Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Symphony no. 40(every single note) on the piano

There are 14 instruments on the staves for symphony no. 40.

If I divide that by 4 I will get pianos needed assuming no overlap and no playing of the same note and that there are 2 players per piano playing with both of their hands.

That is 4 pianos with 7 players so this would be a piano septet of the form 4 pianos, 14 hands.

More than this might actually be needed and also the translation from alto clef to treble and bass clefs for the viola part and lastly getting all the players in sync.

This would be a little difficult but no piano transcription of the symphony no. 40 by Mozart would ever sound the same.

Those piano quartets with 4 pianists and not a pianist + strings, piano duets, and piano solos always have notes missing so that they sound similar to but not exactly like the original symphony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS05QSfeT6g is a piano duet. Other than the piano timbre it doesn't sound very similar to the original but has similarities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdNNudSfpgM is a piano solo. It sounds even more dissimilar than the duet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8nuy1t329g This I think is the piano transcription for 4 pianos, 14 hands or at least 2 pianos, 8 hands because it sounds very similar excluding the piano timbre, even more so than the duet does. But this is 1% dissimilar as far as the notes and their duration and not transcribed exactly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvtoqE33iZg this is the original symphony in comparison to the piano transcriptions

You're going to need about 500 pianos.

not if I just want all the notes in the sheet music.

Several instruments double other instruments. It is doubtful that there are ever 14 separate voices in the score. More likely, there are never more than there are fingers on your hands.

You only need one piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlUfWD6mJFQ

I see 5 transcriptions for solo piano on IMSLP, and the Hummel transcription in Keith's post is not one of them.

there are 14 staves and so I take that to be 14 instruments since there are no piano parts or parts for other instruments with 2 or more staves.

And as you get more and more notes from 1 staff to 2 to 3 etc. it sounds more and more similar to the orchestral version if you don't take the piano timbre into concern.

3 pianists per piano is already very uncomfortable and so 7 or 8 is nearly impossible. That plus the overlap and playing of the same note lead to my base number of 4 pianos and 7 pianists and the fact that more might be needed. What also lead to 4 pianos 14 hands is 2 staves per pianist and 4 per piano I am surprised at how they even get 8 let alone 16 pianists on 2 pianos. This 4 pianos 14 hands the way I have it which is the most comfortable way is equivalent to 3 duets + 1 solo.

By the way, where are these 14 staves that you see? I only see 11.

Your math does not make sense.

I, too, see only 11 staves and, if you look closely, a goodly number of instruments are doubling other instruments, so you're not going to need nearly as many pianos and pianists as you seem to think.

14 staves in order in the parts section:
Flute
Oboe 1
Oboe 2
Clarinet 1
Clarinet 2
Bassoon 1
Bassoon 2
Horn 1
Horn 2
1st violins
2nd violins
violas
cellos
basses

That is 14 staves.

you must have been counting in the full score instead of parts if you saw 11 and I saw 14

That is 14 parts. I checked my facsimile of the Haffner Symphony, and it is on 12 stave paper. Some of the parts are both on the same staff, like the horns and clarinets. Chances are Mozart used the same paper for #40.

well still x staves divided by 2 = minimum # of pianists assuming duet on each piano

and then that divided by 2 = minimum number of pianos assuming duet on each.

The reason that I am leaning towards duets + singles is that a trio on 1 piano is already uncomfortable so maximum comfortable # of pianists per piano is 2. However 11 is prime and so after dividing by 4 since it is 4n-1 I would have 3 pianos with one having 3 staves and the other 2 having 4.

I prefer the parts for these reasons:
1) It gives me the true number I need to do calculations with
2) lots of pieces have few if any intervals for quite a few measures and this 1 part per hand makes intervals that are there really easy(easier than intervals that are all in 1 hand)
3) I don't run into prime numbers as often this way.
4) Since I use musescore and some of the full scores(Like Piano Concerto no. 21 by Mozart of Tchaikovsky's ballets) have changing numbers of staves which is confusing, using the parts makes things much simpler.

You're going to need about 9 million pianos.

You are still wrong. Most instruments can only play one note at a time, while a pianist can play chords. Chords of four notes in each hand are common in piano music, so one pianist may be able to play what eight other instrumentalists are playing, especially if there is doubling of parts.

You should look at the score, and compare it to some of the existing transcriptions. Chances are you will find that they are pretty complete, especially once you get to two pianists.

I think if you were to replace the phrase "minimum pianists" with "maximum pianists", you might be closer to the mark. Most of the posts here are 100% on point -- pianists can play more than one note, so you really might only need, at minimum, one pianist on one piano..

Even half a pianist on one piano. I can give the gist of it using LH alone.

A 2 hands, one piano transcription is quite sufficient, although Liszt did say that the only thing he couldn't transcribe for piano was this symphony. (But that had to do with the piano's timbre, not its ability to play all the parts.)

Caters, if you read a little about the history of piano transcription, and some basic orchestration, you'll come across the idea that writing that is idiomatic for one instrument is not necessarily idiomatic for another. This is true both for technical/performance reasons and for acoustic/physics reasons. Thus, the ideal piano transcription is NOT a note for note translation of an orchestral score into a piano reduction, but an arrangement that realizes the musical gesture of the original work as effectively as possible at the piano.

I say it is minimum for duets + singles because this is very comfortable. I don't consider 1 pianist on 1 piano feasable because obviously you can't get every single note that way.

This is the similarity to original diagram and as you can see the duet and solo are very low and the minimum for all notes(assuming duet with each hand playing 1 instrument's notes + singles with the same assumption) is very high.
Piano solo<Piano duet<Piano trio<Piano quartet<Piano quintet<piano sextet<piano septet ..... <minimum pianos for all notes approximately = original orchestral version

Here is an exception to the no more than 1 note thing that is always in an orchestra unless it is made for a woodwind or brass ensemble of some sort:
The Strings Section

Just like the piano the 1st violins, 2nd violins, violas, cellos, and contrabasses can play intervals and chords without having to arpeggiate them like woodwinds and brass do.