Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Little quiz: Main deterrent to trying to learn La Campanella

Who, CyberGene or von Sauer? I can tell you that von Sauer was not only a very thoughtful pianist, but also a virtuoso. Josef Hofmann, Martin Krause, and even Vladimir Horowitz (who mostly hated Liszt's pupils) knew that.

I'm trying to have us have fun with it.

There is that strange extreme rotational passage right after the left right alternation chromatic riff which climaxes to the big solo trill that becomes a 3 hand effect variation of the theme in the upper register. It sounds quite comical, but it's always looked extremely awkward when I've it seen worked on. After that, the octaves start coming and the piece gets quite a bit easier.

Nonetheless, after 10+ years of seeing your posts on this forum, I'm sure it's something far more...unexpected.

My guess is there is simply other music you would rather learn.

I figured it out. The dog ate your sheet music.

Answer: All those blankety-blank way-off-the-staff leger lines.

This time don't give in. Ain't worth it. All those leger lines and all those "D's." I mean come on already, how many "D's" should one piece of music have?

And all my life I've been thinking those are D-sharps....

You got me on that one. Guess I was so overwhelmed by the number of D's in the score I forgot to look at the key signature.

I empathize with you! I'm working on something with too many of those blankety-blanks and the notes are so close together it's hard to read. Don't let that discourage you!

I lol'd.

I have a few pieces in my rep like that, e.g. Gaspard.

My solution is dead simple: I write the note names next to the offending notes .

Slightly off topic, but do you find that when there are many such off-the-staff notes, you can easily guess the first one, but for the rest it suddenly becomes as though you forgot reading scores. It's a sudden WTF situation for me and I start counting the lines as a first-grader... I believe it must have something to do with visual relation to the regular 5-liner which is broken when many off-staff notes are added, ultimately adding lines, and so I start seeing 8-9-10-liner staff which is weird and hard to decipher.

I think most of us do.



I can usually glance at F1 or A6 and identify them on slight from the score, but below or above those, I'm lost and I too have to count the lines "like a first-grader". Add some accidentals and compress the notes together on the page, and my eyes start to hurt. I'm a big fan of the notation "8va".

Good reason! For many years I refused to play a nice version of 'Misty' with those pesky things - they were mostly in the treble. I eventually plucked up courage and conquered them, but the bass is still a pain. For various reasons Gflat is almost impossible on my current keyboard, so that I have to transpose that nice Schubert piece; all goes fine until the rumbly bass notes - can't really hear clearly that they're wrong so it's only on exiting the passage that I realise what's happening because I can recognise the next note but that isn't where my fingers are heading. Solution is easy, of course, my brother sent me a transposition (hurts the ego) and the keyboard will be replaced (sometime, but other things to deal with first).

I always write it in when it gets past the first few. Sometimes it's fine e.g. if it's octaves and the lower note is readable, but more often than not it feels like an exercise in feeling stupid.

My teacher in grad school once mocked me for writing some of the high leger line note names in the score (Liszt piece), claiming that a good musician shouldn't have to do that. I didn't care.

Your teacher must have also been a flutist

I propose we insert one of those "D"s right in here:
leger!

Oh no - that would be one "D" too many.