Has it all been done on the piano ?

[ted]

I am posting this following a thought provoking response in the Audition Room by our friend, CrazyforIvanMoravec. The notion that there is nothing left to say in piano music seems to be floating around a lot lately, especially in academic circles. What do we think here, as a reasonably varied body of people concerned with expressing ideas at the piano ?

As the general notion is somewhat imprecise, please choose the option which comes closest to your point of view. Take existing genres to mean all existing piano music - composed, improvised, classical, romantic, jazz, serial, New Age - absolutely everything.

[henrah]

There are an infinite amount of combinations of notes, chords, keys, chord progressions and the like; and an infinite amount of emotions and ideas attached to those combinations. Therefore there are two lots of infinite creative possibilities for the piano, which is a heck of a lot

There are only a finite number of emotions, but they can be expressed in an infinite number of ways.
Henrah

[florestan9]

well, pick your favorite dead composer - assuming he (she?) was alive today, he would certianly be able to produce a meaningful work from the genre that was popular in his time, hence there are still possibilities out there.  Modern composition, as with most modern art, is much more incomprehensible to me, but then again many artists aren't appreciated in their own time.

[ahinton]

well, pick your favorite dead composer - assuming he (she?) was alive today, he would certianly be able to produce a meaningful work from the genre that was popular in his time, hence there are still possibilities out there.  Modern composition, as with most modern art, is much more incomprehensible to me, but then again many artists aren't appreciated in their own time.

This is perhaps the best kind of answer possible here; could anyone imagine Liszt or Alkan, Skryabin or Godowsky - to say nothing of Chopin - tacitly abandoning the piano as a means of expression just because they happened to live in the present age? Of course, if they were alive today, their lives would still be full of what they themselves would have done in a past life, since so many present-day pianists perform it! The piano music of Finnissy, or Sorabji, say, would not have been possible without the pre-existence of those and other major past piano composers' writing for the instrument.

Best,

Alistair

[tompilk]

i sometimes wonder why the 'modern music' now has to rely on strange things like pre-prepared pianos and slamming keyboard lids...
also variations on a theme, although i love some of them, get on my nerves. I think they should write original music.
I also think music nowadays should not be trying to fulfil mathamatical structures or whatever it is, because ome modern music is just not as universally enjoyable as say Rachmaninoff or Chopin.
Tom

[henrah]

I think modern 21st Century (and some late 20th Century) music will - in years to come - be much like what Romantic music from the Liszt, Alkan and Chopin era is now in terms of people playing it and enjoying it.

But I think Classical music will always live on, or be replaced by Romantic music whilst that is replaced by modern 20th and 21st Century music.
Henrah

[jas]

I suppose the general public at every period in musical history has thought that everything had led up to that point and that musically there was nothing else that could be done, yet behind the scenes there are always people working at pushing things on. I don't believe everything has been done, but now, with things like prepared piano, Cage's 4'33, electronic music, etc. we're moving in a very different direction to where we've been before with "normal" acoustic music. With computers a lot is possible that wasn't before, and I believe there's a lot more that can be done in that respect, but I think it's almost inevitable that with an increase in electronic techniques, the blurry line between music and non-music will be crossed and it will essentially cease to be music at all.

Jas

[henrah]

What do you guys mean by 'prepared piano'?

[thalbergmad]

What do you guys mean by 'prepared piano'?

Some modern composers give special instructions about the piano, ie place 3 lightly done haddocks over the bottom 2 strings or depress the sustain pedal with a large box of figs.

There are several more examples.

Thal

[jas]

Some modern composers give special instructions about the piano, ie place 3 lightly done haddocks over the bottom 2 strings or depress the sustain pedal with a large box of figs.

There are several more examples.

Thal

Yeah, that's possibly one of the more unusual ones.

[nanabush]

Do you ever think they'll extend the piano?  Like add 2 octaves or somethin?  I'd assume that would add a lot of possibilities...

[henrah]

Well a Bosendorfer 280 adds 9notes to the bass, but I think much further and it won't sound very much like notes and more like just a rumble. It would become difficult to tell two close notes apart.
Henrah

[rob47]

this is worth considering:



from Leonard Bernstein's "The Infinite Variety of Music"

(if this is to small to read right click "view image" and then you can zoom in.

