Songs

[dazed]

I've come back to the piano after about 30 years of career, mariage, kids etc; only to find that everythig seems to be called a "song"; "Rach III - yeah I know that song".  Either I'm getting old or iPod simplifications are taking over...? 

[will]

Check out https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,10246.0.html and https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,6065.0.html

[dazed]

Ta - not just me being a miserable old git then.

[ahinton]

As most contributors here so far have already agreed, “song” when physical singing is required of a singer (except, of course, in a operatic context) and “piece” or “work” or some other description when only instrumental playing is involved. That said, let us not forget, among other things,
(a) l’Art du Chant Appliqué au Piano
(b) Sorabji’s remark that “music begins and ends with singing”
(c) the observation credited to Byrd centuries earlier that “Since singing so good a thing / I wish all men would learn to sing” (which Sorabji used to pervert as “Since singing is so hard a thing / I most all men and women would learn to shut up and recognise that it takes years of intensive practice and physical development even to arrive at the threshold of fine singing” – which, of course, scans far less well than Byrd’s more concise remark but is arguably no less pertinent) and
(d) Sorabji’s advice to Geoffrey Douglas Madge on the afternoon before his first complete performance of what is probably still today the composer’s best-known (or at least most-discussed) work with the words “think of Opus Clavicembalisticum as a song”.

The finest and highest aspects of a singer’s art are surely of importance to most if not all instrumentalists. This fact - and all of the above - does not, however, excuse the application of the term “song” to works that are not, of themselves “songs”, even if their performance does call for a good understanding of what it is to sing. Again, to quote Sorabji: “I had singing lessons when I was a boy. I had a voice like a crow. But at least I learnt from this – and from great singers – something of what it is to sing, even though I could not do it myself”.

Best,

Alistair