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Post by Dave Dexter on Jul 24, 2018 9:25:36 GMT
True. Though I wasn't really looking to discuss the historical fine points on recreating original performances, which probably isn't even possible in this case if indeed we have so little information about it. I was looking more along the lines of, given this score and the present-day piano, how would you interpret it? The frenetic high-speed performances are probably more in the realm of showing off than actually making music. So we come back to my original question, perhaps slightly rephrased: Suppose you were confronted with this piece of music and given a piano to play it on. How would you play it? What tempo would you choose, and why? Which notes would you emphasize, and why? How would you phrase it? How would you shape the dynamics? Which passages would you put more emotion into, and why? These considerations, at least to me, are far more interesting than trying to second-guess how original performances were made, how to play it as fast as you can while keeping it marginally still recognizable, or how to use it as a pedagogical tool for teaching piano technique to students. Exactly, couldn't this be considered an etude and therefore playing it fast/showing off is de rigeur? It is perfectly ok to acknowledge that some pieces are difficult, or appear so, and are enjoyable in part because of the theatrical nature of watching a skilled performer work. It doesn't betray music to show off. Note that I'm not a pianist, so you all seem quite blase about the challenge this piece undoubtably represents to a newer student , but hearing fast pyrotechnic renditions of this piece is both enjoyable to me and what I would emulate, if I could play it. I think the structure collapses if approached differently. And yes, I did just partially quote Salieri from Amadeus, but it's a good quote.
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Post by gx on Jul 24, 2018 14:31:47 GMT
Many an eye witness to Beethoven's performance of his own piano music say he much of the time didn't keep to the markings on the page.. Where does this leave this game of 'operator' - as those who draw lines (musicologists/and general riffraff) through lineage depend? Much of the time, the composition itself - through compositional understanding - will reveal a compelling approach to its interpretation.. And what of the tunings? We are note hearing the true harmonic color that Beethoven once heard before hearing it all in his head (and body, arguably). Or Chopin's for that matter, much less, C.P.E. … I think it was (the great) S. Richter who said that the history of piano interpretation is more often a collection of bad habits Hence his shocking move when sitting on the panel, when a tall red headed Texan won the Tschaikovsky competition
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Post by driscollmusick on Jul 24, 2018 16:14:56 GMT
Many an eye witness to Beethoven's performance of his own piano music say he much of the time didn't keep to the markings on the page.. Where does this leave this game of 'operator' - as those who draw lines (musicologists/and general riffraff) through lineage depend? Much of the time, the composition itself - through compositional understanding - will reveal a compelling approach to its interpretation.. And what of the tunings? We are note hearing the true harmonic color that Beethoven once heard before hearing it all in his head (and body, arguably). Or Chopin's for that matter, much less, C.P.E. … I think it was (the great) S. Richter who said that the history of piano interpretation is more often a collection of bad habits Hence his shocking move when sitting on the panel, when a tall red headed Texan won the Tschaikovsky competition I was thinking about this yesterday, listening to Simone Dinnerstein's recording of the Goldberg Variations. We get so used to a particular performance approach (Gould's most famously for this piece) that it is striking when a performer comes to a warhorse and breathes new life into it. I've always been of the mindset that while you need to notate as specifically as you can, you also need to give performers of your work significant latitude (even things as basic as tempo, which often play out differently in a concert hall). Somehow I feel this approach isn't favored by many modern composers...?
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Post by fuguestate on Jul 24, 2018 16:55:21 GMT
Many an eye witness to Beethoven's performance of his own piano music say he much of the time didn't keep to the markings on the page.. [...] A man after my own heart! When I play my own compositions, I rarely (if ever!) play it the same way twice. My Fantasia Sonata, for example, can be played in quite a number of different ways, and the tempo can vary quite greatly. But this is one area where I've run into frustrations before. Imagine this: you're composing a piece, and playing through it multiple times in the course of refining it. You catch yourself playing the same passage with completely different accompaniment figures each time through. And you realize that which accompaniment style you choose depends on what kind of mood you have decided to use in a completely different passage (because the two have to answer musically to each other). How do you even notate something like that??? It's true that modern notation does give a lot of leeway in some areas -- you can indicate, for example, that the tempo may vary between some prescribed range, or you can write rubato / espressivo and let the performer insert his own interpretation, etc.. But other areas have no such freedom for interpretation: how do you notate, for example, a general shape of an LH accompaniment figure where the pitches of the notes are allowed to vary? I suppose in theory you could write a long explanatory footnote and attach it to the score / passage, but who's going to actually parse through that just to decide how to perform the piece? One may perhaps reuse Baroque notations for figured bass, perhaps... but in modern music one rarely uses the stock interpretations of such notation that over time have converged on a few specific textbook patterns, that may or may not reflect actual practice at the time. And how do you notate a free-form figure that has no precedent in Baroque music?
