Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner which composer is best known for this particular style?

What composer(s) is best known for pioneering the style of playing a lyrical octave melody with the right hand, over sweeping arpeggios played by the left hand?

(I have an idea but want to know if it's the one others consider most well known for that technique)

One perhaps associates that texture with Chopin or Liszt, but Beethoven did it many times before them. Off the top of my head: the development section of the first movement of his op.14/1 sonata.

-J

Are you perhaps thinking of Thalberg, who played arpeggios with both hands with the theme played by his thumbs in the middle registers?

No, not thinking of Thalberg.

I did listen to Beethoven's sonata op 14/2, but it doesn't have quite the fullness and flow as the work of the composer I'm thinking of. Nothing I've heard by Liszt or Chopin does either. But it could be my personal preference.

I would love to hear more examples cited such as that Beethoven sonata.

Henry Mancini ... Moon River (1961)
lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

An arpeggiated LH up to a RH melody.

“Moon River wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style
Old dream maker you heart breaker
where ever you’re goin’
I’m goin’ your way.

Two drifters off to see the world
There’s such a lot of world to see
We’re after the same rainbow’s end
waitin’ round the bend,
my Huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.”

Sounds like Rachmaninoff.

Edit: but Liszt's Un Sospiro has this too. He didn't use it as extensively as Rach though.

Chopin, of course.

I think the keyword is "pioneering". In that, I have no clue. My guess is you're looking for someone in the mid-18th century. It is quite possibly some entirely obscure composer no one today has ever heard of-- but at the time, someone like Chopin had heard of him, and "borrowed" and popularized that particular style.

I don't know about "pioneering" but the person who did it best is Brahms and later Rachmaninov. Chopin had moments like this but this is definitely not a highlight of his style.

"Sweeping" might be open to interpretation, I mean, Chopin rarely "swept" did he? [1]and would suggest nothing earlier than Romanticism, given the shorter keyboards of earlier periods. Many composers have some pieces that could fit this description. As for "pioneering," that, too, might be open to question.

[1] Op 10, No 1; Op 25, No 12; Op 31 (meas. 118-130) are exceptions, among others.

Regards,

For "pioneering," I suppose the in-between boys. John Field and that crowd. Weber, Hummel, Czerny et al.

D.Scarlatti

A. Scarlatti

^ I can only assume that the above post -if not meant facetiously- is taking the thread into 'which composer is best known for their particular style'. And if we wish to go there, then let us do so.

Alessandro Scarlatti -as BDB knows- is entirely known today for his operas and vocal chamber music. If he wrote any keyboard music, I am not aware of it, but even if he did -which is certainly plausible- it has not been influential.

Alessandro Scarlatti's keyboard music might have influenced Bach, and it certainly influenced Domenico.

Does the question mean:
a) Among all composers, which of them is most identified with this style?
or
b) Name a composer who, among all the styles he or she is known for, is primarily known for this style?

For the b) option, there could be more than one correct answer. And the composer(s) could be very obscure.

Put another way -- here's this style; which composer do you think of first? Or, here's composer X; what style do you think of when hearing his or her name?

I'm not sure "style" is the best word for this. Maybe "texture" as used by Beet31425 above, or perhaps "figuration."

Chopin (ie Nocturnes)

The composer I was thinking of is Rachmaninoff. I have developed a great appreciation for classical music, and listened to lots of Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, etc but I've never heard any other composer/pianist do it as well as Rachmaninoff. His second piano concerto (esp 1st mvmt) is my favorite, but I've been openmindedly checking out everything I can from other composer/pianists and can't find anything that has the flow and feeling that Rach had. I've resigned to the view that Rachmaninoff took all his previous pianist/composer influences and combined into his style that has hardly been improved by anybody since, other than having fresh interpretions of his material from other virtuoso pianists.

I do love a lot of other classical piano musical styles, but the particular style I mentioned (octave melody over sweeping arpeggios) seems to me to have been associated mostly with Rach, and I was wondering if that is just me or if that style is widely attributed to him by the pianist world. I did read that the producers for the movie Dangerous Moonlight had that exact piano style in mind (I even read they wanted "Rachmaninoff style") and when they couldn't get Rach to do the music, they found another pianist to provide the same exact type of style of music that I associate with Rach.

I appreciate all your input. I'm going to check out the other composers mentioned in this thread and want to know if anybody nailed this style as well as Rach did before him.

Indeed Liszt's Un Sospiro is the best example of this style from Liszt that I've heard.

I'm curious as to what Brahms pieces demonstrate this style?

I really don't think that so generic and common a figure as a right-hand octave melody over arpeggios can be considered to have been "pioneered" by Rachmaninoff. Moreover, to take only one example, the opening of the Second Piano Concerto, as "pioneering" seems to be really stretching the point when so many examples of this kind of writing are evident from the Classical period onwards.

But, of course, comparing this one aspect of Rachmaninoff's writing from 1901 with that of other classical and earlier Romantic composers is hardly valid. Even though Rachmaninoff's writing is frequently classified as post-Romantic, so much changed in harmonic vocabulary and in pianism between, say, Beethoven's works and those of Rachmaninoff that the best one can say is that there are similarities.

A small point of correction : when the producers of "Dangerous Moonlight" couldn't get Rachmaninoff, they looked for another composer, not another pianist, and ended up with Richard Addinsell, giving the world the "Warsaw Concerto."

Regards,