Piano Forum

Schumann's "Traumerei" with Schumann's RHYTHM.  It is not about the SPEED, the TEMPO, guys.

Freedom vs Slavery.       From ignorance to knowledge = from slavery to freedom.


Imagine yourself a dealer of some reputable company, for example, "Mercedes". One potential buyer takes your car for a test drive and comes back not quite happy with the car. The car "sniffs the asphalt" on  steep entrance to his driveway.  So he asks for wheels to be mounted one inch larger.

However, the buyer does not want to lose an excellent acceleration of the car at the same time.
Therefore, he asks to replace the 184 HP engine with a more powerful 204 HP engine.

And he asks to replace the velour seats with leather, because he often travels with a dog. Dog's hair is difficult to clean off the velour.

There is no doubt that this buyer will get a car with such wheels, engine and seats what he needs.

But here's another buyer, who even refused to take a test drive because he knows in advance: what exactly needs to be changed in the car. He wants wheels from the tractor for off-road driving, the engine from the lawn mower for fuel economy and a hammock instead of a standard seat to relax in it while traveling.

Although today they produce more cars than they can sell,  the firm will most likely refuse to fulfill  these ridiculous alterations, because they ruin  the very idea of this great car and turn it into a worthless rubbish.

We have the same situation in our business: there are much more performers and music teachers  than listeners and students. The ridiculous alterations of masterpieces and disrespect even for the best composers is very common.  One can understand a musician who is somewhat unsatisfied with the composition and wants to correct something in it,  because he/she  is 100% sure that this correction will be better than the author's version.  But how can we understand the musician , who never even tried to play exactly what the composer wrote,  but from very beginning played just his own fictions instead of original text?

This phenomenon has become so massive that I, for example, failed to find on the  You Tube even a single recording of  Schumann's "Traumerei" without substituting the author's  RHYTHM with some kind of more or less successful rhythmic improvisation of the performer.  By the way, the notes of Schumann's melody are often replaced by notes of some other voices and the original notes of the melody are practically in mode "mute" in this case .  Today's listener is completely deprived of the opportunity to hear exactly what Schumann composed and compare the original with what is played instead of it.
Each note in the music has its exact  timing.  If the performer changes it , then he performs not original but his own music.  However, he  still covers himself with the name of the great composer.  This situation is unfair to both: to the composer and to the public.

No wonder that the performance of "Traumerei" with the correct rhythm  and tempo is perceived by many as 'the most bizarre "Traumerei" ever heard'.

I propose here my records of "Traumerei" in different tempos, but with the accurate rhythm written by Schumann. I can prove this accuracy because I recorded with a metronome generating  a click for every EIGHTH note (not a quarter note). My eighth notes coincide with clicks, and there are no shorter notes than eighths in this piece.  I attached the record with the metronome below among the records of my work on this piece.

I recorded "Traumerei" in the usual for modern performers tempos:

1. Three times slower than Schumann wanted. You can hear this tempo, for example, from  Lang Lang.

 ROBERT SCHUMANN - Traumerei (Lang Lang, 2004)



His "Traumerei" lasts  3 minutes instead of 1 in Schumann's tempo "100 quarter notes per minute".  Some performers play even slower - about 4 minutes.


2. Twice as slow as Schumann wanted.  You can hear this tempo, for example,  from  Vladimir Horowitz

  Schumann-Traumerei, Vladimir Horowitz



His "Traumerei" lasts  two minutes.


3. And I did one minute long record  at the tempo  "100"  indicated by Schumann.  Unfortunately,  today no one pianist  plays at Schumann's tempo.
 I put  "Traumerei" at tempo "100" on You Tube to give listeners an opportunity to compare.

Playing this piece at a very different tempo from the ultra-slow "33" to the ultra-fast "150" I did not find and did not feel the slightest reason to replace the elegant rhythm written by Schumann, organically combined with the pattern of the melody, with a rhythm played by any of the pianists. I hope that my listeners will also agree that Schumann's rhythm sounds better than any of its distortions, abundantly presented on You Tube.

If you liked the rhythm, composed by Schumann,  I invite you  to listen to the recordings of my work on this piece with a metronome.  You will achieve complete freedom in your performance of this piece,  if you just do the same thing that I did on these records :.

 I recorded a melody with synchronous accompaniment at the tempo of "150", "125" "100", "50" and "33"  for comparison with "lagging accompaniment" that I play in my first four recordings. Prof. Lev Oborin explained me this technique using a quote from Matthew 6:3 - "don't let  your left hand know what your right hand does".

Everyone can decide for himself: which accompaniment sounds better?

At the beginning,  I recorded "Traumerei" at four different tempos  with a slightly delayed accompaniment to the melody.  In romantic music, the lag of accompaniment  is quite acceptable, although this should be done very moderately,  when we perform seriously, on stage.  However, in the home work of the pianist, the delay can be made more explicit. With a large delay it is much easier for our brain to understand: what exactly should be done?  By itself, uncontrollably such a lag of accompaniment can never happen - it takes too much effort from the brain. Playing "like a soldiers walking in step" with two hands is much, much easier than with the delay in the accompaniment to the melody.

Many performers and especially piano teachers of the classical style suffer from acute allergies to the slightest discrepancy in the time of notes in melody and accompaniment, although this is  absolutely normal for ALL OTHER genres of musical art, for organ and harpsichord performing  (this is the only way to single out individual voices from the total mass since the keys do not respond to the touch force)  and even for classical opera and vocal performing.  Many wonderful vocalists have repeatedly asked me NOT to play my accompaniment at the same time with them, but to be all the time "half a step" behind.

The melody is the queen in music, and her servants, the suite should not go with the Queen in one line. They should be a little behind, otherwise this is a disrespect to the queen. For those who insist on the allegedly specificity of the classics, which requires simultaneity of all the notes written on the same beat, I would like to remind you that not one composer deliberately composed classical music.  Everyone always tried to compose popular music.  And then only the best of the best  compositions survived from millions of popular works,  which we today call "classics".

On my records without a metronome, I play "rubato" (with a barely noticeable lengthening of some notes necessary for expressiveness). This is perfectly normal, natural for any music, but these tiny extensions should not turn eighth notes into quarters, quarter notes into halves, etc.  Without "rubato" music becomes symmetrical, dead.  Because all living things in nature are at least slightly asymmetric (even our arms and legs, the right and left half of the face are not absolutely the same).

As a result of my work (recorded for everyone who wants to do the same), now I can play "Traumerei" at any tempo, "rubato" or  strictly on metronome beat, with a perfectly synchronous or with a lagging accompaniment, etc.  My performing intentions are variable depending on circumstances, time of the day,  weather outside, mood of my audience and myself etc.

HERE, BELOW IS MY RECORDING OF "TRAUMEREI" WITH SCHUMANN'S RHYTHM




Working on the rhythm by the sheet music makes the musician free, when copying by the ear of someone else's record makes the performer someone's slave.  It is very possible that the one who is copied himself  blindly copied someone else.

 "If a blind man leads a blind man, they both fall into a pit" (Matthew 15:14)



The path from ignorance to knowledge is the path from slavery to freedom. With my own example, I invite all pianists to set foot on this path and start (continue) to  learn and teach the music by sheet music, and not by records.