Pianophilia

Dear fleubis,

this is a very nice compliment! Thank you!!

And of course huge thanks for those brilliant and completely new (!) remarks on fingering in general by a concertizing pianist. Yes, I ignored the individuality of pianists - especially of those with 11, 12 or 13 fingers!! I will definitely ban all pre-fingered scores from my shelves and try a more individual approach. That means that I will occasionally, like Mozart, use my nose!

Of course timtim is correct and there are many ways to finger complex passages and all fingerings should just be a jumping off point for creating ones own. I am just not good at doing my own sometimes and help is needed (as in the Rachmaninoff "Oriental Sketch" that caused me endless grief until Alfor pointed out a more innovative fingering).

I recall seeing Peter Schickele (P.D.Q. Bach fame) years ago perform one of his hilarious pieces where he did actually play a note with his nose.

Is there proper official 'fingering' notation for the use of the nose, elbows,
toes, or other potentially employable convex human appendages common
to both genders?

P.S. I uploaded my English translation of Müller von Asow's KORNAUTH bio in the KORNAUTH!! thread!

Timtin wrote:Is there proper official 'fingering' notation for the use of the nose, elbows,
toes, or other potentially employable convex human appendages common
to both genders?

If there was I would love to see the symbols for the use of such appendages, talk about graphic scores!!
regards
Brian

Timtin wrote:Is there proper official 'fingering' notation for the use of the nose, elbows,
toes, or other potentially employable convex human appendages common
to both genders?

I seem to recall some piece by Serocki (I think) where tone clusters were played by the arms. And of course, not to be forgotten, Henry Cowell, who at least managed to be somewhat civilized and whose notation persists today to some degree, but still manages to make my ears hurt most of the time. All of which suggest something like "piano abuse" and not music, so I'll still take Schickele's nose--this was one of his pieces that only he performed and so no one knows how (or if) he notated it.

Some of Percy Grainger's music calls for the use of fists and I recall a particular notation being used to indicate it - can't remember now exactly what it was though.

I also seem to remember that it had something like "pugil" italicised next to the mark. Latin for fist I think.

Can't claim to have ever seen a mark for the nose - though it might perhaps be latinized as "rhino" something or frenchified as a La Bergerac. !

"Prepared pianos" certainly have special notations.

tobyjj

cf. "col pugno"

I can try to track down a copy of this more often performed one from Rakowski's etude, a study specifically exploiting the challenge of a pianist to utilize an extra appendage, I saw this performed live last fall in a recital and the audience got quite a chuckle out of it, should I get a scan of this I will try and pull an image of how he calls for it specifically without posting the actual score (as it would obviously be a big no no!)

http://youtu.be/9OjC8WVkGgw

folks interested in reading more about them, I posted a paper on them on my scribd sometime ago....
http://www.scribd.com/doc/123076605/The ... d-Rakowski

fists - there are probably multiple ways, as with the nose, I can try to track this down too.
http://youtu.be/Vsor316E90E

one option, one of my favorite Japanese composers, N. Uemtasu's piece transcribed for solo piano uses this:
happens shortly after about 1:45 or so
http://youtu.be/AfNz6PSnLOo
"genkotsu" (English-ized from Japanese) = "fist"