Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner The 5 Most Original Keyboard Composers

Dunno about non-negotiable ....but I go along with that.

So, who gets kicked out of the 5 that I said before?

Nobody.
My 'top 5' needs to have at least 6.

If anybody, I suppose Bartok, partly influenced by WR's post above.

I have 4 names, I couldn't think of a 5th. Mostly for pianistic, rather than musical reasons.

Chopin, Debussy, Cage, Lachenmann.

Chopin - for expanding the hand, fingering innovations, etc.

Debussy - probably more musical rather than pianistic, but his use of harmonies and colours for sonority purposes, rather than for functional purposes.

Cage - the prepared piano.

Lachenmann - use of unique extended techniques, sonority effects, etc. Has anyone here listened to Guero?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MChTWNDAg8

Another vote for Scarlatti. You can take one look at most of his sonatas and instantly recognize it's his work, even if it's some obscure sonata that nobody plays.

Definitely! Especially since the subject says keyboard, not piano.

Scarlatti's sonatas are in forms derived from earlier keyboard composers. He just did it better than most of them, and most people writing here are not familiar with the earlier composers.

I think you're going past the point in talking about "form." It's not at all what we mean here with Scarlatti -- just as it's not at all what we mean here with Chopin, or Liszt, or really any of them.

Well, in that case, whoever wrote the first keyboard music would have to be on the list. I have no idea who that was.

Holy infinite regression, Batman! We now need to focus on what, precisely, counts as the first keyboard musical instrument... and what counts as the first written music intended to be played on that first keyboard.

Bach would be my answer to the OP's question, though we seem to have drifted downstream from that.

And I'm afraid that would be impossible to find out. It seems the first known and surviving keyboard manuscripts before 1500 are for organ and the composers are not known (often church people no doubt). In the Middle of the 16th century first sets of written down well crafted compositions began to appear from composers like Cavazzoni, Merulo, Frescobaldi, Cabezon, Byrd, Sweelink.
(Source: Silbiger: Keyboard music before 1700)

IMO to try to make a list of five is ridiculous...

Hmmmm,

I'm confused. Beethoven took the piano far beyond anyone of his time and even beyond the capability of contemporary instruments. Was he not original? Mozart was similarly unique compared to his contemporaries. Yet, no one's mentioned them.

There's a lot of good choices above, but I don't think anyone has mentioned Satie. Langourous melodies, barless notation, quirky tempo and interpretation suggestions, atmospheric arrangments. There's really nothing else like his music. Very original.

Note that we're mentioning KEYBOARD originality, not musical ones.

I don't think we actually need to jump through any linguistic hoops to justify Scarlatti's inclusion. His boss, Queen Maria Barbara, owned several pianos, and Scarlatti was certainly very familiar with them. There's also a body of research, e.g. Jacqueline Ogeil's, that explores in depth the idea that some of the sonatas appear to have been written specifically to take advantage of the possibilities of those new-fangled instruments.

I only meant that Chopin and other later composers were maybe more innovative on how to make use of all the possibilities of the modern piano while Scarlatti's sonatas are special and innovative as keyboard compositions whether played on a piano or a harpsichord.

I mentioned Beethoven but noone seems to agree.

Well, his primary outlet was keyboard composition and his works >do< sound like nothing else. They may not have opened up new technical possibilities, but they took some qualities (i.e. a willingness to "hold back" technical virtuosity in a serious work) to almost absurd extremes.


Can you think of another composer who did mysterious, drawn out and languorous stuff like this on the keyboard?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Yoz9Nh21k

These qualities you spoke of are musical... I love Satie, but his piano writing is not innovative, his musical conception is. We're talking here about effects, about techniques...
Satie's originality would still shine through if the Gnossienne was for a string quartet. It's not about the piano, it's about the music.


Having said all that, I have to admit your post made me reflect on just how groundbreaking Satie must have sounded when taken in context. I mean, late romanticism isn't known for its economy of means, minimalistic approach, even more so on the piano. I see your point, but I think it's stretching the meaning of the thread a bit too much.

Another original composer for the piano was Rossini, who may have been the first and earliest composer to explore the sonorities of the modern Steinway piano.

Some people here might remember the fun and frustration we had with this old radio quiz. It was about identifying a piece from a very brief snippet. Nobody here came close.

The piece was:



The snippet was ~half a second at a place like 2:41.

As I mentioned on that old thread, part of the difficulty was that the snippet as given by the radio show didn't have the rhythm exactly right. But probably nothing would have helped.