Search Results

Several developments coalesced in the mid-1840s that encouraged a new influx of European musical performers to tour America, who were usually of a higher rank than those previously heard. These factors included the healthy economy of the United States, the abundance of virtuosos in Europe, and vast improvements in transportation (Atlantic steam travel greatly shortened the trip and increased its reliability). Even though many Europeans had serious doubts about the artistic sensibility of Americans, visiting pianists generally found a welcoming audience. Through its versatility as a solo and accompanying instrument, its newfound recognition in the concert room, its suitability in the home, where a rising number of musical amateurs made music for their own enjoyment and that of their friends, and its usefulness as a tool in music education, the piano had become by far the most important instrument in America.

Unlike the obscure newcomer De Meyer, Henri Herz (1803-88) already had a well-established reputation as pianist, composer, teacher, and piano manufacturer when he arrived in America in 1846. Because of his well-known reputation, Herz was well received without having to resort to sensational publicity and attracted many amateur pianists and music lovers to his concerts. His piano music, noted for its brilliance and elegance, consisted primarily of variations and fantasias on opera themes. His performances of works for multiple pianos (e.g., Overture to Rossini's William Tell arranged for sixteen pianists on eight pianos) were popular with audiences if not critics. Bernard Ullman soon became Herz's manager and began resorting to more outrageous publicity. John Sullivan Dwight, Boston's most prominent music critic, was rhapsodic about Herz's performances.

This chapter analyzes the principles of international humanitarian law as exemplified in the book and film called The Pianist. This method of analysis relating international law and literature is a variant form of semiotic analysis focusing on the signifier (the film and the novel) and on how the texts illustrate the signified (the international laws of war). In other words, the movie and the book are signifiers (like the letters of a word that are the outward representation of messages or signifieds). Within the texts there are many levels of relationships between the signifier and the signified that the reader and the movie viewer must work hard to identify in order to perceive the meanings of the texts. Thus, the reader and the movie viewer are creatively and actively involved in producing meaning. The international laws of war are the signifieds that can be perceived in many different variant art forms. The law and literature approach considers the artistic text as an illustration of legal principles according to basic semiotic principles.

This chapter presents Reich's account of composing Six Pianos. Six Pianos was completed in March 1973. It begins with three pianists all playing the same eight-beat rhythmic pattern but with different notes for each player. Two of the other pianists then begin in unison to gradually build up the exact pattern of one of the pianists already playing by first playing the notes of his fifth beat on the seventh beat of their measure, then his first beat on their third beat, and so on, until they have constructed the same pattern with the same notes, but two beats out of phase.

This chapter recounts the period when Rudolf Serkin was in the twilight of his life. Accounts from family and friends reveal how he never considered retiring from his musical career until age and illness physically prevented him from continuing with his commitments. His final performances at Carnegie Hall and at the gala season openings of the Chicago and Cleveland orchestras are recounted fondly. Well into his eighth decade of life, Serkin had outlived most of his friends and siblings. Based on his correspondences with his friends, towards the end he was even too tired to write, after experiencing depression from having to cancel many of his concerts. Serkin died from complications of intestinal cancer in March 1991. He was universally mourned by the music industry. All over the world, orchestras and pianists dedicated their performances in memory of this brilliant musical genius whose contributions to the field are invaluable.

This chapter presents the text of an article about George Gershwin's musical career and various escapades, which was published in the January 3, 1932, issue of New York American. The article focuses on Gershwin's recollection of his early career and his income. It includes mention of his work as a song plugger where he was paid fifteen dollars a week and his job as a piano player at Fox's City Theater where he earned twenty-five dollars for seven weeks.

This chapter is a follow-up anecdote to the concert described in the previous one, Introducing at the very end one, an illegitimate child begot by Edgar Palm, the last great composer of the Palm dynasty. They had been of Swedish origin who built a bridge between Europe and Afro- Caribbean music.

