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I'm working on a piece by Weprik which has a lot of huge chords in it. Here\'s a link to the first page .

Some of the chords I can reach, and others I can't -- in that case, I have to roll the ones that are too big for me. But as for the others that I can physically reach, should I roll those as well, for the sake of uniformity? Or should I play whatever I can as solid chords, and roll the ones that I can't? This piece is based on a folk song about pioneering / building a new country, which should have a lot of majesty to it -- so I'm not sure if rolling all of the chords would take away that majestic feeling, but rolling some and not rolling others might actually be worse in that regard.

Here's another question: given that many pianists simply can't play such wide chords, might the composer (a Russian, early 20th century) have just assumed that they would all be rolled, without actually writing in the notation to roll them?

I would roll those chords that you can reach only if they sound right. Have you heard any recordings where the pianist arpeggiates those chords?

As for the large chords, sometimes there's a bar above a certain measure labeled "ossia" but that's not always the case. Lots of people roll chords that are more than an octave so don't worry too much about it. Argerich arpeggiates a lot of the time.

I like rolled big chords. The chords in m. 10 & 14 are so big, I would guess that they are intended to be rolled. I say just keep rolling the ones you cannot reach. Or you could rearrange the notes so they fit under you hand.

I would only roll those chords which are too wide for you, and not the others. For the chords where you roll: by having the hand prepared well and the fingers actively involved (i.e. not just a "moving-hand arpeggio") you can aim to avoid arpeggio feeling and approximate the sound of a solid chord as much as possible.

I wouldn't play them at all - it's not very well written, but if somebody forced me to learn it, I'd probably err on the side of consistency and roll all of 'em.

Roll them, just like in here.

I haven't tried to play it, but looking at it, it seems to me that rolling the chords would spoil the effect. Have you thought of playing only the bass note of those chords in anticipation of the chord. I'm not quite sure how to write this, but I'm suggesting you play the bass note like a grace note before the beat, and play the remaining notes of the chord together and on the beat.

Tomasino

Have you considered using your nose for notes you can't reach? :p

I have!

Considered it... I've never actually done it.

I would only roll the largest chords, quickly.

RICKROLL!!!!!!!!!! :p

I think you should just roll all of them, for consistency's sake. The composer really shouldn't have made such chords that most people have a hard time reaching all the notes at the same time.

To answer your second question: There have been many, many composers who have written music without the performer in mind at all. But I don't think they would be oblivious to the fact that not everyone is able to reach a large chord, and so I believe they expected some different interpretations than what is written.

Roll the chords like I just rolled everyone.

Is rolling the only alternative?

The last piece I learned with a chord too wide to play was Chopin's 10/7 (at bars 24 and 25). I treated the lowest note as an appoggiatura.

When all the notes of a chord save the lowest can be played as a unit, is this a sensible solution instead of arpeggiating the entire chord?

Steven

too funny.

Dang, I know I lack a teacher and an education in music (and quite possibly good sense and good taste, too), but it was an earnest question!



Steven

I like the idea of treating the bottom note as an appogiatura -- another possibility is to play the bottom two notes together as an appogiatura. I tried both of these ways last night and it makes more sense to me than rolling, but of course it's still an open question.

I don't think apple* was responding to your post, Steven.

Regards,

I considered that, but there were at least two on-topic posts after the "rickroll" besides my own, and everyone's posts were hardly simultaneous.

When one is responding to something other than (1) the topic of the thread or (2) the immediately preceding post, it's easy enough to make that clear.

Steven

Sight-singing (or in this case, as I'm at work...sight-humming-to-myself ) is not my strongest suit but I can get a basic idea...

Given that this is a Folk Dance, and given the basic structure of the piece, my guess is rather than "rolling" the chords it would be a stylistically good choice to follow pianojerome's suggestion of the 2-note appogiatura.

This would give it a folk-dancey sound like a fiddle playing chords in double stops.

Edited to add...OK...so I just suggested that the OP follow his own advice. :rolleyes: Well that probably won't be the dumbest thing I do today.

Note to self...check posters' names!!

No, it's not a dumb thing to do -- actually, I really like your imagery of the violin double-stops.

Actually, now that I've been thinking more about this, I actually can hit most of the chords entirely by taking some of the bass clef notes, including the melody in the 2nd and 3rd lines, with my right hand instead of my left hand (and then in the 3rd measure of the 3rd line, I can play the octave melody with just my right hand). And another trick is to play both the E# and the G together with the RH thumb in 2nd measure of the 3rd line. Doing this, there are really only a couple of chords that are still slightly out of reach for my left hand, like the two chords in the 2nd measure of the bottom line, and those will just have to be appogiaturad, rolled, or just practiced until I can reach them (they're not too bad or unusual).

So rolling isn't so necessary after all, for almost all of the chords -- it's just necessary to figure out which hand takes which notes.