Difficult or Not?

[DarkWind]

Have you ever played a piece, and it seemed easy to you? But yet to most people, it's really difficult, but somehow you just find it really easy? Don't suggest things like the Moonlight Sonata. For me, I would say that the Apres un Lecture de Dante doesn't seem overly difficult, more on the easier side. I would also say the same thing about Jeux D'eau. What pieces would you nominate?

[m1469]

Are you simply strutting Darkwind?  What's your real point?

m1469

[DarkWind]

For some people, they have a strong left hand, and would say the Revolutionary Etude is easy. Some would be good at fast runs, and say that Mazeppa might be easy. Others are agile at moving hands from place to place, so they consider La Campanella easy stuff. So I am asking you what you find easy that others don't. Not necessarily easy, but not as difficult as it is hyped up to be.

[m1469]

To be honest they all seem somewhat difficult for me, I have to work at it all.  

I guess I have ideas on the opposite side of what you are talking about.  Peices that everybody thinks of as easy or as not having much substance, but I find to be challenging in ways.

I suppose if I had to choose a piece, based on my bigger challenge, I would probably say the inventions.  These are peices that everybody thinks of as student pieces, or easy pieces, and consequently try to blow through them without much thought it seems.  These in my opinion, deserve a decent amount of attention musically, as well as technically.  I can tend to have a more difficult time with that kind of fingery stuff.

However, in all honesty, I find that most the Liszt that I have played comes a little easier for me for a variety of reasons.  I don't believe this means too much.  And I don't know if he is really considered to be "difficult" by those who know a lot about music.  He is just generally impressive in concerts for the average listener -ya know?  Where as the inventions are not as easily captivating.

m1469

[donjuan]

If I find a piece easy, I am doing something terribly wrong..Many times i have gone to my teacher and played something to the best of my ability and had him tell me my playing was crap.

Darkwind, there is nothing easy about Liszt--> It is overwhelmingly difficult to play the pieces in the manner in which they were intended.  I would say, to understand Liszt's intentions completely, you would have to live through the Hungarian Revolution, Experience paganini play, be increasingly religious through time, fall in love, elope, be heart broken, Worship Bach and Beethoven like Gods, and oh yes, Travel Europe many times, living in France and Italy especially.
donjuan

[blindmouth]

I'm currently learning scriabin's fifth sonata and it seems quite easy to me (only because i follow a very, very, very, very, very prolonged and laxed practice regime.)

Darkwind, there is nothing easy about Liszt--> It is overwhelmingly difficult to play the pieces in the manner in which they were intended.  I would say, to understand Liszt's intentions completely, you would have to live through the Hungarian Revolution, Experience paganini play, be increasingly religious through time, fall in love, elope, be heart broken, Worship Bach and Beethoven like Gods, and oh yes, Travel Europe many times, living in France and Italy especially.
donjuan

your quite the romantic, arent you?

[donjuan]

I'm currently learning scriabin's fifth sonata and it seems quite easy to me (only because i follow a very, very, very, very, very prolonged and laxed practice regime.)


your quite the romantic, arent you?

? what do you mean by that? :-/

[Shagdac]

Whitemass...what do you mean by prolonged and laaxed practice? What is your practice schedule?

S

[blindmouth]

ive forgotten the code to quote others. any help would be appreciated.

" ? what do you mean by that? "

i meant that you think passionately, emotionally. to put it bluntly, you would fit in liszt's era.

"Whitemass...what do you mean by prolonged and laaxed practice? What is your practice schedule?"

i dont follow a rigid schedule. somedays i'll practice four to six hours (not consecutively though.) much of the time, i dont practice at all.   not good of course, but hey, i do's what i feels.

