# Incredible Feats of Musicianship by Famous Composers



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Anyone have any interesting anecdotes on this topic?

A couple I've come across recently seem pretty astounding, first one is J.S. Bach known as the top organ player in the world in his day also somehow found the time to get proficient enough on violin to at times take the role of first violin in orchestral works of his he was performing.

Or how about Debussy in his earlier years when he was first promoting his Opera _Pelléas et Mélisande_ on more than one occasion he performed the work in it's entirety for friends or associates on the piano while simultaneously singing all the parts himself.


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## StrangeHocusPocus (Mar 8, 2019)

all hearsay I'm afraid..............................


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Mozart's transcription of _Miserere_ at age 14; the Pope had forbidden anyone from transcribing it, on pain of excommunication:

https://medium.com/world-of-music/the-story-of-allegris-miserere-b4d21656798

"The Mozarts popped into the Wednesday service at the Vatican, at which the Miserere was being performed. A couple of hours later, back at home, the young Wolfgang proceeded to transcribe the entire piece from memory. He went back on Friday to make a couple of corrections - and the Vatican's secret was out."


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"Camille Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy, memorized all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas and offered the audience to choose one that he would play from memory as an encore at his debut recital in 1845 when he was ten years old. Such a feat made him world famous, even in the United States."


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Amazing feat, Stravinsky wrote_ Le Sacre du printemp_ on a toy piano and a tin drum in Diaghilev's living room before passing out from too much champagne. This led to a riot in which a lot of vegetables were thrown and maidens sacrificed.*

*Facts subject to a peer review.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*How long did it take Handel to write The Messiah?* Three weeks? Heck, I couldn't get the score paper, pen, and ink together in three weeks let alone write a 259-page score! But that's not the remarkable thing. The remarkable thing is The Messiah ranks as a masterpiece! A work of three weeks writing time? Even after I'd gotten my paper, pens and ink together, it will take me a month or two just to come up with a hummable tune. Apparently Handel wrote the Halleluia Chorus in three days!

*Liszt's sight-reading skills. * These intrigue me, if we can believe the stories. And why shouldn't we? It's Liszt, after all.
According to QUORA ( https://www.quora.com/Was-Franz-Lis...the-most-complex-sheet-music-upon-first-sight ) and responses from one Mark Andrews, Composer and pianist. PhD in Composition: (1) Liszt sight read a Grieg violin sonata, playing both the piano and violin parts, about which Grieg remarked: "Now you must bear in mind, in the first place, that he had never seen or heard the sonata, and in the second place that it was a sonata with a violin part, now above, now below, independent of the pianoforte part. And what does Liszt do? He plays the whole thing, root and branch, violin and piano, nay, more, for he played fuller, more broadly. The violin got its due right in the middle of the piano part. He was literally over the whole piano at once, without missing a note, and how he did play! With grandeur, beauty, genius, unique comprehension. I think I laughed - laughed like an idiot" 
Liszt sight read Chopin's Etudes so well that Chopin said of him: "I wish I could steal from him the art of playing my own etudes."
Here is Czerny on his young student Liszt: "Since I made him learn each piece rapidly, he finally became such an expert sight-reader that he was capable of publicly sight-reading even compositions of considerable difficulty and so perfectly as though he had been studying them for a long time" ((Reginald R. Gerig, _Great pianists and their technique_)
There's a notoriously difficult piano concerto by Adolph Henselt that Liszt apparently sight read at a rehearsal (this concerto is more difficult than Rach.3). So yes, he was pretty much a phenomenon.

*Schubert.*
I'm always most astounded by the amount of music Schubert wrote in his short life span. Unlike Mozart, Schubert's compositions do not begin in early childhood. Schubert, born in 1797, began composing in 1810. He would die 18 years later, and in those 18 years composed approximately 1000 works (including symphonies, masses, piano sonatas, string quartets, and some 600 songs). The sheer act of putting pen to paper and scratching down notes for 1000 works of music takes time, and one might wonder when the composer slept. How long would it take a person to copy by hand all of Schubert's music? Still, once again, the truly amazing thing is that so many of these works are masterpieces. And that's another reason why I worship at the shrine of Schubert.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Larkenfield said:


> "Camille Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy, memorized all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas and offered the audience to choose one that he would play from memory as an encore at his debut recital in 1845 when he was ten years old. Such a feat made him world famous, even in the United States."


Beethoven on the other hand could play all preludes and fugues from the two books of Bach WTC from memory at age eleven.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

hammeredklavier said:


> Beethoven on the other hand could play all preludes and fugues from the two books of Bach WTC from memory at age eleven.


