Study single Chopin etude or Godowsky study?

[musicsdarkangel]

What would be more beneficial, doing a Godowsky Chopin etude for two hands, or just a Chopin etude?

[zheer]

What would be more beneficial, doing a Godowsky Chopin etude for two hands, or just a Chopin etude?

  Just had the dis- pleasure of sight reading through a few Godowsky Etude, and to me they are equivalent to learning haw to touch your right ear with your left hand.

[iumonito]

Why "or"?

I can't imagine anyone doing a Godowsky study without having done the corresponding Chopin original.

Your Chopin originals will get better just by reading and practicing the Godowsky transcriptions.

[zheer]

Why "or"?

I can't imagine anyone doing a Godowsky study without having done the corresponding Chopin original.

   Yes you are spot on,  what Godowsky seems to do is make things twice as hard by making the left and right hand do extra things, take a look at his op 25 no1 or his op10 no1 . I might be wrong but i guess they are the less difficult ones .

[mike_lang]

Have you played all of the Chopin etudes yet?  I wouldn't belittle them as "just a Chopin etude"; there are a lot of great things they will do for you.  I think that you should master these before you attempt Godowsky's transcriptions of them.

[zheer]

Have you played all of the Chopin etudes yet? 

   Once you have learnt the chopin etude to the best of your ability, i guess it would be nice to learn some of the Godowsky's , for example his op1o no1 and op25 no 1 will sound  good if playd well, but some of the other ones, to my ears sound like something  Chopin would have had a problem with, you know the story when Liszt playd for chopin, a chopin composition and chopin was really not happy with Liszt, saying that it should be playd as written.

[countchocula]

The Chopin Etudes are more useful, because they present techincal problems that are more universal than the ones posed in the Godowsky Etudes. In other words, you will encounter those problems in other pieces more often than you will encounter the problems in the Godowsky Etudes.  In that sense, the benefits of studying Chopin Etudes are greater, in terms of applying what you have learned  to other pieces. 
The Godowsky versions are really brilliantly inventive and also beautiful, and of course extremely difficult, just such works of genius, really.  But I would recommend a student to learn the Chopin Etudes rather than the Godowsky.
I think maybe Godowsky would have agreed! 
Although you never know...

[liszt1022]

   Once you have learnt the chopin etude to the best of your ability, i guess it would be nice to learn some of the Godowsky's , for example his op1o no1 and op25 no 1 will sound  good if playd well, but some of the other ones, to my ears sound like something  Chopin would have had a problem with, you know the story when Liszt playd for chopin, a chopin composition and chopin was really not happy with Liszt, saying that it should be playd as written.

"Liszt is in the next room, playing my Etudes. I should like to steal from him the way to play my own Etudes."

-Chopin, in a letter to somebody

[zheer]

"Liszt is in the next room, playing my Etudes. I should like to steal from him the way to play my own Etudes."

-Chopin, in a letter to somebody

  Yes and what is your point, possibly Liszt playd what chopin had actually composed.
I was refering to the time when Liszt playd Chopin a Nocturn by Chopin, this made Chopin unhappy, since Liszt was almost re-writing it.

[jas]

I'm in two minds about the Godowsky studies. I firmly believe that Chopin wouldn't have approved, because he didn't like people messing around with his music. Even a few added embellishments to a nocturne annoyed him, as zheer said (although I suspect this may have had something to do with the fact that it was Liszt adding the embellishments).
I don't particularly enjoy listening to them from a musical point of view. I find them interesting -- it's interesting to hear how Chopin's originals can be jigsawed together, for one thing -- but I don't think I could honestly say I like them.

Also -- putting aside the fact that they were very difficult concert pieces even during his own time -- Chopin's Etudes, as the name suggests, were written for the purpose of helping develop a particular facet of pianistic technique, presumably so the pianist who learns them has solid enough technique for the rest of the repertoire. What's the point of the Godowsky studies? If they lack the musicality of Chopin's originals and their practical purpose (since they're among the more difficult pieces in the repertoire anyway), then the answer to the original question seems pretty clear (IMO).