[DarkWind]

Darkwind, there is nothing easy about Liszt--> It is overwhelmingly difficult to play the pieces in the manner in which they were intended.  I would say, to understand Liszt's intentions completely, you would have to live through the Hungarian Revolution, Experience paganini play, be increasingly religious through time, fall in love, elope, be heart broken, Worship Bach and Beethoven like Gods, and oh yes, Travel Europe many times, living in France and Italy especially.
donjuan

You really take it too far, don't you? Anyways, I'm talking technical difficulty here. Theres a large difference between emotional and technical.

[rubleski]

rach c# minor prelude

[Shagdac]

I'll definately 2nd that....Rach C# minor Prelude.

I think Rach's compositions are among the easiest to understand and play. By that I mean for the most part, Scores by Rach are generally black and white, you know exactly what he wants you to play. Everything is written in a fashion that makes it easier to understand than some others. I find that is one criteria that makes his pieces somewhat easier....technically, that's another story. I think some of his Preludes are very easy, except for reaching some of the handspans of the chords. (My hands are pretty small)...that seems to present the biggest difficulty though.

S

[goansongo]

I know what you mean Darkwind.  It's not that he's trying to show off or anything.  But some people do pick up pieces a little faster than others.  Hmm...  For me, I pick up on a piece that I'm really in love with.  I guess it comes from listening to the piece again and again.  

Hehe.. and I don't think you have to experience all those things just to play Liszt...  Music can be expressed in different ways anyway.  Different doesn't necessarily mean bad...

[f0bul0us]

I'll definately 2nd that....Rach C# minor Prelude.

I think Rach's compositions are among the easiest to understand and play. By that I mean for the most part, Scores by Rach are generally black and white, you know exactly what he wants you to play. Everything is written in a fashion that makes it easier to understand than some others. I find that is one criteria that makes his pieces somewhat easier....technically, that's another story. I think some of his Preludes are very easy, except for reaching some of the handspans of the chords. (My hands are pretty small)...that seems to present the biggest difficulty though.

S

I'm not exactly sure about this...but I think Rach's pieces are easier than Chopin or Liszt because he didn't make it a mission for all of his pieces to be both beautiful and difficult, while Chopin and Liszt (well, Liszt atleast) did. Then again, he did write the Op. 23 No. 9  Prelude, which is argueably the most difficult piece in solo repertoire.  What I don't get about that "Prelude" is that it has the technical challenges of an Etude, yet he's labelled it as a Prelude...

[DarkWind]

Of course it's not the most difficult piece in solo repertoire. You do not know one single thing about difficultness until you have witnessed Sorabji. Trust me, he makes that Prelude looks like a piece from a Bastien book.

[dj]

Of course it's not the most difficult piece in solo repertoire. You do not know one single thing about difficultness until you have witnessed Sorabji. Trust me, he makes that Prelude looks like a piece from a Bastien book.

can anyone really say what could or could not be the most difficult piece? i mean, isn't that what this post is all about? what is difficult for some, others may consider easy. i personally find chopin quite harder to sight-read than liszt....however, im not technically advanced enough to play a whole ton of either.

[DarkWind]

But I don't honestly think anyone has ever said Sorabji is not difficult, except for Sorabji himself. You want examples? Only one, that's right, one person on earth can play his Sonata. His Opus Clavicembalisticum is 3-6 hours long. His Jami Symphony is a bit long. How long? About a thousand pages. Here is a small example of his Sonata:



Still not convinced? You are hopeless.

[thierry13]

This guy was crazy, i think only liszt or the ones of his level could play this, and there again, with some LONG training. One day, when i will have about 60-70 years of experience, MAYBE i will try that  

[f0bul0us]

Of course it's not the most difficult piece in solo repertoire. You do not know one single thing about difficultness until you have witnessed Sorabji. Trust me, he makes that Prelude looks like a piece from a Bastien book.

I've "witnessed" Sorabji's music and while it's very difficult, what is beauty in music if the sound being made is just octaves and 4-note chords for 3 hours? Yea...so what is his music worth? Shit, which is why only one person plays it.

[willcowskitz]

I've "witnessed" Sorabji's music and while it's very difficult, what is beauty in music if the sound being made is just octaves and 4-note chords for 3 hours? Yea...so what is his music worth? Shit, which is why only one person plays it.

Even worse, 6-note chords within the span of an octave! I was once looking at the score of Opus Clavicembalisticum my friend had sent me as PDF's, and as I scanned through the pages and found these ugly chords I noted to this friend "Hmmm 6 notes within an octave chord...", he replied with "Well, you could use thumb for playing two keys", - that wasn't exactly my point, but rather "Wonder what it sounds like..."

Anyways, aren't you too quick to judge his music? Maybe you should put it aside as uninteresting and wait for the right mood to come on and then listen through it again. The friend of mine had experienced an "illumination" during one of the fugues of a Sorabji opus.

[bernhard]

Sorabji actually forbade the performance of his works (unless the pianist is given his express permission - which is difficult to obtain since he died in 1988 ), so no composer’s-wishes-respecting- pianist should be playing them. Really.

In the meantime you may enjoy this review of Jonathan Powel’s rendition of the Opus Clavicembalisticum:

https://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/story/0,11712,1044257,00.html

And here is a more sympathetic one:

https://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1039848,00.html


Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Dave_2004_G]

Haha I'm not sure quite why but that first review was hilarious

Dave

[DarkWind]

Well, if his music is not to be played, then we can just forget about him all together! The answer is no, we can not. People are learning more about his music, as atonality is popular now. Some of his pieces don't sound that bad. The Fantasie Espagnole is quite pleasant, actually! Also, here is a New York Times article about him:


A Mystery Man Who Produced Piano Music by the Truckload[/b]

WHEN he died - nearly 16 years ago, at 96 - Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was hardly more than a formidable name. It was a name that could be found on a few scores in libraries and music shops, but these had all been published long before and had remained unplayed for decades, by Sorabji's wish. He was never very interested in performances. He preferred privacy, which gave him the freedom to think on an unprecedented scale, covering great lengths of time without bothering about the customs of concert life.

Next Sunday at Merkin Concert Hall, as the climax of a little Sorabji festival, the British pianist Jonathan Powell will perform Sorabji's "Opus Clavicembalisticum" (1930), whose three parts unfold through four and a half hours. By comparison, the Fifth Piano Symphony (1972-73), which the American pianist Donna Amato will perform on Thursday, also at Merkin, is a mere bagatelle, running two and a half hours.

These durations would mean nothing, of course, if they were not filled with fascinating music. They are. Sorabji, as a young man in London during the years before World War I, got to know the music that seemed most modern, exciting and esoteric. He was fascinated by the sumptuous harmonies and glittering textures of the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski, but the example that meant most to him was that of the German-Italian pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni.

Like Busoni, Sorabji was born astride cultures - only more so. Although he was always stingy with biographical information, he seems to have been born in suburban London in 1892, and originally named Leon Dudley Sorabji. His father was a civil engineer of Parsi parentage from Mumbai, his mother a singer of Spanish and Sicilian ancestry. He never visited India himself - or Spain or Sicily; a visit to Paris seems to have been his only trip abroad. Yet the sound of his music is exuberantly exotic, with its lustrous chromatic harmonies, its touches of Eastern modality and its great profusion of detail.

At the same time - and here Busoni was a specific influence - Sorabji revered Bach. Harmonies that would be static in Szymanowski are wrought into dynamic processes of change. However free and dazzling the right hand may seem, the left is holding it in a contrapuntal grip, and the music is full of recurring motifs.

Moreover, the contradictions in Busoni - between showiness and contemplation, composition and recomposition (of operatic hit tunes as well as Bach), vast learning and narrow concentration, experiment and tradition - became Sorabji's own, and he adopted the Busoniesque persona of the sage who dispenses arcane knowledge from the piano bench.

