# Compositions in which pianos are destroyed



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Hello, I am looking for classical compositions in which the piano is destroyed, or at least thrown into the audience.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

If anyone finds a concerto for piano thrower and orchestra, please let me know for the unusual concertos series in my blog.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Beethoven's Appassionata.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Art Rock said:


> If anyone finds a concerto for piano thrower and orchestra, please let me know for the unusual concertos series in my blog.


That's _piano tosser_, if you didn't know... as in "the performer just tossed that one off."

I looked for "Piano mosh" "Piano moshing" in the urban dictionary, but there is no appearance of it there... yet.

There is at least one bit of either evidence, or evidential anomaly, that it was a very popular sport in the ancient Olympics in Hellenic Greece:


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Of particular interest would be a composition in which a fire is set to the piano during the performance, and the crash of snapping strings as the burnt wood can no longer bear the tensile load forms part of the aural matrix of the piece. In 2014, such a thing must exist?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Couchie said:


> Of particular interest would be a composition in which a fire is set to the piano during the performance, and the crash of snapping strings as the burnt wood can no longer bear the tensile load forms part of the aural matrix of the piece. In 2014, such a thing must exist?


hehehehe....you never know. It is possible.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> Beethoven's Appassionata.


There was a pianist who was famous for snapping strings. Unfortunately I don't remember who and don't have any other details aside from this vague recollection. He was probably playing Rachmaninoff, though.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

The new single of the classical heavy metal band, Classictrax, 'Caught in a piano mosh', is due on October 10th, on EMI.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Horațiu Rădulescu's _Clepsydra_ uses 16 sound icons: a sound icon is a grand piano placed on its side and the strings played directly like a harp. 



 At least one of his works stipulate gold coins must be thrown at the prone piano/icon. This guy 



 seems to be destroying a piano but I can't at the moment vouch for the musicality of the endeavour.

2014 may well be a golden age of creativity in musical extended technique but it is also a golden age of safety standards and barrantry. Igniting a piano just doesn't seem feasible at Carnegie Hall in the present climate. At least the animal rights people haven't caught up with dog inside a piano


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Couchie said:


> Of particular interest would be a composition in which a fire is set to the piano during the performance, and the crash of snapping strings as the burnt wood can no longer bear the tensile load forms part of the aural matrix of the piece. In 2014, such a thing must exist?


Yosuke Yamashita, Jazz pianist. has beat classical music to this one:


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Two Swedish names come to mind, Karl-Erik Welin and Sven-Eric Johanson; back in the day, 1960's early 70's both sprang to "fame" during various performances were pianos where destroyed. In 1964 at Stockholms "Moderna Museet" Welin and his co-performer Leo Nilsson did a performance of Théodore E. Libèr's (ps. Knut Wiggen, Norwegian Composer mostly active in Sweden) work "Rendez-vous" which has the performer(s) dissect a piano with a chainsaw, at this performance Welin seriously nicked his leg with the chainsaw and in a very stoic way had to finish the act with blood gushing! (I am unsure about the availability of the score..  ..Welin then went on to become one of Sweden's most celebrated organists.)

Here's a vid from a reconstruction re-performance happening of the piece:





I'm slightly less sure about the provenance of Johanson's encounter with destroying piano's, I was told this by a former employer who was much into contemporary music in the early 70's; at a Vocal/Choir recital featuring his music (@ Levande Musik, Göteborg), he had written (improvised) a work for Voice, Sledge Hammer and Piano, where the composer mauled the instrument, my employers wife was hit by a severe chunk of piano wood, no injury, but she took it home as a token of memory and I was shown the piece placed on top of her sheet music cabinet.. Johanson went on to become one of Sweden's most loved "classical" composers, not least for his works for choir and children.

I'm not sure that any of these "happenings" would be possible today, least in the US where people sue you for looking at them... :angel:

/ptr


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## SilverSurfer (Sep 13, 2014)

It was not destroyed by chance...


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Just look for old Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert videos on YouTube. You'll see a lot of organ brutality if not piano destruction. I think the piano flew around as I recall. Unashamed silliness but great fun.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

It may be destruction in slo-mo, but just about any prepared piano piece, where metallic and other harder objects are sitting on or used on the strings -- a little factoid well-known in the music community -- is usually not performed on the better piano available, but a tuned up old 'beater,' because it just is so not good for the strings


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)




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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Simply attend any Keith Jarrett improvisation concert.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

1) *Langgaard* "Little Sonata, Le Beguinage" (1948-49)
http://www.langgaard.dk/musik/faser/faser-4e.htm_Le Béguinage, "The Little Piano Sonata" (1948-49), is one of Langgaard's strangest compositions, with an 'autobiographical' content that is very dificult to interpret. Even the title itself is ambiguous: le béguinage means 'holiness' in French, but in a mocking, derogatory sense. This is music that is constantly commenting on and mocking itself - indeed, one can almost speak of self-destructive traits in this work, which is built up of fragments like a collage. Langgaard also built a theatrical element into the composition, which is meant to give the impression that the pianist is playing the piano out of tune and almost to destruction._
http://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/sharedfiles/booklets/CLA/booklet-CLASSCD240.pdf _"... very strange work, full of dismantled effects, conscious triviliality, tormented crossings out and remarks in the manuscript as in Mahler and invitations to the pianist to bang the piano until it is out of tune and stamp the pedals to pieces - a couple of decades before the happenings! The violence particularly applies to a broken seventh chord which ... seems to contain a hidden, symbolic value." _

2) *Fluxus*: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus - such as *Philip Corner*:"_Piano Activities_" (1962)

3) *Georgy Dorokhov*: _Concertino_ (2010) 




