Valse brillante Op. 34, No 3, Valse Op. 42, Valse Op. 64 No 1 and 2

Another Ted Talk worth viewing.  In it, David Byrne discusses how architecture changed how music was composed in the course of history.  I was able to tie in some of what he talked about into my Music History II Paper: The Evolution of Sonata-Allegro Form.

I have continued to read through the waltzes.  I can already tell as the opus number get higher Chopin's writings get more chromatic and his themes become more lyrical and flowing; less technical and more expressive.

Finals week... almost finished.

Total time spent sight reading: about 8 hours in the last week
Total time spent writing: 10 minutes

Grande Valse Brillante Op. 18 (mm. 200-end), Valse brillante Op. 34, No 1 and 2

And so it starts, the final mad dash to the end of the year.  Musical rehearsals, final papers, final projects, final presentations, and piano juries.  I love this time of year.  Until final week I can't guarantee blog posts, however, I will continue to sight read because I spend a good chunk of my time in the music building already.

I am enjoying reading the waltzes much better than the etudes.  Much less technical and the 1-2-3|1-2-3|1-2-3 makes it relatively easy to anticipate how the music will flow.

Trois Nouvelles Etudes No. 3 and Grande Valse Brillante Op. 18 (mm. 1-200)

If you have not watched the video from yesterday's post you should do that now.

A couple things that Benjamin Zander, from the video, said got me thinking: one-buttock playing, and the idea of a whole piece being condensed down to only the beginning and resolution.  I can honestly say that today, while I was practicing my pieces for my piano lesson, that I tried one-buttock playing.  It was... interesting.  I wouldn't say that I noticed an immediate change in my playing, rather, the act of sitting on one buttock (which is supposed to represent feeling, understanding, line, and putting emotion) was, in itself, a reminder of all of the things that playing the piano is supposed to be, other than playing notes.  In other words, as long as I can associate emotion, technique, and line with sitting on one buttock then when I do remember to lean onto one of my cheeks then I will be reminded to think about more than the notes.  It is an interesting concept that I will have to explore more deeply as I practice and get ready for my end of the year piano juries.

In music theory freshman year we learned to analyze chords.  Sophomore year, we learned to analyze chords in relation to those around them to find the movement of a line.  Junior year we learning to see the overall form of a piece as themes develop, modulate, transform and ultimately move a piece forward.  Thus, as new concepts are gradually understood, we have learned to analyze music from the more specific to the more general.  I think this is why I resonated so deeply with Zender's statement that in Chopin's Prelude the piece is just a lengthy process of moving from the note B to E.  When understanding this, it's less important that you analyze every chord, every beat, every note, rather, you simply understand the melody presents itself as a roundabout way from going to B (the dominant) finally to E (the tonic).

Today I finally made it out of the etudes and into my first Valse.  Valse is basically the French for Waltz.

Total time spent sight reading: 1 hour
Total time spent writing: 20 minutes

Etude Op. 25, No. 11 (mm. 28-end) and 12. Trois Nouvelles Etudes No. 1 and 2

Today I found a wonderful Ted Talk video on the timelessness of classical music. Please watch it, it is brilliant.

Yesterday I knocked out six pages after my recital (which went well by the way).  Those six pages were the conclusion of Op. 25.  Yes, I finally finished off the impossible last two etudes.

That means I get to finally move on to more works that are not as technically challenging, which is a relief and means that I will not have to supplement my sight reading with easier works.  The next pieces in the anthology are three more simple etudes.  The first two, which I read today, work on playing triple in one hand while playing duple in the other.  I love the sound this creates and the way the chords and bass don't always fit together.  The pieces were very simple and fun to sight read.

Total time spent sight reading: 3 hours
Total time spent writing: 20 minutes

Etude Op. 25, No. 9 (mm. 24-end) - 11 (mm. 1-28)

Well, my Junior recital is tomorrow.  Thus, in the name of sleep I will not write much tonight.  Tomorrow I will find out whether or not all of my hard work has payed off.  Hopefully I'll end up with some decent recordings and will be able to upload a piece or two.

Etude 10 is a beast in almost nothing but octaves.  Chopin offsets a fast, agitated, technically challenging, A section with a beautiful, building, lyrical B section.  The A sections builds continuously the ends on an unresolved half cadence.  This half cadence makes the B section even more of a contrast to the A.  The B section leads back in to the A section by a few measures of the bass turning from major to minor then becoming faster and more agitated until it leads back into the A section.

Etude 11: never judge a piece within the first 30ish seconds.  The melody is in the left hand while the right hand travels up and down the piano in chromatic arpeggiations.  I only managed one page today, perhaps I'll analyze more on Monday.

Total time spent sight reading: 1 hour
Total time spent writing: 20 minutes

Etude Op. 25, No. 6 (mm. 33-end) - 9 (mm. 1-24)

For the times, they are a changing.

I was reading more of Bidou tonight when I happened upon an interesting few passages about George Sand.  Sand, despite her masculine pseudonym, was a female writer.  She and Chopin go on to have a bit of a romance together before the composers death.  Interestingly, Bidou chooses to include a few passages from letters composed by various people in regards to Sands character:

Chopin is quoted in a letter from Hiller to Liszt: "How repellent that woman Sand is!  Is she really a woman?  I could almost doubt it..."

Balzac wrote: "I found our friend George Sand in her dressing-gown smoking a cigar after dinner at the fireside in a great lonely room. [...] So much for the moral side.  As for the physical, she has got a chin as double as a cannon's."

