Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Playing piano purely mechanical??

I agree with your friend. But I wouldn't say they weren't doing much. It's hard work playing classical music.

I've run into many people like Teodor's friend. Some of what they said like "if you are not composing but just playing someone else composition, you are not an artist. You are just a copycat". "copying is easy, anyone who can read notes can play anything".

Yeah. I would give them Prok 2nd concerto and say, "copy that you @*^#%*$^#$&"

Teodor, there is nothing you can say, you have to reach out and grab them, musically. You have to play and reach into their soul. You know you've got them when their faces get red and their feet squirm.

If you don't make them squirm, then it is true, your playing is lifeless.

Keyboardklutz is right.

I have heard a conductor say that you have to be thinking of the closing bars when you start the movement (probably Haitink).

Fits with kbk's view.

I didn't suggest otherwise though. I pointed out that long-term pacing and musical shaping are totally different issues.

If you heard a pianist play a phrase from a lyrical composition, would you need to hear the rest to have any idea as to whether it was played musically or mechanically? In the example i outlined, would cortot be mechanical, had he not heard the whole composition but played a few phrases? Some of the most tedious mechanical performances I've heard come from those who obsess over the whole. structure governs the organisation of musical ideas. Whether a performer plays with life or like a robot is a short-term issue, not a long-term one. Mechanical performers can be identified in an instant from whether they can shape a single phrase or not . You Don't need to spend an hour comparing their tempo relations in the hammerklavier.

I didn't suggest otherwise though. I pointed out that long-term pacing and musical shaping are totally different issues.

If you heard a pianist play a phrase from a lyrical composition, would you need to hear the rest to have any idea as to whether it was played musically or mechanically? In the example i outlined, would cortot be mechanical, had he not heard the whole composition but played a few phrases? Some of the most tedious mechanical performances I've heard come from those who obsess over the whole. structure governs the organisation of musical ideas. Whether a performer plays with life or like a robot is a short-term issue, not a long-term one. Mechanical performers can be identified in an instant from whether they can shape a single phrase or not . You Don't need to spend an hour comparing their tempo relations in the hammerklavier.

I didn't suggest otherwise though. I pointed out that long-term pacing and musical shaping are totally different issues.

If you heard a pianist play a phrase from a lyrical composition, would you need to hear the rest to have any idea as to whether it was played musically or mechanically? In the example i outlined, would cortot be mechanical, had he not heard the whole composition but played a few phrases? Some of the most tedious mechanical performances I've heard come from those who obsess over the whole. structure governs the organisation of musical ideas. Whether a performer plays with life or like a robot is a short-term issue, not a long-term one. Mechanical performers can be identified in an instant from whether they can shape a single phrase or not . You Don't need to spend an hour comparing their tempo relations in the hammerklavier.

I wonder if you took it out of classical and put an example like this to him... If Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton were given the same piece of music to interpret...would it sound the same?

My thinking is that it would not.

Nothing any human does is purely mechanical. It's simply not in our nature. Any action, no matter how repetitive, can be given its own beauty by skillful and graceful execution. So this argument is a non-starter from the beginning.

Surely the point is not whether an isolated phrase is played musically or not but that the musician's view of the whole movement (or piece) can and often will influence how that phrase is moulded, its dynamics, articulation, balance, etc.

No, you're mistaken.

To Nyiregyhazi:

Huh.....TRIPLE post.
That might be a record.

BTW -- you can delete 2 of them if you do it soon enough. And then I'll delete this one.

P.S. I have an old LP by Nyiregyhazi. It's good to have.

Or better yet, ask them if they would find the sports illustrated swimsuit models equally appealing if it was full of large "fat" women? Probably not, but then ask "Why? its just a girl who is wearing a bathing suit." If they say "no, because the girls worked hard to be thin, then say fine, you would be equally attracted to ugly thin girls in bathing suits?"

Beauty, like music is not something you can merely replicate through a mechanical process, for some people its natural for others it takes work, but to say piano is mechanical is like saying beauty is too.

I agree with N. You can usually tell pretty quickly if the music sounds 'lifeless.'

He-who-shall-not-be-named was like that. Hint: he had at least 4 usernames, and was exceptionally obnoxious.

I don't agree that interpretation is a purely mechanical exercise. However, as someone who took years to break through the pomp of it all and gain the courage to start composing, I understand where they're coming from. At some point, I was no longer satisfied playing only others' music, no matter how personal or faithful my interpretations.

Sure is! Sorry about that. Stupid mobile phones!

The point of the whole yes. However, unless you really ARE suggesting that you cannot identify whether a lyrical phrase played by Cortot was mechanical or musical, without considering the entire performance, I really don't follow what point you are trying to make. Equally, you'd also have to argue that you couldn't call a bar of MIDI rendition mechanical until you'd heard the whole perfomance. This makes no sense. Structural playing is about how you decided to make relationships between sections. Those individual units can be mechnically played or musically played. Mechanical playing is that which simply doesn't feature any interest at all. It's totally different issues. Thinking too much about the whole, without stopping to add any short-term detail (such as melodic shaping)is precisely what leads to mechnical playing- especially as structure seems to be almost exclusively viewed in terms of unity and cohesion, rather than equally in terms of the differentiations that generate interest.