Less relevant, but weird too: *Dorokhov*: _Exposition VI_


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

4) *Nam June Paik* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik

5) less relevant but *Niels Viggo Bentzon* & Fluxus http://www.vortidsmusik.dk/index.ph...55:5-fluxushappening&Itemid=57&layout=default


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## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

This is the closest thing that I can remember "listening" to:


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

Iirc, there is a 'composition' involving dynamite that's never been performed funnily enough.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

European festivals and the Fluxkits  _Piano Activities_, by Philip Corner, as performed in Wiesbaden, 1962, by (l-r) Emmett Williams, Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Benjamin Patterson and George Maciunas

With the help of a group of artists including Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell, Maciunas then organised a series of _Fluxfests_ across Western Europe. Starting with 14 concerts between 1 and 23 September 1962, at Wiesbaden, these _Fluxfests_ presented work by musicians such as John Cage, Ligeti, Penderecki, Terry Riley and Brion Gysin alongside performance pieces written by Dick Higgins, George Brecht and Nam June Paik amongst many others. One performance in particular became notorious; _Piano Activities_ by Philip Corner.
The score - which asks for any number of performers to, among other things, "play", "pluck or tap", "scratch or rub", "drop objects" on, "act on strings with", "strike soundboard, pins, lid or drag various kinds of objects across them" and "act in any way on underside of piano"[SUP][20][/SUP] - resulted in the total destruction of a piano when performed by Maciunas, Higgins and others at Wiesbaden. The performance was considered scandalous enough to be shown on German television four times, with the introduction "The lunatics have escaped!"[SUP][21][/SUP]
At the end we did Corner's _Piano Activities_ not according to his instructions since we systematically destroyed a piano which I bought for $5 and had to have it all cut up to throw it away, otherwise we would have had to pay movers, a very practical composition, but German sentiments about this "instrument of Chopin" were hurt and they made a row about it...


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

joen_cph said:


> http://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/sharedfiles/booklets/CLA/booklet-CLASSCD240.pdf _"... very strange work, full of dismantled effects, conscious triviliality, tormented crossings out and remarks in the manuscript as in Mahler and invitations to the pianist to bang the piano until it is out of tune and stamp the pedals to pieces - a couple of decades before the happenings!"_


If one has an upright piano, you can count among its joys playing with the front cover open so you can observe its mechanism. The soft pedal brings all the hammers closer to the strings when depressed in order to soften the sound. However, if one stamps this pedal hard enough, the hammers can be made to randomly contact the strings. When combined with the sustain pedal this makes for a very eerie sound. Are there any compositions which make use of this phenomenon? I don't think it would destroy the piano, assuming the pedal mechanism is solidly built, but it would likely do a number on the tuning if violent enough.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Scriabin - Vers La Flamme
If you play it right the piano will spontaneously burst into flames. Horowitz got close.


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## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

Couac Addict said:


>


This happened to Maurizio Pollini once.

AND IT WASN'T FUNNY.


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> Of particular interest would be a composition in which a fire is set to the piano during the performance, and the crash of snapping strings as the burnt wood can no longer bear the tensile load forms part of the aural matrix of the piece. In 2014, such a thing must exist?





ArtMusic said:


> hehehehe....you never know. It is possible.


Well, since Couchie is describing a piece that has existed since 1968, it is possible for anyone to _ever_ know it. (Annea just performed this last year in Bangor, too. I wish I'd known about it. I used to live in Redlands, California, where Barney Childs worked. Shortly before I moved there, the Redlands New Music Ensemble (of which I was to become a part--good times!!) performed her piece. So I missed that one, too. Grrrrr.)


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

Shocking behaviour all round. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. Poor defenceless Pianos.

La Monte Young had the right idea.
This is the proper way to treat a piano.

http://soundart.zkm.de/en/piano-piece-for-david-tudor-1-1960-19891990-la-monte-young/


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2014)

Not exactly a concert piece, but a piano does get destroyed...Chico starts, Harpo finishes it off (from around 2:30)


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2014)

MagneticGhost said:


> Shocking behaviour all round. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. Poor defenceless Pianos.
> 
> La Monte Young had the right idea.
> This is the proper way to treat a piano.
> ...


One of my more regretful memories. After finding a piano that was ruined--headed for the trash--and getting it transported to the stage of a music hall, I went on to do that venue's first (and only) experimental music concert back in the late seventies, completely forgetting about the piano sitting to the side, waiting to be fed.

What a maroon.

Just think, that piano had to go to its final resting place without its final meal.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I have long intended my opus one to feature the audience throwing softballs at the orchestra. A softball hitting a cellist would probably be a sadly familiar sound, but a softball cello could be a refreshingly unique sound. Now for Couchie's sake, I will render my work as a concerto for thee pianos and orchestra.


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

I remember as a kid, at many village fairs, Piano smashing contests! maybe its time for piano's to get their revenge...A concerto in which the pianist is savagely mauled by a rabid Bosendorfer?


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Badinerie said:


> ..A concerto in which the pianist is savagely mauled by a rabid Bosendorfer?


I'd pay to see that! (Please make the pianist LangLang! :devil: )

/ptr


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

Have you directly consult Google's cousin, Youtube?

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=piano+destruction+concert


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Prokofiev, toccata and also sonata #8.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Beethoven Hammerklavier sonata.


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2014)

hp, you mean piano sonata #7? Number 8 is pretty mellow.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

ptr said:


> I'd pay to see that! (Please make the pianist LangLang! :devil: )
> 
> /ptr


Let the bidding begin!! Do they take American Express?


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## OldFashionedGirl (Jul 21, 2013)

ptr said:


> I'd pay to see that! (Please make the pianist LangLang! :devil: )
> 
> /ptr


Yeap! Every composition has the risk to destroy da piano in Bang Bang hands.


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