Balzac also wrote: "She is not lovable and consequently she will only be loved with great difficulty.  She is a bachelor, an artist, she is great, generous, devoted, chaste;  she has a man's features: ergo, she is not a woman.  In fine, she is a man, and all the more so since she wishes to be one, since she has gone outside the position of a woman, and is not a woman.  Women attract; she repels, and as I am very much of a man, if she produces that effect upon me, she must produce it upon men like me; she will always be unhappy."

Wow, times were different. I think Balzac deserves a slap, she's a nice lady!  Despite Chopin's initial repulsion they find a love for each other.

Finally, almost finished with these etudes.  Etude seven begins with a beautiful almost atonal melody presented in the left hand.  For the rest of the piece the melody switches between the left and right hands.  Also found in the piece is the technique of having moving notes in the left hand that do not fit metrically, matching beats, with the right hand.  This teaches the hands to become completely separate entities.

Etude eight is comprised completely of triplet eighth notes with the melody found in the upper note of the right hand.  It is to be played vivace, making the jumps and chorded arpeggiations in the left hand difficult.

Total time spent sight reading: 50 minutes
Total time spent writing: 30 minutes

Etude Op. 25, No. 3 (mm. 17-end) - 6 (mm. 1-33)

It's been a week since my last post.  I decided to take Easter break off due, in part, to laziness and general lack of motivation.  Unfortunately, due to my Junior Recital being this Sunday, I may become behind on blogging this week too.  

I feel that now may be a good time to flush out some of my thoughts on my writing since improving my writing style and efficiency is also a goal of this blog.  

I have never considered myself a good writer.  Somehow when I'm playing piano the connections in my brain are firing in a concentrated coherent manner, but when I sit down to collect my thoughts into words my synapses start firing haphazardly in such a way that it usually takes me a while of pondering a sentence before I'm satisfied enough to write it down.  This leads to an elongated writing process and frustration as I forget the beginning of a decent sentence as I'm putting the finishing touches at the end.  Thus why I hope this blog helps me learn how to simply sit down and just write.  So far, I think it has been working.  I managed to pound out a decent eight page paper for my ethics class in two days, something that I had never thought possible.  In fact, college has taught me to be come comfortable with lengthy papers to the point that I'm not sure how I could write a decent paper under three pages with a coherent flow and enough content to still make sense.  Even now, as I continue to write, the words come easier than they had at the beginning of the post.  

Today's post contains six pages worth of etudes.  Unfortunately I won't go into very much detail because, quite frankly, I wasn't able to play much of it.  The etudes are just to hard.  I'm finding that I'll sit down, play a few measures, and just give up because the pieces don't make much sense unless taken at the required tempo (which is usually pretty fast).  However, that does not mean that I am not sight reading.  Instead I have been sight reading a few children's and exercise books.

The third and fifth etude are related in that both pieces are in an upbeat 3/4 with the melody comprise of quarter notes over a sparse staccato bass.  However, the melody is not a simple one because the chord tones of the piece are also in the right hand and are played in a rolled like manner immediately after the melody note is played.  Both pieces include a contrasting key change and a return to the tonic. The fifth is slightly different than the third in that it is more chromatic with leading tones found on every quarter note that lead to the melody note.  

The fourth prelude is choppy with the right hand and left hand trading off in eighth notes.  The trick is to keep the melody legato above the staccato homophony in accompaniment.

The sixth etude is probably one of my favorites simply because it reminds my of a melody from Harry Potter.  If you thought playing a chromatic scale was hard, try doing it in thirds.  The entire melody is found in thirds in the right hand is comprised almost entirely of sixteenth notes for the entire piece.  Beautiful, but deadly hard.

Total time spent sight reading: 2 hours

Total time spent writing: 1 hour

Étude Op. 10, No. 12 (mm. 40-end) and Etude Op. 25, No. 1 - 3 (mm. 1-7)

Whew, long title!  This marks the halfway mark through Chopin's etudes.  Let me tell you , it has not been an easy journey.  Nothing is more discouraging than seeing a page full of black knowing that you have an hour between one class and the next to work your way through it.  Unfortunately, in the battle between reading for class and curbing my addiction to playing piano, piano always wins.  This almost always leads to what little motivation I may have had for doing schoolwork being thrown out the window.  The worst part is that I know I will never be a virtuosic pianist.  So why do I play so often?  Because it allows me to express my emotions, practice my critical listening, theory, and recall skills, as well as continually pushing me to become more creative and adventuresome musically.

While etude 1 seems rather complicated, Chopin (or the editor of the edition) chose to make the unimportant chord notes of the arpeggiated pattern look almost like ornamentations, leaving the melody as more prominent, regular sized, notes.  Once I figured out the pattern of the arpeggiated broken chords the piece was rather easy to sightread as it did not have as my accidentals as some of Chopin's pieces.

'nuff said about etude 2.  It's a beast.

Total time spent sight reading: 1 hour 20 minutes
Total time spent writing: 30 minutes

Étude Op. 10, No. 10 - 12 (mm. 1 - 40)

As the etudes get harder I get more and more discouraged.  Especially since I hit etude 12 today which is often known as the "Revolutionary Etude."  It opens with a very dramatic striking of a G M/m 7th chord followed by a downward moving 16th note run in the left hand.  This motif is found throughout the whole piece.  The piece ends on a resounding I V... then nothing!  It ends on the dominant.  I think this may be due to the fact that Chopin has unresolved feelings about Poland's failed revolution against Russia that occurred around the same time he wrote the etude.

Etude 11 is a short two page piece entirely comprised of arppegiated eight note chords, thus it is often referred to as the "Guitar Etude."

Total time spent sight reading: 1 hour
Total time spent writing: 20 minutes