The piano

[Richard Barrett]

Please don't give the Donald any ideas about reinventing himself

I think we'll be safe there, I don't imagine he knows one end of a piano from the other.

Scriabin had very small hands too, as a result of which there were stretches in some of his pieces that he couldn't actually do himself.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I was reminded, this morning, when listening to COTW, of the size of the American jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams's hands - large enough not just to span an open tenth with the left hand - which I can, just about, but also with the right hand - which is too great a stretch for me. One interesting question perhaps worth considering is, how great musicians manage to make up for physical shortcomings of this sort? Watching Keith Tippett - one of the most virtuosic of pianists in the world of jazz - the first thing one notes was the smallness of his hands.

Oscar Peterson could comfortably stretch a tenth in the flat keys e.g. Eb to G or Aflat to C. As I suspect could Art Tatum. If you need to play a tenth in the left hand one way is to rapidly arpeggiate it - which in jazz at least you can make a rhythmic virtue of or you could play stride in the manner of Art or Fats Waller ...mind you that’s even more difficult.
Or get a bass player to help out...Or don’t attempt the thirds in the left and voice it like Bill Evans with the right hand usually playing the third. Or play like Keith T (and Stan Tracey) and adapt to what you can do and not bogged down in what others did.
Hmm I don’t think there are any easy options.
On a classical note it’s interesting which pianists arpeggiate the opening of Rach 2 which has some tenths in the left hand with the added complication of a minor second up to minor third (and back again);taken with the third and second fingers of the left hand. Ashkenazy arpeggiates it ; Rachmaninov who could stretch an octave and a FIFTH doesn’t,,,

[Joseph K]

Yikes, does that mean you knew and studied with Andrew Lewis (one of the most accomplished acousmatic composers in the UK/Europe)?

Yes indeed. Not that I appreciated it fully at the time, although his composition seminars and modules on Boulez and Stockhausen were among my favourite. In hindsight I should have also chosen his music technology (or whatever it was called) modules - but then prior to doing that, I feel I should have spent some of my student loan on actually buying a computer! Still, I hope one day to go back there and study for a composition master's - they said I'd be accepted onto that course, in the mean time I just need to create a portfolio of compositions and save 10000 pounds. It's doable...

To an extent yes, but avoiding a keyboard might well result in a more original approach to harmony. For example, I think one of the main reasons Mr. Holdsworth crafted such a distinctive harmonic syntax (confounding even fellow professional guitarists) was due to his having been self-taught and never consulting any theoretical texts or sitting at the keyboard.

I'm not so sure of that - I do not think that theoretical knowledge stifles originality. Messiaen springs to mind (to name but one of a fair few composers) as someone who had plenty of theoretical knowledge but whose harmonic language was very original and distinctive.

It is true that in the counterpoint text I'm studying they entreat you to not work at the keyboard and instead endeavour to internally hear what you're writing - an ability that I am working towards. But, prior to that, I spend some of the time reading through the examples it gives (I'm currently on three-part first species counterpoint) where I play two parts at the keyboard and sing the third part, then change which one I'm singing etc. Basically the trick to internalising music is to sing (and play) it lots...

The length of his fingers and where they gravitated to on the fretboard makes for some rather 'unorthodox' stretching on the keyboard, but thankfully beautiful chords/progressions.

I've never tried playing any of Holdsworth's music on the keyboard, but I think much of it would be easier on a keyboard than on the guitar, since many close-voiced chords do require big stretches on the guitar, but are relatively straightforward on the keyboard.

[Serial_Apologist]

There's a story to the effect that around the time he was composing his Piano Concerto and Sonata, Stravinsky would pin score paper around the walls of his studio, beginning to the right of the entrance and ending there. It was said by one writer, I understand - I wish I could remember the source - that in this way he was able to compose music of a continuity not possible for composers forced to interrupt the thought processes by having turn over to the next page of the blank score book! He would start writing at the door, and carry on uninterrupted until the door was reached once more, whereupon the composition would be complete! He also had two pianos in the studio, to which he could refer for inspirational or checking purposes without having to move far, thereby also not breaking his thinking processes!

[Richard Barrett]

I wish I could remember the source

I remember reading that story in Nicholas Cook's Music: a Short Introduction where there's also no attribution. There's no reference to it in Stephen Walsh's two-volume biography, besides which it really isn't unusual for composers to pin sketches to their walls. I think the ultimate source here might have been the Encyclopedia of Bollocks.

[ahinton]

I remember reading that story in Nicholas Cook's Music: a Short Introduction where there's also no attribution. There's no reference to it in Stephen Walsh's two-volume biography, besides which it really isn't unusual for composers to pin sketches to their walls. I think the ultimate source here might have been the Encyclopedia of Bollocks.

!!! Be the source as it may or may not, even Elgar is supposed to have done this kind of thing when engaged on a symphonic work!...

[Boilk]

I'm not so sure of that - I do not think that theoretical knowledge stifles originality. Messiaen springs to mind (to name but one of a fair few composers) as someone who had plenty of theoretical knowledge but whose harmonic language was very original and distinctive.