People were smarter in those days. There's been a bit of backsliding since...


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Beethoven on the other hand could play all preludes and fugues from the two books of Bach WTC from memory at age eleven.


 I would have mentioned this separately without comparing them. Lately, there's been too much music presented as a competitive horse race between composers, and here it is again where another attempt is being made to diminish the accomplishments of one composer's achievements by comparing him with another's. I find this anti-music... anti-music to the spirit of music. What Camille Saint-Saëns did at the age of 10 was a tremendous feat regardless of what Beethoven did with Bach. But since the comparison was brought up, I find the ability to play the 32 demanding Beethoven sonatas from memory as being more impressive and done at a younger age because S-s never knew which Beethoven sonata he might be asked to play in a concert.


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

KenOC said:


> People were smarter in those days. There's been a bit of backsliding since...


I don't know if they were smarter, but they certainly wasted a lot less time on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Not by a composer but still a tremendous feat: ‘Alexander Brailowsky (one of my personal favorites) programmed all 160 piano pieces by Frédéric Chopin for playing in a series of six concerts. In 1924, he gave a recital in Paris of the complete cycle of the works of Chopin, the first in history, using the composer's own piano for part of the recital. He then went on to present a further thirty cycles of Chopin's music in Paris, Brussels, Zurich, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Montevideo. A highly successful world tour followed.’


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Larkenfield said:


> I would have mentioned this separately without comparing them. Lately, there's been too much music presented as a competitive horse race between composers, and here it is again where another attempt is being made to diminish the accomplishments of one composer's achievements by comparing him with another's. I find this anti-music... anti-music to the spirit of music. What Camille Saint-Saëns did at the age of 10 was a tremendous feat regardless of what Beethoven did with Bach. But since the comparison was brought up, I find the ability to play the 32 demanding Beethoven sonatas as being more impressive and done at a younger age because he never knew which sonata he might be asked to play in a concert.


I wasn't saying Saint-Saen's achievement was any less impressive than Beethoven's. I'm only intrigued by the similarities it almost seems like Bach meant to Beethoven in the way Beethoven meant to Saint-Saens even in the early periods of their careers. That's why I related my description of Beethoven with your description of Saint-Saens. I wasn't thinking in terms of 'competition between artists', maybe it's the way you interpret my posts that's a bit paranoid (sorry to use the word), thinking that I'm talking in terms of competition again, (between Saint-Saens vs Beethoven this time) when in fact I was never thinking in that way. And I don't discuss in terms of competition any more often than other members here on TC do.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Rachmaninoff probably belongs in this thread as well. Apparently he could learn to play very difficult piano pieces very quickly.
He is supposed to have said the following about Scriabin's Etude Op. 42 No. 5: "It's a difficult Etude - it took me a whole hour to learn it". Ha ha.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

If it is true that Mozart composed Nozze Di Figaro in 6 weeks - 3.5 hour opera plus considering the quality of it.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Berlioz reportedly played a Beethoven string quartet on the kazoo while translating a portion of Ovid's Metamorphosis into French with pen and paper, and making line drawings of the Parisian skyline with his feet.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven once performed his _Hammerklavier _sonata on a toy piano. When asked how he could play such complicated music when the black keys were only painted on, he replied, "I practice a lot."

(Apologies to Charles M. Shulz)


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

In Bach's day, professional musicians were generally expected to be proficient on a range of different instruments. Bach could apparently perform well on at least the violin in addition to keyboard instruments, on top of his composing activities. It seems that there are not many contemporary composers that are able to be both virtuoso performers and composers as well. Penderecki mentioned something along these lines and lamented not having enough time to practice violin. I wonder why things have changed so much in this respect. Perhaps one reason is composers today have a much greater range of music to study than composers of the past.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Beethoven once performed his _Hammerklavier _sonata on a toy piano. When asked how he could play such complicated music when the black keys were only painted on, he replied, "I practice a lot."
> 
> (Apologies to Charles M. Shulz)


You can probably do better than this. With all the reading you've done on Beethoven I suspect you could certainly add something of interest to this thread.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

MarkW said:


> Berlioz reportedly played a Beethoven string quartet on the kazoo while translating a portion of Ovid's Metamorphosis into French with pen and paper, and making line drawings of the Parisian skyline with his feet.


