all keys

[cadenz]

does anybody know of any piano pieces which use all 88 keys of the keyboard? i think it would be interesting especially if it was by accident, and it wasn't written with the idea of having every key used. 

[Rach3]

Well definitely not Beethoven, or anything before him - their pianos had limited range. And suprisingly not the Rach 3 either, I know it doesn't hit the top keys at all.

-Rach3

[ted]

Either of the two Ives sonatas must surely come close to doing it, but I'm not about to wade through the music to find out.

[Lance Morrison]

Either of the two Ives sonatas must surely come close to doing it, but I'm not about to wade through the music to find out.

Ted, what is your opinion of these works? just asking 'cause no one ever mention charlie on here...

[quantum]

Alexina Louie - I leap through the sky with stars
It uses Low A and High C, and a whole bunch of notes in the middle.  The glissandos, probably bring it closer.  However I haven't actually counted all the keys it uses. 

Scriabin's 6th Sonata asks for a D above the highest C in the coda.  When Scriabin played it I believe he substituted it with the C. 

[ted]

Lance:

The short answer is that I like Charlie's music very much. I have many recordings of it and have listened to it regularly without tiring of it for thirty-five years. I do not play any of it but for the same reason I do not play most things - because my repertoire is necessarily small through concentration on my own music.

My experience was that the initial impression of a collection of idiosyncratic musical gestures soon gives way to a very special endearing universality expressed through sound. I think his piano music is very highly dependent on the performer - much more so than classical works or even ragtime and jazz based compositions. In the case of the first sonata, for instance, Joanna MacGregor's version is so different from, say, Noel Lee's, that some sections hardly sound like the same piece. Likewise for John Kirkpatrick and Steven Mayer, say, in the Concord. Ives himself, we are told, did not hesitate to alter things and improvise different versions of his piano pieces from one day to the next.

My opinion, and it is purely opinion, is that Charlie is at his best when he is not quoting bits and pieces of tunes or imitating brass bands, thunderstorms and church singing. For this reason my favourite sections are the darker, more nebulous regions of the first sonata, which, along with Thoreau and parts of Emerson in the Concord, reveal an amazing visionary landscape of sound to the receptive listener.

So the short answer is that I am still learning from his piano music. Like all piano composers of substance he created his own world - showed us a new way of playing, a way rich in power of expression and possibility of development.