The piano was always central. In his 20's and early 30's, Sorabji produced eight piano concertos (along with four sonatas and other solo works), but he didn't seek to perform any of them. (So far, only one has ever been played, last year by Ms. Amato.) Then in 1930 came "Opus Clavicembalisticum," a gigantic summary and extension of what he had discovered - not least about generating musical forms that, beginning in feverish excitement, nevertheless have the capacity to continue at greater lengths than any earlier composer had dreamed of.

Performances and recordings are at last starting to show the benefits of Sorabji's daring. Alistair Hinton, who befriended Sorabji in his later years and founded the Sorabji Archive to manage his musical estate, justly points out how the music's absorbing continuity gives the player the stamina to proceed - and the listener the power to stay with it. Mr. Hinton once met a woman who had heard Sorabji play "Opus Clavicembalisticum" in Glasgow in 1930 and could testify to the music's charisma: "It was the most terrifying experience of my life, musical or otherwise," he quoted her as saying. "I hated it, but I could not tear my ears away."

Others, reacting to the music more positively, have felt the same way. The pianist John Ogdon, who played and recorded the work in the 1980's, said that when he got to the end of the piece, he would have liked to start all over again. Mr. Powell, who enraptured a London audience with the lucidity of his approach last year, also seems to finish the work not exhausted but energized and ready for more.

Sorabji, too, seems to have been given a huge jolt of energy by this piece, one that never fully abated. In his Second Organ Symphony, which he started before "Opus Clavicembalisticum" and finished two years after, he created a work lasting seven hours, the middle movement alone taking more than three. Not only that, but he wrote down these colossal spans of music without making sketches, straight into the final copy. Mr. Hinton, who watched Sorabji work once, when he was into his 80's, recalls having seen his pen "racing across the pages."

And the pages piled up. The "Symphonic Variations" for solo piano (1935-37) goes even beyond the Second Organ Symphony, to a length of eight and a half hours, though with two breaks that performer and audience might well need. But by the time he completed this work, Sorabji was no longer playing his music in public, nor was he encouraging others to do so.

A performance of the first two parts of "Opus Clavicembalisticum," given by another pianist in London in 1936, may have been decisive. Sorabji went to the concert reluctantly, found his music played by an uncomprehending pianist to an audience that included many of the city's leading musical lights and left before the massacre was over. Later that year he returned to Glasgow for his fourth appearance in a new-music series (which also took Bartok, Hindemith and Szymanowski to Scotland), and this proved to be his farewell.

His performing career had never been more than sporadic. He probably appeared no more than eight or nine times, always in programs of his own music. Now he withdrew altogether, though he remained active as a critic until the end of World War II.

The huge scores continued: a sequence of piano symphonies begun at the end of the 1930's, a cycle of 100 transcendental studies written during the war (and soon to be heard complete for the first time in Bis recordings by Fredrik Ullen), "Opus Clavisymphonicum" for piano and large orchestra (1957-59). There were also occasional smaller pieces and songs.

In his mid-70's Sorabji evidently ran out of steam, but past 80 he got going again, and at last allowed his music to return to the concert hall. The Fifth Piano Symphony, with which his creativity bounded back, is, typically, in two large movements, the first running 40 minutes; the second - a series of six characteristic forms (scherzo, fugue and the like) - an hour and a half. At Merkin Hall, it should provide a good gearing-up for "Opus Clavicembalisticum," for Ms. Amato, like Mr. Powell and Mr. Ullen, is one of several younger musicians who have taken these Himalayas as part of their world.

The times, too, are on the side of this music. Wildly eccentric from the Neo-Classical 1930's to the postserial 1960's, Sorabji's impassioned lucubrations seem quite normal in a world that cherishes the pursuit of individual goals and unbeaten paths. Nor can his self-similar patterning, his spectacular harmony and his time scale seem so strange when Gyorgy Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen and the expansive American Minimalist Morton Feldman are valued. These mountains are ours, too.