May I be so bold as to point out that the earliest patent for the kazoo dates to some 15 years after Berlioz' death? This leads me to suspect some hyperbole in this otherwise entirely plausible anecdote.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Pat Fairlea said:


> May I be so bold as to point out that the earliest patent for the kazoo dates to some 15 years after Berlioz' death? This leads me to suspect some hyperbole in this otherwise entirely plausible anecdote.


I thought he was just being silly. Nice post Mark W. I like silliness (or is it true?).


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Pat Fairlea said:


> May I be so bold as to point out that the earliest patent for the kazoo dates to some 15 years after Berlioz' death? This leads me to suspect some hyperbole in this otherwise entirely plausible anecdote.


Well, I'll just have to add that Berlioz was one one of the early developers of the Kazoo Francais -- but was too busy writing his Requiem to patent it.  (I've been trying to enter urban legends into the Berlioz biography for years -- so far with no success.)


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Berlioz didn't even decide to pursue music as a vocation until he was in his late teens, so this leads me to believe he was never a virtuoso on any instrument.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

tdc said:


> Berlioz didn't even decide to pursue music as a vocation until he was in his late teens, so this leads me to believe he was never a virtuoso on any instrument.


Believe I read that Berlioz composed using a guitar as an aid.

BTW a true Beethoven story: He claimed that he could accurately recreate and play any and all of the improvisations from throughout his life. I'm not sure I believe that.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

tdc said:


> Berlioz didn't even decide to pursue music as a vocation until he was in his late teens, so this leads me to believe he was never a virtuoso on any instrument.


He most definitely was not a virtuoso on any instrument. He did play guitar but I doubt he used it as a compositional aid. He also dabbled with the flageolet and the flute. He never studied the piano but did not regret it; in fact, he considered it an advantage because it "saved me from the tyranny of keyboard habits, so dangerous to thought, and from the lure of conventional harmonies."

I am somewhat similar to Berlioz in that I am a composer and my major instrument is classical guitar. My only piano studies were class piano as an undergrad. My piano skills were at one time mediocre at best and are non-existent now. (I use Finale to compose.) I am dissimilar to Berlioz in that I am neither a genius nor a great composer.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Hindemith could play all the standard musical instruments (see Classical Net) and supposedly he could play all the parts from his many sonatas for various instruments extremely well (see TC post).

I'm more amazed by what composers have done then by what performers can do, but I still think Hindemith's performance ability is incredible.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Liszt has a small, 2 octaves piano, to make practice when he was travelling. And he was travelling a lot at the beginning of his career, giving recital in every major European city. On this tiny piano he has composed, practice and final learned almost ALL his operatic transcriptions and paraphrases! 

Liszt was playing from memory the whole Well Tempered Clavier of J.S Bach, in every tone (climax) and also from the end to the beginning. 

He could play extremely F (breaking piano strings) but also extremely P (and very soft) making the audience to have the feeling of a violent winter storm or of a midsummer sunny day.


Apart from his super human Prima Vista capability, he had also super human ears. He could play almost all Wagners operas from memory, after the first time he had listened to them. (Wagner was exposing the opera themes (almost every one) at an orchestral part (overture) at the beginning of the opera. Nevertheless, this was an unbelievable accomplishment.)

At the end of his life, he was giving lessons. They said that he knew from memory ALL the pieces his students wanted to learn. (I presume that he was extremely charismatic also in classical composers, like Beethoven, Haydn, etc...)


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

KenOC said:


> Believe I read that Berlioz composed using a guitar as an aid.
> 
> BTW a true Beethoven story: He claimed that he could accurately recreate and play any and all of the improvisations from throughout his life. I'm not sure I believe that.


He wasn't using the guitar, but also he had nothing to do with the piano. (he composed, If I can remember correctly, only one or two piano pieces, of low (for his standards) quality) I believe, that he was composing from memory. (like Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, etc... ) His composition studies were of the highest possible level (and with the best teachers)

Beethoven, indeed, had the memory of an elephant. That was his tyranny and salvation.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Many composers (Beethoven included) composed at the piano, half-improvising and letting their ideas take shape. Old Bach sneered at this sort of thing. He could compose anywhere, riding in a coach for example. He called such authors "finger composers."


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

KenOC said:


> Many composers (Beethoven included) composed at the piano, half-improvising and letting their ideas take shape. Old Bach sneered at this sort of thing. He could compose anywhere, riding in a coach for example. He called such authors "finger composers."


From what I read, Bach's comment was aimed more at the amateur composers of his day whose ideas were limited to what they could physically play at the keyboard. That doesn't necessarily describe what Beethoven(or Haydn or Mozart, etc.) was doing.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

wkasimer said:


> I don't know if they were smarter, but they certainly wasted a lot less time on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.