Indeed, so "original and distinctive" that you can study it and soon come up with Messiaen-sounding piano music (as his pupil George Benjamin once demonstrated). But I would say that very few composers broke as much harmonic new ground as Messiaen did (obviously his rhythmic stuff can be traced directly to India).

Obviously, having theoretical knowledge of something makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to act in a manner that is completely uninformed by that knowledge! (Think of all those mid-20th century composers who, writing some 200 years after the Baroque period, still couldn't refrain from inserting fugues and extended fugal sections into symphonies, concertos, et al; the knowledge of that contrapuntal skill (ingrained from their student days as one of the holy grails of great composition) just had to manifest itself rather than sit there forever unused.)

The neuro-plasticity of the brain means that we can (with time and effort) unlearn & remould our default musical tendencies in order to consciously redirect our creativity in another, perhaps more original direction. But once the earlier conventional learnings have been assimilated, they are an ever-present 'musical toolbox' that the artist can draw upon - which is less likely the case if originally self-taught, or never a student of 'conventional wisdom' when starting out.

[Joseph K]

Obviously, having theoretical knowledge of something makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to act in a manner that is completely uninformed by that knowledge!

Right, but I don't think being uninformed increases one's chances of creating something of worth. Getting back to Holdsworth, he was not uninformed in his tradition - I know that he learnt at least one Charlie Christian solo by ear; obviously his aural knowledge was far-reaching as well as his knowledge of scales etc.

(Think of all those mid-20th century composers who, writing some 200 years after the Baroque period, still couldn't refrain from inserting fugues and extended fugal sections into symphonies, concertos, et al; the knowledge of that contrapuntal skill (ingrained from their student days as one of the holy grails of great composition) just had to manifest itself rather than sit there forever unused.)

... and then there's Webern who IIRC had a doctorate on some aspect of Renaissance polyphony - and some of those techniques found their way into his music. But I think Messiaen won prizes in fugue and harmony, and there's not a lot of fugal stuff in his actual oeuvre.

The neuro-plasticity of the brain means that we can (with time and effort) unlearn & remould our default musical tendencies in order to consciously redirect our creativity in another, perhaps more original direction. But once that conventional knowledge has been assimilated, it is an ever-present 'musical toolbox' that the artist can draw upon - which is less likely the case if originally self-taught, or never a student of 'conventional wisdom' when starting out.

Bottom line is, I think any composer or musician would/should have a curiosity about the music of their tradition and want to learn from it - that includes Harmony and Counterpoint as traditionally conceived as well as things like Serialism (assuming this person is composing in this tradition). And I can't think of one decent musician who has not been a student of 'conventional wisdom' (although I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this term).

[Mandryka]

Wieland is much more concerned with his compositions having a structural shape than Aaron, whose pieces generally start, do what they do for a while, and then stop. Wieland is more interested in the sonic and expressive potential of structure. This idea of disassembling the actions that make up instrumentalism derives from the music of the late Klaus K Hübler (not to be confused with Klaus Huber!) and especially his 3rd string quartet, which indeed had a strong effect on me when I first heard it (in 1984!), although personally I feel that this is a limiting way to proceed unless it's followed by a recombination of the elements into some kind of "new instrument" whose repertoire is coextensive with the composition in question. Otherwise every disassembly of a particular instrument or combination of instruments is going more or less to resemble every other, being so to speak a high-entropy phenomenon.

Returning to piano music, I would mention Richard Emsley (b 1951) whose recent work is mostly for piano. Here's a relatively extended example I find very engaging:
https://soundcloud.com/richard-emsley/for-piano-13

Not piano, but I thought you may be interested in this transfer of Arditti playing Hubler

PW: thewolf5th

https://mega.nz/file/9BMyTTrb#W4amDg1Kmy9LCix9n1RcskoouMlfb_fYizJ7MFSSXAE

[Richard Barrett]

thewolf5th

A fine resource indeed. Thanks, I have that already (and the LP it came from!).

[Roslynmuse]

Though I have felt some kind of attraction to the instrument and its capabilities compared to the guitar, to the extent of not even taking my guitar with me to Bangor for the third year of my music degree, telling myself I'd spend the time practising one of the pianos available in the Music School practice rooms. I don't think I was conscious at the time how much I missed having the guitar around, being able to play even just a bit!

Another Bangor graduate! I was there in the mid-eighties in the Mathias days...

[Serial_Apologist]

I think Messiaen won prizes in fugue and harmony, and there's not a lot of fugal stuff in his actual oeuvre.

The only passage I can think of is in the second movement of the Fête des Belles Eaux suite for four ondes martenot, of 1937. Very neat writing, inversions and all, could almost have been composed by Roussel!

[Bryn]

The only passage I can think of is in the second movement of the Fête des Belles Eaux suite for four ondes martenot, of 1937. Very neat writing, inversions and all, could almost have been composed by Roussel!

"four"? Les Six[sic], surely. C'est un sextuor.

[Joseph K]

Another Bangor graduate! I was there in the mid-eighties in the Mathias days...

[Serial_Apologist]

"four"? Les Six[sic], surely. C'est un sextuor.

Thanks for shedding lumière on my mistake!