[f0bul0us]

"The programme, at least, provided plenty to while away the hours, with tributes to Sorabji from his admirers and a descriptive analysis of OC by the composer Ronald Stevenson, which never used one overheated metaphor when six could be crammed into the same sentence. The cadenzas in OC, you'll be pleased to know, "set off the architectonic counterpoint of the fugues and may be likened to the rose-quartz Aravuli mountains that rise behind the Temple of Ranpur". Such rubbish does Sorabji no favours, but then his empty-headed note- spinning can only be described in hyperbolic terms. Why a fine musician like Powell is bothering with it I cannot imagine."
Ouch  :-/

[Rach3]

I think Rach's compositions are among the easiest to understand and play. By that I mean for the most part, Scores by Rach are generally black and white, you know exactly what he wants you to play. Everything is written in a fashion that makes it easier to understand than some others. I find that is one criteria that makes his pieces somewhat easier....technically, that's another story. I think some of his Preludes are very easy, except for reaching some of the handspans of the chords. (My hands are pretty small)...that seems to present the biggest difficulty though.

No. It is an insult to call Rachmaninoff "black and white."  I'm working on the second sonata... so much subtlety, lyricism... at times it's like Schubert... anyone who thinks it's the technique that makes this piece hard, must be stupid.

On a side note, I get to hear a performance of Rach's cello sonata this evening!

[larse]

Lucky you

However, I think he's got a point. Not that Rachmaninoff is no more than large cadenzas and huge chords. Cause then you've misfigured Rachmaninoff. But, it's never hard to figure out Rachmaninovs intentions, and he's usually voting for the same theme.. he's seldom grey, but usually full throttle Rachmaninov.

Nevertheless, Rachmaninovs music is amongst the greatest yet to be composed. He's definately an ace russian, and that comes to more than his piano concertos. Symphonies, Preludes, usw...

[Radix7621]

Rachmaninoff is one of my favorite composers, and I find his music very dense and rather difficult.  As far as the easy/difficult thing goes, I think it depends on the person.  I'm left-handed, and my left hand is fairly strong, so I found pieces like Chopin's Revolutionary and Ocean etudes easier than some (but still not "easy").  But my thirds aren't what you'd call great, or even good, so I'm trying to play Chopin's G#-minor etude, and I'm finding it extremely difficult.  I'm finding Islamey extremely difficult as well, while I know some people think it's not as hard as everyone says.  It definitely just depends on the person.

[Motrax]

Rachmaninoff's music is multi-tiered. You can sight read basically anything of his and get the melody rather easily the first time through. But it seems to me that nearly every time I look at a score, it becomes slightly different. Unfortunately, many pianists ignore the inner voices which are present throughout practically all of his music, making it all sound indeed rather uncomplicated. But if you really want to understand his music, it takes a lot of patience and repeated listenings.

I've listened to each of his concertos hundreds of time. The 4th I especially didn't like very much, but after hearing it 10 or 15 times, beautiful melodies started making themselves apparent. It's now one of my favorite pieces of music, but that wouldn't be the case if I did not put out a concerted effort to understand the piece.

Branching out in the same vein, I think a lot of music is like that. You can take pretty much anything - Chopin's Scherzos, Bach Fugues, Beethoven Sonatas - and say it sounds rather simplistic. You can definitely pick out the "main themes" of what the composer is trying to express, but in all practicality this is like reading the Cliff's notes of a book and saying you understand what the author is trying to say.

This in fact a whole essence of classical music - the beauty is, more often than not, readily apparent in music. But it runs far deeper than that which can be immediately percieved, and the intellectual and emotional pursuits of discovering what lies behind the music are wholly fulfilling.

[benbenben9752]

debussy mouvement from inages 2 ... i realize thats not difficult for yall but most graduating 7th graders cant learn it in a year much less the couple of months that ill learn it in