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Post by gx on Jul 24, 2018 17:41:46 GMT
"how do you notate, for example, a general shape of an LH accompaniment figure where the pitches of the notes are allowed to vary?" For many of my pieces, in such context, I use tuplets of 5, 7, 11, ...with some holes - (not all filled) to create such an intention. In essence, the mathematical translation of the 'rubato' - or some such…. I did this when a simple term or - 'long explanatory footnote and attach it to the score' - was not precise enough for the passage.
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Post by Bob Porter on Jul 24, 2018 18:15:18 GMT
I understand that many Baroque solo concertos have come down to us as a solo line over figured base. Baroque instrumentalists played this stuff so much that they filled in their own parts. I don't think that we can allow for every contingency in a composition. Just realize that folks are going to play something the way they want, including way too fast.
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Post by fuguestate on Jul 24, 2018 22:38:59 GMT
gx: That's actually a pretty good idea! I might do just that the next time I write a passage like that. Bob Porter: I have no problem with people interpreting my music (or anybody else's, really) however they want. In fact, for some of my pieces I welcome different interpretations. But that doesn't mean I don't have my own preferences, or enjoy discussing how a piece "ought" to be performed, according to my view of it. The way too fast thing has already happened to me, in fact. Mike Hewer has said that he would play my C# minor fugue a lot faster, like 2-3 times faster, than I had written. I wouldn't play it that way, and maybe I'd cringe if I had to listen to it played that way, but hey, if he gets a kick out of it, why not? All this discussion makes me really want to post my Fantasia Sonata, because it's one of those pieces that I play in wildly different ways depending on my mood, and I think it would be fun to discuss the relative merits of different ways of performing it. But I just can't seem to find the time to properly record it, and the computer rendering is, to say the least, so ear-bleedingly horrible that I refuse to post that anywhere. (And the amount of work needed to make the computer rendering not horrible is just... not something I want to consider at this time.) Or should I just post the score for, say, gx to record it for me with at least some human emotion invested into it? I feel like it would be unfair to ask, though, 'cos it's a rather long piece (about ~10 mins in total), and some passages, esp. the coda, likely needs a good revision.
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Post by gx on Jul 25, 2018 2:37:27 GMT
HS - I'd like to take a look at your Fantasy Sonata - especially after your revision.. I can't commit to recording at this time- (lots on the plate) - but at least see it, and what would be involved to get the 10 minutes in playing shape..
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Post by Mike Hewer on Jul 25, 2018 7:27:59 GMT
I'd say write the music, give as much performance info as you feel relevant to make clear what you prefer and then let the performer decide. At some stage it's best to let the piece go and send it into the big world to attempt communication with players and audience. As to the Solfegietto tempo, apart from common sense and musical tastes, do you think it's possible that the tempo one prefers also has a link with the level of ability one has to play an instrument?
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Post by fuguestate on Jul 25, 2018 19:46:38 GMT
gx: I'm not expecting anyone to record it for me -- I think that would be unfair since I should be the one doing the recording. Though it's not a particularly complicated piece, and someone with your level of piano skill should be able to play it easily. It's just that I feel like something is missing if I only post a score without an accompanying audio file. Maybe I'm just letting my perfectionism defeat me. Mike Hewer: I've been on the fence about how many / how few indications I want to write on the score. On the one hand, there are certainly some tendencies toward particular ways of performing certain passages when I play it myself, but OTOH I've also played through with a completely different style and it still made sense to me. So I'm not sure whether to leave it all up to the performer, or put in some indications with a note that they can be ignored at will. Also, I still can't decide how to write the indications: should I write specific dynamics / tempos, or should I label passages with the emotion(s) one might wish to convey, and let the performer decide what tempo/dynamics/etc. that might mean? As for the tempo of Solfegietto, certainly if one's skill is not up to snuff, one would not be able to play it fast. However, the flip side is that just because you can play it very fast doesn't necessarily mean you should. That's a pet peeve I have with certain performances of famous pieces, where the music becomes a platform for the performers' theatrical showing off, rather than an honest attempt at conveying what might have been the composer's intention when he wrote those notes. But of course, this is all highly subjective, since in the absence of explicit remarks from the composer, one can always argue that the whole point of the piece was to show off virtuosity. But such arguments, to me, rob one of the interesting discussions that might be had over the finer points of how specific passages could be interpreted differently, and what their musical/emotional/etc. impact might be in each case.
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