Pianophilia

fredbucket wrote:

rob wrote:Nevertheless I used to be able to play (after a fashion) a piano sonata and a group of preludes that I wrote when I was 13 or 14, but attempting that now would torture me let alone anyone listening.

Precisely my point

Regards
Fred

PS are your sonata and preludes in the public domain?

Dear Fred, it is only in the "public domain" that one can view Rob's sonata and preludes.
HHH

HullandHellandHalifax wrote:Dear Fred, it is only in the "public domain" that one can view Rob's sonata and preludes.

No, in fact I can view them in my private domain, but even at my age I'm never in there long enough...

Regards
Fred

fredbucket wrote:...
PS are your sonata and preludes in the public domain?

No, I am not dead yet. Although some friends would say they couldn't tell!

The works in question are in a dusty box in the garage probably. Hopefully something has eaten them or they've disintegrated over the millenia since I last saw them. The sonata was, like Prokofiev's, an opus 1 in f minor. There the comparison ends, sadly.

An interesting article;
http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/cusick_eng.htm

One very effective method of musical torture is to transcribe a simple C major
piano piece into the key of A triple-sharp major. Here's its key signature.

Timtin wrote:One very effective method of musical torture is to transcribe a simple C major
piano piece into the key of A triple-sharp major. Here's its key signature.

Better yet, skip the key signature and write an accidental for each note.

fredbucket wrote:If you had the power and means so to do, what musical torture would you devise to break even the most strong-willed of musicophiles?

     I have read that one of the methods used in Guantanamo Bay to break the will of prisoners was to subject them to hours of loud heavy metal music. I wonder how the bands concerned feel about their music having been used that way.

Regards, Michael.

rob wrote:In a composition lesson a million years ago I took a Chopin Etude and changed all the octaves to sevenths. The result sounded like Messiaen! Some would think of that as torturing Chopin.

     I think changing them to *minor* 9ths would make the effect more excruciating.

rob wrote:Nevertheless I used to be able to play (after a fashion) a piano sonata and a group of preludes that I wrote when I was 13 or 14, but attempting that now would torture me let alone anyone listening.

     I'd be interested to see those scores - I bet they're better than you seem to be saying.
     But I'd hesitate to show people music I wrote at a similar age - but I can't throw it out, because it is full of memories for me. At least the vision I had for my music then was, I still feel, essentially good, even if I was far less able to realize that in practice than I believed I was at the time. I still have the haunting feeling that, if I could have written my music then the way it was really meant to go, it would have been far better, and quite worthwhile, even if a little derivative of Beethoven (whom I idolized as a boy).

Regards, Michael.

HullandHellandHalifax wrote:PS Am I glad that cage's 4'33" referred to minutes and seconds and not years and weeks.

     I suppose there is no use, then, in your attending one of the main attractions in Halberstadt, Germany. See here for more on this:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible

Regards, Michael.

M.J.E. wrote:

HullandHellandHalifax wrote:PS Am I glad that cage's 4'33" referred to minutes and seconds and not years and weeks.

     I suppose there is no use, then, in your attending one of the main attractions in Halberstadt, Germany. See here for more on this:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible

Regards, Michael.

I have seen a photograph of the event in progress, there were no signs of life!
welcome to the family M.J.E.
regards
Brian