyev, and Louis Armstrong - "'If I stop practice for one day, I notice it in my playing; if I stop two days, my friends notice it; if I stop three days, the public notices it.'" Dwight's Journal of Music, Boston, Sept 1, 1877, p. 84 (v. XXXVII no. 11). Do you know where this was first reported? Or do you have an earlier citation to a different person using comparable language? Perhaps it was in a German publication, which I can't read, but I'd still love to see it.
posted by Dave 9 to Society & Culture (3 answers total)

Here's the original German, or at least a reference to it from 1900, though I haven't yet found a source that predates 1877:

"Wenn ich einen Tag zu üben unterlasse, so bemerke ich den Unterschied; wenn ich es zwei Tage unterlasse, so bemerkt ihn meine Frau, und wenn ich es drei Tage unterlasse, so bemerkt ihn das Publicum."

That quote is slightly different than your translation. Specifically, it's Bulow's wife that notices after two days, not his friends.
posted by jedicus at 10:12 AM on July 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

Remarkably, a google search for any of the possible German bits of versions of this phrase turns up nothing before the reference given above, which might be a re-translation or paraphrase. Can't see the full text of both google book links above (perhaps not accessible in Europe) but it may well be that the English 1877 reference is fresh and authentic: Von Bülow premiered Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto in Boston in 1876 and he apparently had a US tour in 1877, so maybe someone heard him say this bit in conversation.
I can say so much that during more than a decade of piano-related scholarship, I have not come across an earlier attribution of this bon mot to someone else.
posted by Namlit at 2:04 AM on July 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I would be pleased if Google and I had found the earliest telling of this story, but apparently we still don't know. So, your comments are not really answers, but I'm marking them as favorites in appreciation of your friendly efforts. Thanks!
posted by Dave 9 at 11:43 AM on July 26, 2010