Piano Forum

A  MUSICAL TEST FOR THOSE WHO CAN COUNT UP TO FOUR


I always say that a musician should be able to read sheet music and understand what is written by the composer.

But today people are laughing at such naive people, they say that it's much easier to take a recording of a celebrity and just copy by ear what sounds on celebrity's record.

Recently, five students decided to test me. They asked me to guess which of them had never looked at the notes of Schumann's famous short piece.

I listened to all five and guessed right away. I told this pianist: you played completely different music instead of what the composer wrote. Schumann wrote the Time Signature 4/4. This means that in each bar there should be a One-Two-Three-Four.

Instead, you have five quarters in one bar, six quarters in another bar, three in the next  one and so on.


If we come up with some suitable words for 4/4, then they can be sung to this melody with the correct stressing. For example,

"One day brings opportUnity
and the dreamer is victorious and glOrious".


And with the fake, usually performed Time Signature,  these words will have to be sung with a wrong stressing like this:

"One day brings opportunitY
and the dreamer is victorious and gloriOus".



However, this pianist did not give up. He invited me along with him to listen to all the records of this piece on You Tube and find at least one with the right, genuine Schumann's  Time Signature.

We listened for a long time, but not a single record without this annoying mistake was found. All the pianists played anything,  but not the Time Signature 4/4 that Schumann wrote.


I invite everyone who loves music and knows how to count to four, to go through the same test and find a pianist who can not count among these five.  And if someone knows the record of Traumerei with the correct Time Signature - please, let me know in the comments.

I will listen with a great interest and I thank you in advance!

Good luck to everyone in the test! And thanks for watching.







For comparison, I invite you to listen to the same piece performed by famous pianists: