This was in response to essence who said "It's a funny thing, hardness. Very subjective. Everybody has a different body and skills. Musical? Physical?"
I see that he is a scientist and statistician. But he did not appear to have his scientist and statistician hat on when he made his comment. I agree - difficulty is subjective for an individual. But I was referring to an average of a large group of world class pianists.
Well think of it this way, I assume you are not an expert gymnast? Would an impossible flip A be any more difficult than impossible flip B if both are impossible for you? The relative experience is that both are impossible and describing the difference in difficulty of both would just go over your head and be meaningless since you cannot experience it.
Of course considering the top 100 pianists in the world would also express an answer that would just go over the heads of the vast majority of people you are trying to explain to. Also the top 100 pianists would find practically a huge amount of repertoire "doable" and difficulty is merely measured within a time factor not a skill one.
Difficulty measurements in piano really then don't make much sense to most people other than just a very broad level tag to allow for the subjectivity of the measurements. If we are talking to highly skilled pianists who have the capability to actually feel the difference in difficulty then we analyse exact bars of music and contrast and compare, funny thing is that interest discussions usually never do this, because those measuring the difficulty would find them all impossible and thus have no concept of what impossible is more impossible.
Topic: Last post wins!!!!!