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Thoughts and names?

M Dearest,

Are you kidding? Even the mediocre music composed by "non-pianists" (and there's a lot of it) is most often played first by the composer, making them a pianist! By definition!

Could you rephrase that...

Why not be nicer?

You know what the OP meant. (Don't you?)

There's pianists, and there's people who just sort of play the piano. Chopin wrote some stuff for violin, cello, and voice. Would you say he was a violinist, cellist, and singer?

I admit that the line might be a bit hard to draw. Was Schubert a "pianist"? I'm not sure but I think he could be a good answer here. Not sure I could name any other 'great' composer of piano music who might not have been a "pianist."

Yeah, having a few drinks usually makes me happier, not grouchier.

EDIT: To stay on topic, Berlioz.

Well actually, I'm not sure. Perhaps he should clarify. Does he mean by "non pianists"
[1] composers who are not virtuoso pianists, or performing pianists?
[2] composers who don't play the piano at all, and I can't think of any off-hand. Anyone with any training as a composer should be able to get around the keyboard to some extent (making them, as laguna_greg says, by definition a pianist).
or [3] something (?) in between.

It would perhaps have helped if he'd given his own example to start with. That's often the best way to kick off a thread in any case. Some posters are inclined to pose a question, nothing else, and then disappear...

Good try, but not on topic.

(Piano music, piano music!)


Those people tend not to get too much attention in the future. ("Fool me once".......how does that go?)

(I know, but not everyone famously always did....)

I know. There just happens to be somebody singing along.

Which major piano pieces did Berlioz write? And I think I'm perfectly nice, especially when I'm drunk.

Either way, my point is perfectly valid. Why don't don't we start with that? So get over yourself...

...and along those lines...how about Mussorgsky, an indifferent pianist, who wrote one of the major cyclic works of the 20th century?...Pictures...

Now there's somebody who really didn't understand the idiom of the piano!

Mark,

"I admit that the line might be a bit hard to draw. Was Schubert a "pianist"? I'm not sure but I think he could be a good answer here..."

Schubert was good enough to convincingly play the Erlkönig at its premier, even if it was in someone's living room, and countless times after. And all the other, particularly nasty song accompaniments.

Have you, ever, played the Erlkönig with a singer in front of an audience, of any kind? Or "Die jönge nönne", or "Auf dem wasser zu singen", or "Groupe aus dem Tartarus" I have, a few times...

Either way, it makes him one heck of a pianist and possibly better than you or I. Thanks for proving my point...

+1
Schubert, was not a pianist of Liszt's, Chopin's, or even Beethoven's caliber, but he was no slouch and the music history books need to stop implying otherwise. You'll have to forgive Mark, as he, at times, speaks on topics he's not completely versed in.

You'll have to forgive Stores. He's jealous of people who know stuff that he doesn't and especially who think a little more complexly.

The main point of my post was the opening:

"Why not be nicer?"

I was trying to help the thread have a better tone than the first reply threatened to give it.


P.S. My post admitted that I'm not the best versed in exactly what kind of pianist Schubert was.
Anyway it appears that yes indeed (as an above post by somebody or other said) .....he could be a good answer here.

Good morning all. Yes, perhaps one too many drinks made me laconic rather than verbose. I should rephrase my question, though I have really enjoyed the responses anyway.

Let me provide an analogy that made me think of asking this question from posting in another thread. Beethoven was not trained as a singer, as far as I know, yet he wrote for the voice - badly.

Is there any great piano music written by composers who could not, did not play the piano? The point is that one can learn the range of an instrument, the transposition of the instrument, and so on, and write a decent symphony. But, there seem to be limits on how well can write for an instrument (the voice is an instrument) if one does not have training on it.

Precisely! Wonderful music, but not idiomatic. Look at the structure of a work of Chopin - cascading phrases that are identical in structure, just shifted harmonically, lines that fall effortlessly under the hands that make a piece sound vastly more difficult than it is.

Rossini, more well-known as an operatic composer, wrote many piano pieces that are quite interesting and should be better known. I like especially the pre-Satie style collection of "Sins of Old Age" with pieces like "Ouf! Les petits pois!" and "Prélude convulsif."

This thread led me to look up Joaquin Rodrigo because he's more famous for his guitar concerto than for his piano music. But it turns out he really was a pianist.

How about Cesar Franck? He was known primarily as an organist, he obviously had keyboard skills, but is the Prelude Chorale and Fugue a good enough piano piece to warrant inclusion?

Of course, why not Steve?

Except that Franck was a very fine keyboard player including the piano. His chamber music, if nothing else, attests to a highly idiomatic understanding of the piano.

Good suggestions all, so maybe there is a significant grey area as to the pianistic qualifiations of a piano composer. My somewhat narrow and hugely biased thought was that Beethoven (IMNSHO) was lousy at writing for voice, therefore, by analogy, are there other famous or infamous composers who could not play the piano, but, nonetheless, wrote idiomatically for the piano?

You make an interesting point I have often wondered about. If a composer writes, at the piano, or even tests sections of a composition at the piano, when the work is actually for, say, a string quartet, does that inevitably bias the final texture, voicing, and flow of the music?

Hi Mwm,

The difference is that there are several major composers who were not singers themselves but who understood how to write for the voice. Puccini, Mozart, Duparc, Poulenc, Copland, Brahms, and many others understood how to write beautifully for the voice and show off its best qualities. And none of them sang per se. Most successful opera composers fall into this category, and they all played the piano very well.

I've run across a few composers these days, still living, who are not pianists, just composers (you can actually do that today). And they compose with facility until they try to write something virtuosic for the piano. They can't do it because they really don't understand the instrument. At the same time, the piano has fallen out of favor as the chosen instrument for composition. So new works are slim on the ground even from people who know how to play.

It used to be that composers had to be trained in keyboard skills at the conservatory in order to be able to write anything. For the last 70 years, not nearly so much. It's all serialist this, and IRCAM that, and algorithms and chance. No room for real piano writing in that kind of philosophical setting.