And Talk Classical...

11 year old Anton Rubinstein so impressed Chopin and Liszt that the latter took him on a European tour.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

trazom said:


> From what I read, Bach's comment was aimed more at the amateur composers of his day whose ideas were limited to what they could physically play at the keyboard. That doesn't necessarily describe what Beethoven(or Haydn or Mozart, etc.) was doing.


Bach was dead long before Beethoven and Mozart were composing music. Even Haydn began his earliest compositions just a year before Bach died.

I think trazom is on the money with this one.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

SONNET CLV said:


> *How long did it take Handel to write The Messiah?* Three weeks? Heck, I couldn't get the score paper, pen, and ink together in three weeks let alone write a 259-page score! But that's not the remarkable thing. The remarkable thing is The Messiah ranks as a masterpiece! A work of three weeks writing time? Even after I'd gotten my paper, pens and ink together, it will take me a month or two just to come up with a hummable tune. Apparently Handel wrote the Halleluia Chorus in three days!...


Yes and that was quite normal for Handel. He often wrote not only ceremonial music but also operas at short notice, sometimes working on a few simultaneously. I'm currently reading the biography by Keates and although I haven't come across any party tricks, Handel was amazing on many levels.

Overall I'm most impressed by his ability to not only survive but thrive in the cutthroat world of music, in particular as a foreigner in England. Not the least in the world of opera which is the most fickle, prone to people with massive egos, cliques and political intrigue. He was among the first composers to be essentially freelance and his street smart attitude combined with a tireless work ethic ensured his continued dominance of the English scene, despite setbacks. I find this sense of resilience quite inspiring.



DeepR said:


> Rachmaninoff probably belongs in this thread as well. Apparently he could learn to play very difficult piano pieces very quickly.
> He is supposed to have said the following about Scriabin's Etude Op. 42 No. 5: "It's a difficult Etude - it took me a whole hour to learn it". Ha ha.


He was noted for his memory, particularly as a conductor. He was also one of the few composers who could form a complete work in his mind and then compose it immediately without much need for revision. Nevertheless, like other composers he tended to revise works later.

Scriabin's music - at least his music which was more conventional and less modernist - was second nature to Rachmaninov, they studied together and knew eachother well.

Once he was in exile, the only way Rachmaninov could support himself and his family was to devote himself to playing concerts. It became quite a chore, not only the travel but devoting spare time to learn pieces to add to his repertoire.

As time went on and the need to learn more repertoire grew, Rachmaninov spent longer on learning new pieces. He devoted his holidays every year to this. One acquaintance reminisced about approaching Rachmaninov's practice room and although he was initially unable to recognise what he was playing, after listening for a few minutes he could. It was a piece by Liszt but because he was just starting to learn it, Rachmaninov had slowed down so much that the piece had become almost unrecognisable.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Dimace said:


> Liszt was playing from memory the whole Well Tempered Clavier of J.S Bach, in every tone (climax) and also from the end to the beginning.


https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~tf/liszt.html
_"Liszt Meets Beethoven
``I was about eleven years old when my respected teacher Czerny took me to see Beethoven. Already a long time before, he had told Beethoven about me and asked him to give me a hearing some day. However, Beethoven had such an aversion to infant prodigies that he persistently refused to see me. ...... Beethoven asked me if I could play a fugue by Bach. I chose the Fugue in C minor from the Well-tempered Clavichord. ``Could you transpose this fugue at once into another key?'' Beethoven asked me. Fortunately, I could. After the final chord, I looked up. The Master's darkly glowing gaze was fixed upon me penetratingly. Yet suddenly a benevolent smile broke up his gloomy features, Beethoven became quite close, bent over me, laid his hand on my head and repeatedly stroked my hair. ``Devil of a fellow'' he whispered, ``such a young rascal!'''"_

Having played some classical piano, I have somewhat of an understanding how hard it is to do this.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

.......................


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> Beethoven on the other hand could play all preludes and fugues from the two books of Bach WTC from memory at age eleven.





KenOC said:


> People were smarter in those days. There's been a bit of backsliding since...


The truth is, pianos had fewer keys in those days. So Beethoven didn't have to wrestle with seven octave / 88 key beasts like the modern Steinway. He was familiar with 5 and at most 6 octave instruments, the Walter, Broadwood, Erard, and Graf. The fewer the keys, the easier to play. Right? Common sense. It's not "backsliding" that's provided the problem, it's "forwardsliding" -- the addition of all those extra keys. Heck! If all we had to work with were kazoos, we'd all be able to play everything ever written for the instrument. So, don't call the people of today "dumb" -- 'cause, after all, I'm one of those there peoples!


