Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Who wrote the "most" piano music ?

Since the surviving tempo markings are in no way accurate timewise and there are no metronome markings in general for Baroque era, playing time is not a good measurement here. And since the type set and layout varies a lot, pages aren't eiher. We would need to calculate measures taking into account meter to come up with a reasonable method of comparison for the "amount of music". Sounds fun, but quite a task I'd say

Sorabji might be a contender for the most time to play his works, and/or the highest number of pages -- he lived a long time and wrote a lot of music, some of which is very very long (individual works that are hours long to play, with scores that are hundreds of pages long). I have a CD set for what is probably the most famous of his long piano works -- the Geoffrey Douglas Madge recording of Opus Clavicembalisticum, which is a five CD set with total playing time listed as 234 minutes, 23 seconds, and according to Wikipedia the score is 253 pages. He wrote many such long piano works (sonatas, 'symphonies' for piano, etc.)

In the 17th century, a lot of Italian composers wrote orchestral pieces. The keyboard of the day wasn't very good so they tend to be in the background to accompany the orchestra such as playing a Concerto Grosso as the Continuo part. Bach was the first to write extensively solo pieces for the keyboard including Suites, Partitas & Concertos. The first concerto featuring the keyboard with a cadenza is the Brandenburg #5 (mvt. 1).

There are piano pieces that are arrangements of other composer's music that were not originally written for piano. There were at least 1 Concerto written by Vivaldi rearranged by Bach such as RV522 as BWV593. Czerny rearranged Bach's last set of pieces "The Art of Fugue" BWV 1080 from organ to piano. Franz Liszt did a few arrangements for piano including Beethoven Symphonies and the well-known "La Campanella" by Paganini. And there is the Rachmaninoff "Variation on a Theme of Paganini". And the Mozart Sonata #16 in C was later rearranged by the Norwegian Edvard Greig... from a piano original to a later version also for piano.

The original question asks about who wrote the most piano music, not noise.

Where did you get this idea? There was a lot of solo keyboard music being written before Bach arrived on the scene.

You're right, the question was about music. That's why he mentioned Sorabij.

I have to admit to that I actually enjoy some of Sorabji's "pastiches" -- they have a surrealistic quality, a phantasmagoria, that I find intriguing. For every one of those, though, there's the relentlessly serious, dour Sorabji churning out endless streams of absurdly complex counterpoint that at last blush just frankly makes me giggle in awe at the spectacle of self-importance. I suppose I should give due credit to Haberman, Madge, et al in learning and performing these works, but boy, my idea of a LONG evening is trying to make something of Clavicembalisticum and the like. And, yeah, he probably really does earn the prize of most music ever written for solo piano in terms of time -- if that is a prize worth mentioning.

I have the complete Clavicembalisticum (played by John Ogdon on a lovely-sounding Bösendorfer Imperial) in my iPod for those long coach or train journeys in far-off lands, when I need to keep awake because there is scenery (and my belongings, and myself.....) to watch.

It's like having a garrulous, genial (but sometimes dour), cerebral, somewhat pushy and never-at-a-loss-for-words but endlessly entertaining traveling companion by my side, but with the advantage that I can shut him up and listen to Shostakovich 10 or Mahler 9 instead, for light relief......(or maybe Dialogues des Carmélites for even lighter fare)

Interesting. I'm just getting better acquainted with the Clavicembalisticum by way of the video taped performance of Powell from the Jdp Music Building a few months ago. It's slowly winning me over. For years I couldn't listen past the first fugue.

The second sonata also has an appeal, although the one existing recording isn't to my liking.

Sibelius.

Are you kidding? Hmmm...let's see:...Berg, Griffes, Mosolov, Stanchinsky, Webern, and I'm sure many more but it's late and I'm too tired to think....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNk_A4ZoI30

I wouldn't put any of those in the 'great' category. None would make my top 25.

Cesar Franck
Apart of some unknowns he published only two piano solo pieces that are commonly considered masterpieces...I find it interesting that he clearly knew how to write for the piano at a time when it was probably the most popular instrument but chose not to.

Well that is your opinion. Put everyone's opinions in a bag, shake them up, and you know what you get? Opinion gumbo!

Also I don't know about the other guys, but Berg and Webern are generally acknowledged as being great composers and among the most significant of the 20th century.

Yes, that is certainly what was instilled in me at the music school where I took courses in 20th century music (including one graduate course in 20th century piano literature). And a brief search on YouTube shows for example Berg's sonata being played by such pianists as Perahia, Gould, Hamelin, Pollini, Brendel, and Cherkassky. I remember one of my piano teachers in college performing it at a recital, and it has been a personal favorite of mine ever since.

But I wrote "great composers of piano music " in my post.

How would anybody remember?

Then there is this guy who goes by the name Anonymous.

My first instinct is to vote for Bach. Yet, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Schubert - what with 600 songs.