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I hate to post and run, but I'll be back on here tomorrow.

Focus: In piano playing, is there really such a thing as "color" which can be manipulated through touch?

Well, first of all, what do you mean by "colors"?

It's a metaphor, of course.

Is staccato a different "color" than legato?

Another way of wording the same question : Can different pianists, playing the same piece on the same piano, evoke different tonal characteristics? If the answer to that is yes, would it not follow than an individual pianist has control over tone color when/if s/he knows how to do it?

Regards,

Yes, but from a rational point of view, I'd like to quote Ralph Kirkpatrick: "Keyboard instruments are illusion machines."

There is a certain psychology of how different colors make you feel .

I would say the same could be said about tonality.

Clashes of harmony create color. So, pedalling is one of the keys to playing colorfully. Horowitz, for example, often pedals so that harmonies clash. Apparently Liszt used this sort of colorful pedalling, too. Then there is ppp, FFF, an everything in between, and they have an effect on the tone. PJ mentioned legato and staccato, and then there are again gradations of those. The piano and the acoustics also determine to a much greater extent what some pianist sounds like than what people often seem to believe.

the word colour. what does it mean?

could you play the exact same note on the exact same piano, exact same dynamic level, exact same articulation, length, and release, yet have two different "colours"?

No. Not with one note. But you can (and do) have colour in your playing. It is a much better term than 'tone'. Which you can't effect.

ecm -a member I respect- seems to think there's something to "color", as he posted in another thread:

We all know how good Valentina is.
She never stops to amaze me technically, but just take a listen at her tone, she has no knowledge at all of different colors the piano can produce.
Musically? I can't think of worse playing.
Even Lang Lang sounds better, and believe me I do NOT like him.

I wish he would contribute to this thread.

Bach is the most common composer that is played without colour. I'm forever hearing flat one dimensional Bach - the notes hammered out as if on a typewriter.

Ah yes. And try some of the more miserable Bach organ recordings. It is no wonder people hear rubbish like that and conclude that organ music is a bore.

Oh, far from it...

There is no such thing as tone quality on the piano. It is impossible for pianists to control actual tone "quality" by means of touch. Tone itself does not exist.

HOWEVER

While it does not scientifically exist, it exists to the ear via means of illusion. When someone like Horowitz or Cherkassky makes this goregous "tone" or "color", they are not doing it by touch, but usually by a combination of one of three things :

1.) Volume level
2.) Taking time at the spot of the particular note that is to be sung.
3.) Playing the melody note slighly before or after the bass.

Chalres Rosen illumintates this perfectly in his book, pianist's notes. Think about it - people usually say that you can get a beautiful, singing, sound by playing "with a big wrist", or "using the fleshy part of the finger". But in reality, a good tone quality does NOT EXIST OUTSIDE THE CONTEXT OF A MUSICAL PASSAGE.
If someone claims they can control tone quality playing a single, isolated note, ask them to go to the piano, and try to play a note twice, one after another, same volume level, and ask them to try to make you guess which one is the "singing one". It will be impossible, because the only thing we can control is the volume level of the note, not the color of it. But when you play a note WITHIN meldoy of a Chopin Nocturne or whatever, if you know what you're doing, you can actually coax the listner's ear into thinking that it hears a different quality by taking time in the resolution of the dissonance, and making the peak note louder, and breaking the hands a bit. It's hard to explain online, but it's a very important concept. I recommend anyone who wants to learn more to read Rosen's book, which, unforunately, I don't have handy to quote from.

You're talking about COLOR, and I'm not sure what you mean by that, but if you mean what I think you mean, it's sort of the same thing, but "color", usually refers to skilled use of the pedal - blurring it in certain ways that can change the texture of the harmonies, while at the same time, changing the volume level of your playing, or "touch" to create certain effects.

For clarity's sake I think we should 'fix' the definition of colour now. It is NOT tone - that is impossible to effect. It IS everything else you can do to 'bring the page to life'.

This summer I've heard Grieg played by Håkon Austbø who is a pianist of the "french style" - known for his Debussy and Messiaen recordings.

My immediate thought was that he played Grieg with a lot more colour than t. ex Andsnes would have done.

I guess I know too little about piano technique to come up with a good answer to what "colour" is, but his use of pedal was one thing, maybe also use of rubato (but not in this terrible sentimantal way) and how he emphasizes certain tones of the chords.

In a choir I would say "colour" comes from allowing the voices be a little individual, not only cultivating homogenous sound.

Ragnhild

I'd pinpoint it to a way of describing combinations of tones when playing a group of notes and sustaining them in some way. (and some composers obviously thought very hard about how they could make a piece more effective by altering the ordering of notes etc)

people are throwing words around like "tone" "colour" like there's no tomorrow.
What does tone mean in this context?
We need to settle on some definitions before this discussion can progress.

I'm happy with the definition of tone given by my Collins English Dictionary:

"The quality of a musical sound that is conditioned or distinguished by the upper partials or overtones present in it."

'Color' is of course 'colorful' functioning as a substantive. The noun should properly be colorfulness, but what can you do... In any case, the word is a bit vague but does its job as far as I'm concerned...