Learning contemporary music

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Does anyone have stragetigies for learning contemporary music?

I've done a ligeti etude once it was only three pages and it was impossible for me to memorize anything beyond the first measure

I'm doing a piece by James Lee III that was published in 2014 and I'm having the same issues

[ahinton]

Does anyone have stragetigies for learning contemporary music?

I've done a ligeti etude once it was only three pages and it was impossible for me to memorize anything beyond the first measure

I'm doing a piece by James Lee III that was published in 2014 and I'm having the same issues

Why would preparing contemporary works involve different "strategies" to those involved in the preparation of other music? And what in any case do you mean by "contemporary"? - works by living composers? (presumably not just those as you mention Ligeti here). What about the vast differences in matter and manner between different contemporary composers' approaches to the piano?

Have you tried to analyse why memorising the Ligeti étude was so difficult for you?

Best,

Alistair

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Why would preparing contemporary works involve different "strategies" to those involved in the preparation of other music? And what in any case do you mean by "contemporary"? - works by living composers? (presumably not just those as you mention Ligeti here). What about the vast differences in matter and manner between different contemporary composers' approaches to the piano?

Have you tried to analyse why memorising the Ligeti étude was so difficult for you?

Best,

Alistair

If it was as simple as just doing the same thing as learning any other piece than I wouldn't have asked the question...

[ahinton]

If it was as simple as just doing the same thing as learning any other piece than I wouldn't have asked the question...

No doubt but, as you have yet to clarify
a) why you contend that the preparation of "contemporary" works involve different "strategies" to those involved in the preparation of other music?
b) how you define "contemporary" in this context
c) the differences in matter and manner between the piano writing of composers of this or at any time since, say, 1950 and which composers's works give rise to such problems and which don't or
d) what it is in particular about the Ligeti étude that you mentioned that you found so difficult to memorise in comparison to any other "difficult" étude by, say, Chopin, Alkan, Liszt, Lyapunov, Rachmaninoff or Godowsky.
Until you do these things, I don't believe that you could hope to expect a realistic and helpful answer from anyone here; it is necessary to understand what exactly you're talking about on this.

Best,

Alistair

[mike_lang]

I think in a certain sense, it's the same as learning any other type of music: you have to have a clear idea of what's going on, how the piece is put together, etc. The difference for me is that while you can fairly take it for granted that Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, etc. are going to be mostly pianistic . . . it's not necessarily so for the thornier, more avant-garde stuff. In the case of folks like Ligeti, there are some somewhat uncommon things you have to wrap your mind around in the score before knowing how to practice (unusual uses of bar lines, varying time signatures, multiple staves, etc.). . .

My best advice for any of this stuff (I'm including the virtually the whole tent . . . Debussy, Bartók, Ligeti, Carter, etc.) is to play through it in small portions and very slowly; and also, to spend some time with it away from the piano. The slow practice at the beginning is not for getting it into your fingers - it's for getting it into your ear. Incidentally, when I do this, I find that fingerings and choreography suggest themselves as I go (obviously, they have to be checked at tempo, but it's helpful nonetheless).

Although listening to recordings can be tempting (and helpful at the right stage), again I think there's nothing more useful for wrapping your ears around it than playing through it slowly a couple times (listening to different parts as you go) before beginning work in earnest.

[ahinton]

I think in a certain sense, it's the same as learning any other type of music: you have to have a clear idea of what's going on, how the piece is put together, etc. The difference for me is that while you can fairly take it for granted that Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, etc. are going to be mostly pianistic . . . it's not necessarily so for the thornier, more avant-garde stuff. In the case of folks like Ligeti, there are some somewhat uncommon things you have to wrap your mind around in the score before knowing how to practice (unusual uses of bar lines, varying time signatures, multiple staves, etc.). . .

My best advice for any of this stuff (I'm including the virtually the whole tent . . . Debussy, Bartók, Ligeti, Carter, etc.) is to play through it in small portions and very slowly; and also, to spend some time with it away from the piano. The slow practice at the beginning is not for getting it into your fingers - it's for getting it into your ear. Incidentally, when I do this, I find that fingerings and choreography suggest themselves as I go (obviously, they have to be checked at tempo, but it's helpful nonetheless).

Although listening to recordings can be tempting (and helpful at the right stage), again I think there's nothing more useful for wrapping your ears around it than playing through it slowly a couple times (listening to different parts as you go) before beginning work in earnest.

This all makes eminently good sense, especially the spending of time with the scores away from the piano; after all, the fingers won't learn what the inner ear hasn't first heard. If this proves unduly problematic, maybe some aural traning classes might be a good idea.

Best,

Alistair

[mike_lang]

If this proves unduly problematic, maybe some aural traning classes might be a good idea.

Best,

Alistair

Yes, and I forgot to say . . . where possible . . . singing through the music!

[ahinton]

Yes, and I forgot to say . . . where possible . . . singing through the music!

Indeed; another very good idea!

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

Another point that I believe to be worth making here is that difficulty of memorising certain music is by no means confined to contemporary repertoire (whoever that term be defined); for example, try memorising some of the early piano works of Roslavets - as tough a task as any, I would say, even though they're not of the order of difficulty to be encountered, say, in some of Finnissy and most of Sorabji.

Best,

Alistair

[quantum]

I think it is about becoming familiar with the language of the music.  Say if you are studying Bach and you really like it so you play a lot of his music, eventually you pick up on patterns, chord voicing, progressions, motifs that tend to recur in the music.  You will start to pick up on these instead of reading note by note, and learning the music becomes progressively less resource intensive. 

For some contemporary pieces, it might help if you define the modality or rhythmic structure, before starting to work out the piece.  Imagine trying to learn a piece in B major before you actually learned the B major scale and arpeggios.  Sure it can be done, but it is a lot easier when you know the mode you will be working from. 

***

One of my teachers was asked a very similar question, it was at a post concert reception talk - she is somewhat of an expert at contemporary and new music.  The answer went something like: you learn this music the same way you study Bach or Chopin, one note at a time.

[_piano_angel]

I'm not sure if this will help but things that I normally do to memorize pieces include:

1.Listening to it as much as possible until you're familiar with every note and can easily spot a mistake
2.Get an overall structure of the piece, like what kinds of patterns are used repeatedly
3.Divide the piece into small parts and practice one at a time and only start the next one, if you've memorized the one before
4.Practicing both hands separately and memorizing them first, then putting them together
5.Getting an idea of the music the composer wrote to familiarize yourself with it
6.With really hard parts with a lot of notes and no recognizable structure at first: writing down the notes on a normal piece of paper and try to find a structure (if there is one)
7:Practicing really slowly and constantly repeat measures until your hands memorize it by themselves

I don't know if this helps (some of these things are probably pretty obvious) but I hope it does

[ahinton]

Sufficient good advice has been given in this thread already that the problem should now dissipate; I hope very much that it does.

Best,

Alistair