Jas

[iumonito]

There is more to pianistic development than being able to play a similar figuration that shows up in another piece.  Your understanding of choreographic logic, fingering, pedaling and agogic, your understanding of the role of weight in tone production and total freedom are enormously increased by just practicing (not even mastering) a few Godowsky studies.

You will never find anything in Mozart, Brahms or Chopin that resembles the textures and specific problems posed by the Godowsky studies, but your Mozart Brahms and Chopin will certainly improve a lot because of the time you devote to working of your Godowsky studies.

BTW, good entry points for the Godowsky studies: Moscheles-Fetis F Minor for the left hand alone, Op 10 # 3 for the left hand alone and the inversion on right hand and straight in left hand versions of Op 10 # 5.

[ahinton]

There is more to pianistic development than being able to play a similar figuration that shows up in another piece.  Your understanding of choreographic logic, fingering, pedaling and agogic, your understanding of the role of weight in tone production and total freedom are enormously increased by just practicing (not even mastering) a few Godowsky studies.

You will never find anything in Mozart, Brahms or Chopin that resembles the textures and specific problems posed by the Godowsky studies, but your Mozart Brahms and Chopin will certainly improve a lot because of the time you devote to working of your Godowsky studies.

Plenty of good sense here. It must be understood that Godowsky never regarded his studies on Chopin's études as being in any way "superior" to Chopin's own - in fact, in his teaching notes for them, he was at pains to point out the importance of Chopin's originals, so much so, in fact, that in so doing he openly revealed part of the very motivation for the composition of his own vast and vastly important cycle of studies which are, effectively, one of the most significant tributes in music to Chopin's art ever written.

Chopin was still in his 'teens (incredible and embarrassing - to me as a composer, at any rate! - as it may seem) when he wrote his Op. 10 études; at the time of their publication, they were immediately seen to represent a new approach on at least two fronts - firstly, the idea of a pedagogical piece that could have a separate life as a concert work and secondly the expansion of the technical requirements of pianists. This latter also informs Godowsky's series of studies on them, albeit from a late 19th-early 20th certury standpoint (for there had obviously been considerable advances, not only in pianists' technique but also in piano design, in the almost seven decades between Chopin's Op. 10 and the first of the Godowsky studies). Not only do I agree that study of the Godowsky pieces will greatly halp in the performance of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. but it will also be immensely beneficial to the study of certain 20th century piano repertoire - Rakhmaninov, Busoni, Sorabji, Medtner, etc.

Godowsky sought, amon other things, the complete independence of every finger and at times he explored the possibilities of enunciation of multiple lines at contrasting dynamic levels within one hand alone. Sorabji - who yielded to none in his admiration for Godowsky, "The Creative Transcriber" (as he called him) - appreciated this very much and once told me that, as far as he was concerned, much of his own music would be a closed book to pianists not thoroughly versed in the studies of Godowsky and Alkan. I am not a pianist, but I can confirm that, when I was a student, I wrestled my way with determination (though painfully little skill) through the entire Chopin/Godowsky cycle in practice rooms for the purpose of finding out not only how Godowsky went about his elaborate piano writing but also what it might actually feel like under the hands of real pianists; I have never regretted putting myself through that experience, for all that my lack of pianistic facility rendered it a brain-draining, finger-numbing and ear-bashing one!

I would recommend the practice of at least some of these studies to every serious pianist; they are, to my mind, as indispensible as Chopin's immortal originals.

Best,

Alistair

[superstition2]

I have Hamelin's set and it's OK, but the pieces are like Kincaid paintings.

Fussy, lacy, and overly adorned. Like Kincaid's flowers, little notes pepper the melody and the entire production seems very artificial. The only one I care much for at all is the first track, and even it suffers from the problems I've described.

Some of Chopin's Op. 10 don't impress me, though, particularly the Eb minor.