Madeleine Forte

Background

Madeleine Hsu was born on September 20, 1938.

Education

Madeleine finished Ecole Normale de Musique with Diploma in Pedagogy in 1960 and with Diploma in Musicology in 1961. She attended Warsaw Conservatory and also earned a Diploma from it in 1965. Next school which she attended was Juilliard School, Madeleine obtained Bachelor of Music degree from it in 1970 and Master of Science degree in 1971. After that she graduated from New York University and earned Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1984. She studied with Alfred Cortot, Wilhelm Kempff, Zbigniev Drzewiecki, Rosina Lhevinne, and Martin Canin.

Career

Madeleine Forte began her career working as a teacher in private studio in Paris in 1955, she held this position for almost 10 years. In 1960 she became also a private instructor in Ecole Magda Tagliaferro, and was working there for three years. In 1965 she was a teacher in private studios in Rio de Janeiro, but Madeleine held this post for only one year. She was working in New York, holding the same position for 5 years from 1966 to 1971. Simultaneously she was a piano instructor in Bronx House Music School during 1968 – 1970 and a piano instructor and accompanist in Usdan Center for the Performing Arts from 1968 till 1969. In 1971 she worked in Boise State University and in Boise private studios as a teacher. She held the same position also in private studios of Sun Valley in 1993. In 1996 she was appointed a visiting fellow at Yale University. Now she is working as a professional pianist.

Achievements

• Madelaine has many awards and grants from different countries including awards for taking part in different competitions.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Politics and Society in Modern America)

    (Conventionally, US immigration history has been understoo...)

Views

Quotations: “Music is neither game nor recreation for the true performer: it is an uncompromising synthesis of intellect and soul. It is a fearful and magnificent exercise in authenticity and perseverance. I urge my students to demand more from themselves than they would otherwise dare, to know themselves beneath the skin, to strip their surfaces until they have found their core. I teach my students to express themselves, as individual men and women; to embrace music as their personal act; to reach the heart and intellect of their audience; to explore their own selves in order that they may hear their innermost dreams and render their music with life. I teach them to transcend prosaism as we merge with the greatest minds of the musical world. As performers, we feel elevated beyond our own humanity. Our audiences receive offerings from our world of the spirit. The performer and the listener, through these offerings, find emotional renewal, each excavating new truths from within the other."

“Technique is not a question of practicing seven hours a day. It is in the mind and depends on intelligence. For this reason, I teach my students to be aware of their bodies, to study carefully their reactions, and to control their motions through their brains with care, sensitivity, and a heightened awareness of their biological composition. Musical spirit lies in the synthesis of mind and body.

“We approach each composer with humility. I lead my students toward writings on and by the composers themselves in order that the students may understand the composer’s thinking, his world of emotions, and his spirit. In striving to understand the mind of the composer, we must also tune our introspection. It is at the center of our introspection that we find the most wonderful part of ourselves: the part that does not belong to us. We reach the innermost part of human experience, and there, through our music, we collectively meet."

“As performers, we embrace the composer’s spirit as our own, and in offering it to our audiences through music, we temporarily dissolve ourselves and let the composer speak through us. The performer is the in between, the audience’s guide to the collective part of our minds that allows music to be the language we all understand."

“I guide my students to be wise with this language. I teach them to be poets, to examine subtlety and nuance, and to discipline their musical ear. The world of emotions awaits them, but opens only to those whose honesty is absolute. This honesty can be a devastating thing; it is treacherous at times to examine one’s own naked soul. Some students, afraid to look too deeply into their own eyes, prefer to turn away instead. It is so much more comfortable to look away, and so much easier to demand little of oneself. For them, my studio has little to offer. Others, however, find a hint of truth in what I have to say; these students remain. They probe their hearts and intellects, and they learn to reach the rigorous honesty that surpasses the artist’s ego. They learn to discover within themselves the most sublime of human emotions, and to offer them humbly to the world.”

Membership

• She is certified master teacher.

  Music Teachers National Association

• American Liszt Society

• National Federation of Music Clubs

Interests

• art

• Sport & Clubs

  Swimming

Connections

Hsu has two children: Yann and Olen.

Son:

Yann

Son:

Olen