[nanabush]

O dear... god

[ahinton]

Some modern composers give special instructions about the piano, ie place 3 lightly done haddocks over the bottom 2 strings

What a waste of haddock! However, maybe the piece concerned has also to be lightly done (said he discreetly) if the desired accompanying haddock are likewise. Personally, although a Scot (and the Scots place no small importance on haddock), I've never incorporated any fish in any of my own work...

Best,

Alistair

[ted]

These responses thankfully confirm the obvious; that yet another musical academic is talking nonsense. But that's par for the course.

[mikey6]

Some modern composers give special instructions about the piano, ie place 3 lightly done haddocks over the bottom 2 strings or depress the sustain pedal with a large box of figs.

There are several more examples.

Thal

Listen to the John Cage sonatas for prepared piano.  Their the pieces that were reccomended to me after I started questioning it (although I haven't heard them myself), their some of the few pieces that pull off the...prepared piano.

As for the post, I don't really know how you could answer that there is more to be said unless you can think of something that hasn't been said (in that case you would have a breakthrough in the musical world)  It's difficult if you answer it with that line of thought (and depressing!), but you can hope that there will be another Debussy to f*** up the harmonic language, or Beethoven to re-arrange form.

[jam8086]

Maybe it's because most musicians don't write anything anymore.  The fewer musicians that write music, the less of a chance there is that something good will be written.

[prometheus]

Classical music is much more popular today than in it's 'own time' though it is true that a professional classical pianist is no longer a composer per definition, which one could say was almost true in the past. On the contrary, the two have been totally seperated.

The question is silly, actually. Though it kind of depends on what is meant. Yes, everything that is 'shocking' or 'impressive'  has been done. Maybe things that are considered 'innovative' or 'fresh' have also been done. But surely one can write an endless amount of music. The limit will be the number of people in the world.

The problem is that people are not interested. People do not want to hear someone composing a work as great as Beethoven but with a more modern touch. Why listen to a Beethoven-like work that was written by someone obscure instead of by the great Beethoven himself? A work without a history, a legacy, tradition, anekdotes, importance in the evolution of music that we already know, etc.

A short time ago there was a topic asking about what would happen if all the known classical music was somehow gone, deleted from reality. From one point of view that would be great, exciting. People will start writing music again because then there is a need for it.

Mainstream classical music limits itself to 30 composers or so. They rest is largely ignored. People that listen to classical music aren't that interested in the music itself. They want the experience.
Maybe they should ban the public performance of these 30 composers.



I guess this is really the disadvantage of composed music over improvised music.

And since when is Cage's 4'33 about music?

[mikey6]

And since when is Cage's 4'33 about music?

I thought that's been the debate over the past 50 years? Is John cage actually a composer?

[Tash]

i liked what i read in peter sculthorpe's autobiography- when he was a kid he wrote composers' block and thought he'd run out of melodies, so just composed some random blah thing. then his teacher was like what is this? and he was like we've run out of melodies. and his teacher was like has god run out of making different faces for people?

sure, some faces may be similar, but everyone is still an individual. and nothing is ever finished.

[rachmanny]

this is worth considering:



from Leonard Bernstein's "The Infinite Variety of Music"

(if this is to small to read right click "view image" and then you can zoom in.

I think this doesn´t apply to the piano we would have to consider of how many hands and fingers a pianists has and what chords and melodies are posible  posible to play with them. unless there were 8 hands i guess.   

[semme]

so why the heck does everything still sound the same? probably because 99% of infitiy posibilities still sound like crap. dont we like to stick with heart and soul?

[Tash]

heart and sould oh god let me just shoot myself with that suggestion, i swear, every time someone comes to my house and sees my keyboard all they want to do is play freakin heart and soul, man i am ready to abuse the hell out of whoever wrote it

[clef]

heart and sould oh god let me just shoot myself with that suggestion, i swear, every time someone comes to my house and sees my keyboard all they want to do is play freakin heart and soul, man i am ready to abuse the hell out of whoever wrote it

lol yes!!!  arg I'm gonna get out the hose the next time my sister plays that...  thing!!