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

SONNET CLV said:


> The truth is, pianos had fewer keys in those days. So Beethoven didn't have to wrestle with seven octave / 88 key beasts like the modern Steinway. He was familiar with 5 and at most 6 octave instruments, the Walter, Broadwood, Erard, and Graf. The fewer the keys, the easier to play. Right? Common sense. It's not "backsliding" that's provided the problem, it's "forwardsliding" -- the addition of all those extra keys. Heck! If all we had to work with were kazoos, we'd all be able to play everything ever written for the instrument. So, don't call the people of today "dumb" -- 'cause, after all, I'm one of those there peoples!


The number of keys is irrelevant in regard to the WTC...in playing the WTC the extra keys on the modern piano make absolutely no difference since they are not used. I am sure a musician of Beethoven's caliber would not be unduly stressed by the presence of those extra keys.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

ArsMusica said:


> The number of keys is irrelevant in regard to the WTC...in playing the WTC the extra keys on the modern piano make absolutely no difference since they are not used. I am sure a musician of Beethoven's caliber would not be unduly stressed by the presence of those extra keys.


Balderdash!*

* And I seldom go that far with my language! Just as "clothes make the man", "keys make the instrument" … or something like that!


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

I don't know if it's true, but I heard a story once about Shostakovich. He was attending a rehearsal of one of his works -- there was a fortissimo section with the full orchestra playing, that was heading towards a prominent cor anglais solo. The cor anglais line in the orchestral mass was rather high, and the player decided to take it down an octave to save more energy for the solo. Shostakovich, from the back of the hall, stopped the rehearsal and asked why the cor anglais player was playing his part down an octave.

To have ears like that...


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> The truth is, pianos had fewer keys in those days. So Beethoven didn't have to wrestle with seven octave / 88 key beasts like the modern Steinway. He was familiar with 5 and at most 6 octave instruments, the Walter, Broadwood, Erard, and Graf. The fewer the keys, the easier to play. Right? Common sense. It's not "backsliding" that's provided the problem, it's "forwardsliding" -- the addition of all those extra keys. Heck! If all we had to work with were kazoos, we'd all be able to play everything ever written for the instrument. So, don't call the people of today "dumb" -- 'cause, after all, I'm one of those there peoples!


"Even as a child, Bilson noticed there were other kinds of pianos to explore. It's through the fortepiano that Bilson found his niche, but even he was hesitant when first introduced to the antiquated instrument almost 50 years ago.
"It was harder to play (than) the way I was used to playing," Bilson said. "But I got used to it and realized the music comes out differently, and I thought this is something worthwhile."
http://chqdaily.com/2017/07/malcolm-bilson-brings-1812-model-piano-recital-masterclass/

Fortepianos aren't necessarily 'easier' to play than pianofortes.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Even as a child, Bilson noticed there were other kinds of pianos to explore. It's through the fortepiano that Bilson found his niche, but even he was hesitant when first introduced to the antiquated instrument almost 50 years ago.
> "It was harder to play (than) the way I was used to playing," Bilson said. "But I got used to it and realized the music comes out differently, and I thought this is something worthwhile."
> http://chqdaily.com/2017/07/malcolm-bilson-brings-1812-model-piano-recital-masterclass/
> 
> *Fortepianos aren't necessarily 'easier' to play than pianofortes.*


As a pianist (I have never played with an ''old'' piano ) I have the impression that was more difficult to play to a 5,6 octaves instrument than to a modern monster. An old piano, due to its limited capabilities, makes more difficult to impress the audience. To achieve something impressive with such an instrument, you MUST be a very prolific pianist. (Beethoven was better than a computer...)


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Even as a child, Bilson noticed there were other kinds of pianos to explore. It's through the fortepiano that Bilson found his niche, but even he was hesitant when first introduced to the antiquated instrument almost 50 years ago.
> "It was harder to play (than) the way I was used to playing," Bilson said. "But I got used to it and realized the music comes out differently, and I thought this is something worthwhile."
> http://chqdaily.com/2017/07/malcolm-bilson-brings-1812-model-piano-recital-masterclass/
> 
> Fortepianos aren't necessarily 'easier' to play than pianofortes.


