Extractions from Cycles

[cloches_de_geneve]

Composers' cycles of smaller pieces, usually lasting about 2-3 minutes in average (e.g., Schumann Papillons, Chopin Etudes, Debussy Preludes, Prokofiev Visions fugitives, Brahms Waltzes, Intermezzi etc..) are perhaps ideally performed as a whole -- at least my first piano teacher was never happy when I would suggest to learn just a few pieces of a cycle).

But the performer sometimes needs to play excerpts, just a part of cycles, due to time constraints or perhaps because some pieces of a cycle fit better with a given program than the whole cycle.

My question is twofold:

1) What guides your selections from cycles? Are there some common standards?

2) There is also a numeric aspect to this. Suppose I would like to put a selection of Chopin Etudes into a recital, a mixed bag between op. 10 and op. 25, here is my impression of quantities (obviously you might replace Etudes with any other cyclic work):


1 Etude:  Odd
2 Etudes: Odd
3 Etudes: OK
4 Etudes: Good
5 Etudes: Strange
6 Etudes: Good.
7 Etudes: Unsatisfactory.
8 Etudes: Maybe
9 Etudes: Good
10 Etudes: Good

Is there something to the "right number" of pieces to extract from cycles, or am I plunging to heavily into numerology here?

[pianistimo]

This is a very good question.  It would be nice to hear from koji or marik or someone like that who obviously has the talent (like you) to play an entire cycle.  Basically, up to this point i just pick the ones I can play.  That would be the determining factor.  However, when I began the opus 118 of Brahms - even though I played one intermezzo - i liked them so much (and there are only 4-5) that even though my teacher didn't ask me to practice all of them...i did anyways.

I am very interested in this subject because it seems to fit in with the idea that an entire college course could be make up of planning recital programs.  There is definately an art to it.  And, to even write the program properly takes know-how.  People used to spend a certain amount of time to run-through a program beforehand so that the success of the program wasn't dependent completely upon last minute changes.  Although, some pianists tend to like that to keep the suspense going.  They play what they are in the 'mood' for at the time and not always what is on the program.

Being somewhat of a piano monkey in the sense that I don't have a zillion hours to practice - i'd be stuck with the program i planned and keep it that way.  However, if one leaves off from the lisztian notion that everything MUST be memorized - one could realistically play a whole cycle without much grimacing as an amateur wannabe.

The chopin etudes are interesting the way you list them.  I think all of them are odd - but that's just me.  What's the rush?  Someone going to a fire.  Let's  put one in the bag for a competition and leave the rest to someone who wants to get tendonitis.  Give me something to chew on.  Like a program with Poulenc or Barber.  Some interesting harmonies and none of this speed demon stuff.  It just wrecks a program.

Waiting to hear from opus10no2. 

Btw, i hear the last 3-4 beethoven sonatas as a cycle.  Or, at least opus 90 with 101.  Somehow, they all fit together.  But, who is hearty enough to do that?  That's what I want to hear someday (soon).  It is interesting to find out or reveal the meaning behind some cycles and how they lead from the first piece into the second and through to the end.  Some composers seemed to compose cycles all at one time and others over the course of years - making some of the compositions less 'complicated' than others and possibly less on par with the difficulty of the others.  Of course, simplicity is nice, too.

Something that just occurred to me, as well, is that some pieces just aren't as pianistic as others.  They fit better for a violin or something.  You play them and then feel like you spend too much effort on the details and not enough on the mood.  Then, you pull out your jazz lounge music book and voila - it all fits together much better than any cycle of the classical composers.  Yes. i shall be shot at sunrise.

One last thought - as this article mentions - collections are different than cycles in that you can put collections in any particular order you want.  Here are the requirements necessary for composing cyclical pieces (study of schumann): https://www.jstor.org/pss/745936

[pianistimo]

Jean Paul Fredrich Richter affected Schumann greatly and he patterned some of his compositions after the general structure of his literature.  For instance, it is said that Papillions opus2 is structured after Jean Paul's novel Flegeljahre and according to one - his writing was 'interlaced with epigrammatic breaks, vehement bursts, or sardonic turns, quips, puns and even oaths!'  This is all very interesting.

We sometimes tend to take the genius of others as completely their own - but in this case Schumann defers to a poet/novelist in some of his music composition style.  Interesting that he wasn't particularly bound to the word 'cycle' in the classical sense of theme and variations or anything.  They could be loosely bound and really have no huge connection to each other excepting what Schumann makes them have.

Sometimes cycles demand too much of a person.  Take Simon Barere playing Grieg's a minor piano concerto (which sounds like a long song cycle).  He goes out to attempt to play it with lots of feeling and has to come back stage becaue he feels ill.  He actually dies backstage.  Now, I have no idea if song cycles have the capacity to do this to most people if carried to extreme length - or not.  But, he is one example of too much expression gone wild in the mind and the fuse blowing.


Do you think Poulenc's Concert Champetre is also a sort of 'song cycle' for harpsichord?