[crazy for ivan moravec]

hi guys. our composition department is going to hold an informal forum entitled, "Piano and..." on Sept. 6.

may i ask that i print your opinions and pick out some that might be useful for our discussion... anyways wer all anonymous here...?

i shall gladly update you guys with whatever we come up with.

and if you have any recordings of your friend-composer's work, please do send it to me with some explanation included, plus the name of composer. we would love to include it in our discussion. clem4705315@yahoo.com

[ramseytheii]

Maybe it's because most musicians don't write anything anymore.  The fewer musicians that write music, the less of a chance there is that something good will be written.

Huh?!  That's a bizarre post at best.  Do you mean, "most [performers] don't write anything anymore"?  I should like to think that composers are musicians too, and there is certainly no shortage of composers.

About writing for the piano, I would say unequivocally it has not all been done.  When Godowsky made his 53 studies on Chopin Etudes, he wrote that part of his purpose was to show composers of the future how to incorporate the left hand to a greater degree, so more musical lines could be expressed, more variety achieved, et cetera.  Godowsky etudes have been played of course since they were written, but only recently are they achieving anything like popular notice or success.  The possibilities he worked out for the left hand have definitely not been exploited by piano composers.

In fact some influential composers around that time were turning away from such "pianistic" writing.  Busoni complained to Schoenberg that Schoenberg had "rejected" the traditions of writing for the piano, and had written in a style that was deficient of innovation in piano writing.  Schoenberg claimed he was promoting his own style of writing for the piano; while true in a sense, it certainly didn't catch on as a way to compose for the instrument. 

When we think of modern piano music, by modern I mean from the 1950's onward, or even from the 1980's onward, we are not prone to think of music that is especially pianistic [certain examples notwithstanding] or music that would be played by pianists who love especially to play music that cannot be divorced from the instrument, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, etc.  Why not?  What happened to their traditions of writing for the piano?  What happened to the advances made by Godowsky for the left hand, and Medtner for polyphony and polyrhythms?  I think that a long line was ripped, the line of history was dropped by the Norns, and people are still searching for it.  It is no mystery in this sense why people would want to compose "neo-romantic" music for instance.  Perhaps Prokofiev was write when he said, "There is still much to be said in the key of C major."

Walter Ramsey
 

[ahinton]

Huh?!  That's a bizarre post at best.  Do you mean, "most [performers] don't write anything anymore"?  I should like to think that composers are musicians too, and there is certainly no shortage of composers.

About writing for the piano, I would say unequivocally it has not all been done.  When Godowsky made his 53 studies on Chopin Etudes, he wrote that part of his purpose was to show composers of the future how to incorporate the left hand to a greater degree, so more musical lines could be expressed, more variety achieved, et cetera.  Godowsky etudes have been played of course since they were written, but only recently are they achieving anything like popular notice or success.  The possibilities he worked out for the left hand have definitely not been exploited by piano composers.

In fact some influential composers around that time were turning away from such "pianistic" writing.  Busoni complained to Schoenberg that Schoenberg had "rejected" the traditions of writing for the piano, and had written in a style that was deficient of innovation in piano writing.  Schoenberg claimed he was promoting his own style of writing for the piano; while true in a sense, it certainly didn't catch on as a way to compose for the instrument. 

When we think of modern piano music, by modern I mean from the 1950's onward, or even from the 1980's onward, we are not prone to think of music that is especially pianistic [certain examples notwithstanding] or music that would be played by pianists who love especially to play music that cannot be divorced from the instrument, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, etc.  Why not?  What happened to their traditions of writing for the piano?  What happened to the advances made by Godowsky for the left hand, and Medtner for polyphony and polyrhythms?  I think that a long line was ripped, the line of history was dropped by the Norns, and people are still searching for it.  It is no mystery in this sense why people would want to compose "neo-romantic" music for instance.  Perhaps Prokofiev was write when he said, "There is still much to be said in the key of C major."