This chapter focuses on Robert Schumann, one of the most prominent composers of the early romantic period. Early in his adolescence he displayed extraordinary skills in piano playing and attempted to become a concert pianist. After an initial success, however, he developed a focal, task-specific dystonia of the right hand, also referred to as pianist's cramp. This disorder is characterised by a painless loss of skilled motor control in a task-specific context. Risk factors for developing musician's dystonia are male gender, extensive cumulative practice time, extreme motor workload concerning the temporal and spatial quality of the affected movements and personality traits such as proneness to anxiety and perfectionism. All these factors can be demonstrated in Robert Schumann's early life.

This book concludes with an attempt to summarize the qualities and skills a pianist must possess in order to be a successful Prokofiev interpreter. Prokoviev had a particular talent for creating a fully identifiable mood within the first notes of a piece, passage, or theme. Sometimes, especially in the later sonatas, this mood undergoes a gradual development or transformation. More often, though, it is juxtaposed against a contrasting image, the character of which is also established immediately. It is essential that a pianist meticulously observe the composer's indications regarding tempo, dynamics, and articulation. These are all crucial in creating full characterizations of individual themes and passages. Far too often, one hears unidiomatic performances of Prokofiev's music in which speed and loudness seem to be the only parameters that matter to the pianist.

This chapter provides an obituary for Polish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman. Szpilman's initial training as a pianist was at the Frederick Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. In 1931, he enrolled at the Academy of Arts in Berlin, where he studied piano under two of the most distinguished players of the day, Artur Schnabel and Leonid Kreuzer. On his return to Poland in 1933, Szpilman formed a highly successful duo with the violinist Bronisław Gimpel, the basis, twenty-nine years later, of the Warsaw Piano Quintet. During the Second World War, Szpilman managed to continue practising his art in the Warsaw ghetto, primarily as a pianist and composer. In Poland, Szpilman was known as 'a man in whom music lives'; music was his entire essence and his soul. His contribution to Polish culture will be a long-lasting and important one.

This chapter covers Władysław Szpilman’s memoir, The Pianist. The book is a testimony to the power of music, the will to live, and the courage to stand against evil. In 1939, Szpilman, a young Warsaw pianist, played Chopin’s nocturne in C sharp minor live on the radio while German shells exploded outside so loudly that he could not hear the piano. The war cast Warsaw into the horror of occupation, the ghetto, the rounding up of Jews, the uprising, and the evacuation of the city — events that killed most of Szpilman’s friends and all of his family. Incredibly, he survived among the ruins of his beloved city. Szpilman’s life was saved by a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who heard him playing the same Chopin nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. That officer died in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, but he left behind a diary expressing his fierce despair at the barbarity of National Socialism. Extracts are published in the book for the first time, along with Szpilman’s memoir.

This chapter explores British pianist and composer Martin Butler’s London (2008). This is, thus far, the sole work Butler has written for voice and piano. His musical idiom is easily accessible, basically tonal with naturally flowing lines and lovely sonorities. This is a classic English ‘Lied’ which sets William Blake’s poem with impeccable taste and assurance, allowing both performers a wide range of colour and expression, and encompassing a host of delicately calibrated details of nuance and dynamic. Marked ‘A Dirge’, the piece progresses at a steady pulse, led by a resonant piano part which goes on to three staves at the start. Wide-spanning bell-like chords support a flexible, shapely vocal line, with each word set immaculately. The broad vocal range might suggest a bass-baritone—several of the lowest passages, including the exposed ending, require a rock-like steadiness and security. However, the outer sections are basically quiet, and the emotional outburst at the song’s centre, as the music presses forward, will benefit from a high placing without strain.

This chapter assesses composer/pianist Michael Finnissy’s Outside Fort Tregantle (2008). This song is less of a display piece than a contemplative reverie. Unsurprisingly, though, the pianist is given a dauntingly virtuoso, rhythmically and harmonically complex part. Through all this, the singer drifts serene and undeterred, in gently undulating lines, creating an almost impressionistic effect. Good breath control, clarity, and evenness of tone are prime requisites, and time will need to be allowed for familiarization with pitches. The music’s modernist idiom is highly individual and fascinating, and to capture its haunting quality requires deep thought and insight. At the slow opening tempo, phrases will need plenty of support in order to be sung in one span. Ultimately, for the intelligent singer, the piece constitutes a distinctive test of empathy and sensitivity.