Extended Technique

[pianowelsh]

Hi All ! Do any of you know any really deccent contemporary pieces which make extensive use of extended technique that are not too long (ie under 10mins) I know of works like Banshee and Makrocosmos, but I'm sure you guys have got quite a range between you. I really Like Rautavaara Concerto 1  - do any of you know if he has written solo works for piano in similar vein??

[musicsdarkangel]

hmmm I don't know anything on this topic.

I will be interested to see the replies.


All I know of is George Crumb, and he uses the inside of the piano and all, but I don't think that his music is technically difficult.

[Etude]

All I know of is George Crumb, and he uses the inside of the piano and all, but I don't think that his music is technically difficult.

Another person who used the inside of the piano was Henry Cowell, who wrote "The banshee."  He used certain techniques that he had created such as plucking the strings with the fingernails, and producing harmonic notes perhaps by sliding the finger rapidly across the lower strings.  He also help to develop the tone-cluster playing dense discords with other parts of the hand than the fingers or the forearms. 

To some extent, he began the idea of a "prepared piano", by experimenting with foreign objects placed on or between the strings, or slid across them.  The idea was extended further by John Cage in his piece "Bacchanale."  He had been commisioned to write a piece using African modes and rhythms etc.  At that point in his life he wrote mainly 12-tone and percussion music.  The area that was to be used for the performance had a piano but not enough room for any percussion instruments and an African 12-tone row could not be found.  He realised that he had to change the piano.  He first began with nails, placing them between the strings of the piano, but these just slid through onto the sound board.  He later tried a screw placed between the strings, and it remained fixed.  He began to experiment with various other materials such as weather-stripping, bolts and pieces of rubber, pieces of plastic, pieces of bamboo and an eraser. 

All of these materials transformed the sound of the piano in a different way, turning the instrument into a huge percussion orchestra.  He wrote the piece "Bacchanale" for the performance of a dance.  Most of Cage's music for prepared piano is dance music relying on Rhythm and timbre much more than melody or harmony.  The height of the prepared piano music was his "Sonatas and Interludes" which is not music for dance but a set of about 20 pieces, one movement, binary form sonatas with 4 interludes.  I do not enjoy this work as much because it is very long (just over 1 hour) and there is just a lack of development in the music which causes the entire work to descend into monotony.  My preferences are "Primitive," "The Perilous Night" (this one lasts about 15 minutes,) and "And the Earth shall bear again."  If you do listen to these keep them in comparison with its own style and aside from all the talk about the anatomy of the ear rendering us incapable of liking this music, it does grow on you!

[pianowelsh]

Hey ! great little potted history there. It all seemed accurate to me. The biggest problem I have found is that there are works like Preludes and Interludes and Bacchanale but they are very BIG pieces and frankly not terribly convenient to programme (I'm talking standard conventional prog). But I notice more and more schools and indeed competitions are now asking for contemporary works which use this ideom and short of getting 15 banshee's one after another or A singular prelude and interlude I don't know of much repertory.