# Hard music!



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

What a difference between then and now! Beethoven wrote his piano and chamber music not for the professionals of his day, but for the amateurs in Vienna and elsewhere. Most of his music was notoriously difficult. But if an amateur could master it, he or she was assured of an enthusiastic audience among family and friends.

Of his Op. 101 sonata, Beethoven wrote the publisher proposing that it be called "the Difficult-to-play Sonata," adding "For what is difficult is also beautiful, good, great, etc. Hence everyone will realize that this is the most lavish praise that can be given, for what is difficult makes one sweat."

Today we argue back and forth about Schiff vs Gould vs Gilels or whatever. But when this music was new, it was a rewarding challenge for more or less ordinary people to play in their homes and for those around them to enjoy. It seems to me that we have lost much in these later days, although the music remains the same.

Not sure where this thread is going (if anywhere), but this thought really struck me tonight.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

*Hardanger music*



KenOC said:


> Not sure where this thread is going (if anywhere),


To Norway!

Tveitt tweet: My fiddle concertos are Hard(anger)


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Wagner wrote in an essay that Liszt was the first person who was able to perform Beethoven's later piano sonatas the way they were intended.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Prodromides said:


> To Norway!
> 
> Tveitt tweet: My fiddle concertos are Hard(anger)


Stop droning on.

I'm more used to this:






Or some of the Greig (Anitra's Dance) so that's a nice thought.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

People used to be able to type 60+ words per minute. That is now no longer necessary. There is a connection.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Couple of thoughts. 

Beethoven was writing for the fortepiano which (I am given to understand) could be slightly easier to use than a modern piano. You can see something similar if you compare harpsichord and piano syllabuses of the ABRSM. Typically a piece given on the grade 6 harpsichord syllabus could be on the grade 8 piano syllabus.

Secondly, we are to some extent talking about the educated middle and upper classes who could afford to spend "professional" amounts of time practising and could afford excellent tutors. This allowed them to develop to a level that nowadays we associate with professionals.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

In his day, Mozart's music was considered complicated. Now, kids whizz through it with their eyes closed. I believe it was Chopin who upgraded techniques from the fortepiano to the grand piano. Mozart's style was obsolete. But I think it was Arthur Schnabel who said his sonatas are "too easy for children, too difficult for adults." In other words, playing them technically is not difficult, but investing them with the right feeling is hard. Sometimes you still see performers play Mozart with a patronising grin on their mush, as if they're saying, 'oh how light and breezy this all is!' The old Romantic period view, which takes more than garlic and a stake in the heart to kill. The point being, difficulty isn't only technical.

However, I've seen our great concert pianist Finghin Collins perform a modern piano concerto and the difficulty levels were evident, from a technical perspective. In fact, so finger-twistingly complex was the work that it left no room for feeling, no room for the pianist to breathe. A hundred years from now it might be a standard piece of frippery that gets played wrong, but right now, the great pianist still has to move their lips as they count their way around the keyboard, and learn whatever new idea has just been brutally spawned...


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