Notwithstanding the great amount of sense that you write here, it was not Prokofiev but Schönberg who is supposed to have said something along the lines of "there is still plenty of fine music to be written in C major" (which said, I have been on the trail of the precise reference for that for some time and have yet to achieve success)...

Best,

Alistair

[ramseytheii]

Notwithstanding the great amount of sense that you wwrite here, it was not Prokofiev but Schönberg who is supposed to have said something along the lines of "there is still plenty of fine music to be written in C major" (which said, I have been on the trail of the precise reference for that for some time and have yet to achieve success)...

Best,

AListair

I wondered about that!  Elsewhere I had seen Schoenberg quoted for that statement.  But since I heard first in my life that Prokofiev said it, I stick with that until I see otherwise.

Walter Ramsey

[ahinton]

I wondered about that!  Elsewhere I had seen Schoenberg quoted for that statement.  But since I heard first in my life that Prokofiev said it, I stick with that until I see otherwise.

Walter Ramsey

I've never encountered any evidence that Prokofiev ever said anythig like this - and there would surely in any case have been infinitely less reason for him to do so than there would have been for Schönberg to do so. It's supposedly in a recorded interview with Schönberg, which I will continue to pursue!

To cite a similar example, the remark that all one has to to in order to be an "American" composer is be an American citizen and then just write as one likes has been attributded to both Virgil Thomson and Elliott Carter; which of them said it (or said it first) I do not know for sure, but I think that they both said it, either the one quoting the other or - perhaps more interestingly - independently and unaware of the other...

Best,

Alistair

[quasimodo]

Not even mentioning the fact that not everything has been “said” on the existing classical and romantic repertoire, as far as there’s still room, through interpretation, to come with something new; still a lot of compositional possibilities are yet to be explored.
Just as an example, usage of alternate scales has not yet been thoroughly exploited. We could imagine re-inventing tonality, a different concept of tonality. Like, say write fugues using a whole-tone scale. Systems like that can be formulated ad infinitum, or almost.
And that’s just in the restricted area of systemic composition.

[ingagroznaya]

Is Nanabush the only woman in this thread? I actually find that peculiar .

[quasimodo]

Is Nanabush the only woman in this thread? I actually find that peculiar .

Nanabush is male 

[quasimodo]

But Jas is a lady, I think. I don't know about Henrah.
How about me  ?

[ingagroznaya]

When I'm done with my piano buying, I'll tell you a story about ...Cage. It was the oddest thing I went through. Never happened to me before and hope never will again. It's probably the worst thing can happen to anyone during a ... performance.

[pianistimo]

it's that silent piece.  silent but deadly?  but, wait.  women don't do these things, typically.  ingagroznya, are you sure you are female?  i was wondering when you asked about how many there were and how unfair it seemed - and yet, there's part of me that's sort of wondering how a woman could be so forward on the piano bench.  most sit further back and don't take such command of the piano.  it's all in how you sit.

i have to sit so i can comfortably lean left or right and play the entire keyboard.  but, with cage - you have to get up and walk around.  isn't that right?  and/or stand up and lean over the piano and strum the strings and then sit down.  or is that philip glass?  in any case, my line is drawn where people start striking the piano itself. 

[nanabush]

God damn another person who thought I was a woman.. check the picture thread near the end i proved im not

[quasimodo]

God *** another person who thought I was a woman.. check the picture thread near the end i proved im not

Did you show your manhood  ???

[nanabush]

yes... i showed my manhood...

[quasimodo]

yes... i showed my manhood...

Then I won't look 

[musik_man]

Does it really matter?  As is there is more wonderful music for piano than any of us could ever hope to be familiar with.

[crazy for ivan moravec]

Does it really matter?  As is there is more wonderful music for piano than any of us could ever hope to be familiar with.

yes it does matter, IMO. i think that trying to get familiar with almost all that we could ever hope to is not really the main point of composers to continue write for piano. if composers of the past centuries had that attitude, we wouldn't be doing what we are doing right at present. also, in a forum like this, it's only natural for us to ponder upon such questions. but we always know deep inside that piano music will keep on going on, coz if not (which i think is impossible), then there's really a big problem.