Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Duh!!!!!!!!! (palm--->forehead)

I've been learning the Beethoven Sonatina (2 movements) that is in the RCM Level 3 Repertoire book. It has been going well, I know it from memory, and most of the time, play it rather nicely.

So, I decided to go to the next Sonatina to start learning it. I flipped the page, and, gasp!!!!!!!!!!!! there are 12 more measures to the Beethoven that I had not noticed! What a dufus! (me, not Beethoven).

In my defense, the Sonatina, as shortened by yours truly, ended nicely, and did not seem to lack anything. I was always happy when I made my final lift from the keys. In what kind of mad world do publishers wrap the end of a piece around to the next page?









Well.........wait........ I guess they do that all the time, don't they?

We've all done things that make us want to slap ourselves. 😀 Try to just laugh and move on. To err is human...

Mistakes are no big deal in the grander scheme of things.

Just call it "Arrangement of Beethoven's Sonatina in Key whatever, Opus whatever."
Make sure it has a nice Fried Fish (V-I) ending.
Few will notice.

Maybe "Interpretation" would sound classier?!

Maybe not as bad, but i have learned a wrong note, played it over and over until it sounded perfectly fine to me, only to be corrected by my teacher. Now the right note sounds wrong...

Sam

Recently while working on a new piece, I was thinking a series of chords didn't sound right, had double flats that didn't make sense, must have been a misprint...until I noticed that the clef had changed.

Good time to learn about form. Those 12 measures were probably a coda (Beethoven used comparatively long codas across all his sub-genres), so that's why it seemed complete without the next page.

Maybe think of it as a bonus, since you like the sonatina!

I had this happen with a time change. I said to my teacher, "This is a weird measure," and she said, "No, it's very straightforward," and we went back and forth in this vein until we figured out I'd missed a time change. Sheesh!

In a "world" where it won't fit on the previous page! Enjoy the new discovery!

Cheers,

OP, great story!

No need to worry.

There are countless examples of obvious misreadings by famous concert pianists, some of which are preserved for posterity on studio recordings on CDs (which means that not only did the pianist not realize his mistake, his producer and sound engineer etc also didn't). And I'm talking about well-known music available in lots of reputable editions, not some obscure stuff by an obscure composer.

Reminds me of when I wrote my first ever, 2 hour, music theory exam. I was done in plenty of time. Leisurely checked through my work twice. Wondered if it was unseemly to hand it in early with everyone else working way. Flipped it over and (eek!) - it was printed on both sides ! I had done only half the questions, with 20 minutes left on the clock. Hands literally shaking. - pushed through the other half with seconds to spare.

I once "began" a live performance with a group singing a Sondheim song with the digital piano unplugged.

That's the stuff of which recurring nightmares are made. I used to have dreams about having signed up for a class in college, and then never attending class. And then, later in life, having a plane to catch in an hour, and I hadn't even packed yet, let alone gotten to the airport.

I did that in this piece, too! I sat down to record it the night before the deadline, and somehow noticed the error for the first time, even though I had been working on it for 3 weeks. It was one calamity after another. At the end of the night, when I quit playing, to start working on final preparations for submission (trimming, etc. in audacity) I somehow recorded a failed take over the file!

I hope I've gotten all of my screwups out of my system for a while.


Thanks for this. I'm self taught, and gain pieces of knowledge pretty haphazardly. You prompted me to go find out what a coda actually is. Now, I'm a little smarter!


That's hilarious, at least, now it is. How did you handle that?