It's hard to imagine that the typical fortepianos could have ever sounded so unmusically bad in their day as some of these do now. What composer, even the worst, would have been inspired by its clunky, choked-off sonority of sound to compose for it? If the instruments did sound this genuinely poor, then perhaps Mr. Bilson is oblivious to their poor sound quality. Such pianists may be more fascinated by the _idea_ of how these instruments sounded, by the difference in the keyboard actions between these and modern instruments, by virtue of ignoring how bad they _sound_. It's no wonder that Beethoven pushed the development of the piano rather than these unsatisfactory and limited instruments.

The only thing that I believe can be said for them is that they have a lighter sonority of sound and their keyboard action is probably easier to manipulate. But it must be fun to imagine that this is how Haydn or Mozart sounded though they probably didn't. The treble range invariably sounds like a child's toy piano, no matter how well these works are performed, despite the volume of sound that some of these instruments are capable of, at least when they're being closely miked. But there is a huge difference between the quantity of sound and the quality of sound:

[video]http://malcolmbilson.com/discography.php[/video]


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

MrMeatScience said:


> I don't know if it's true, but I heard a story once about Shostakovich. He was attending a rehearsal of one of his works -- there was a fortissimo section with the full orchestra playing, that was heading towards a prominent cor anglais solo. The cor anglais line in the orchestral mass was rather high, and the player decided to take it down an octave to save more energy for the solo. Shostakovich, from the back of the hall, stopped the rehearsal and asked why the cor anglais player was playing his part down an octave.
> 
> To have ears like that...


That sounds more or less part of his job, to know his scores and the sound he was aiming at. Nevertheless, Shostakovich was a brilliant musician. The story of how he did his arrangement of Tea for Two (renamed Tahiti Trot) in under an hour is well known (and verified). Then there's his composition of the massive Symphony No. 8, entirely without use of a piano in the backwoods of Eastern Russia during World War II. Like other prominent musicians - Prokofiev included - he had been evacuated there. His sparsely furnished room did have a small piano, but he didn't need to use it when composing the symphony, it simply poured out of him at his desk. I think these skills of inner hearing came in a good part from his experiences as a youth playing piano in cinemas to accompany silent films. Experience like that would go a long way to giving a firm grounding in music, not the least in cultivating flexibility.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

Sid James said:


> The story of how he did his arrangement of Tea for Two (renamed Tahiti Trot) in under an hour is well known (and verified).


Under an hour? _45 minutes!_


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Anton Bruckner was a renowned improviser at the organ, once during an examination at the Vienna Conservatory he improvised a fugue and conductor Johann Herbeck who was one of the examiners remarked "He should be examining us."


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Incredible Feat of Musicianship:
Aram Khachaturian wrote his famous 'Sabre Dance' while simultaneously swallowing a sword. 
He was later roasted over an open fire by Stalin in gratitude.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

While drafting the Witches Sabbath for the Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz actually jotted down from memory the entire Wolf Glen scene from "Der Freischutz" -- which he actually had never seen or heard yet.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Berlioz appeared at the dawn of the Romantic era and composed his _Symphonie Fantastique_, a work that pretty much sums up the essence of the entire era, so I think that qualifies.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Berlioz was also among the first composers that were specifically interested in timbre, where previously composers would generally assign instrumentation based on pitch range.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> Fortepianos aren't necessarily 'easier' to play than pianofortes.


As well, they aren't necessarily 'easier' to listen to, either!


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Going back to Shostakovich … his "Tahiti Trot" was written rather quickly, and effectively, I would propose.

Apparently, to quote from internet poster Richard Zuelch [1 year ago (edited)]: "In 1927, the 21-year-old Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and a friend of his, the conductor Nicolai Malko (1883-1961) were sitting around listening to music. One of the songs they heard was a recording of the Vincent Youmans tune, "Tea for Two." Malko bet Shostakovich 100 roubles that he couldn't write an arrangement of the song, from memory, in less than an hour. Shostakovich went into the next room and - 45 minutes later - emerged with the arrangement you're now hearing. Needless to say, he collected his 100 roubles from Malko. An interesting early novelty item from one of the 20th century's greatest composers.﻿"


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

After WWII, Malko worked in Australia as chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra until his death. Malko went some way to increasing exposure of Shostakovich's music in this country. He had replaced the scandalized Eugene Goossens and was in the position for five years. I first read this anecdote in the liner notes of an ABC Classics album called Russian Extravaganza by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra which includes Tahiti Trot. It certainly proves that his orchestration wasn't all battleship grey. Could have been done by someone out of Hollywood.


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