Is written music a set of instructions? A student asked my opinion of a performance he described. In the performance, a pianist used the pedal to sustain long notes while taking his fingers off the keyboard. After thinking, I wrote: "I think the use of the pedal for sustaining notes or helping with legato depends very much on what music is being played. For me, in music by Brahms or Mozart, the central Germanic repertory, long notes must be … [Read more...]
Piano Country
Keyboard music has always been linked with transcribing: making sung, or strummed pieces (or gestures), into something fingers can play on keys. The earliest extant keyboard pieces are transcriptions (more properly "intabulations," because they are written using the little diagrams called tablature): Robertsbridge Codex, circa 1350 One of my former students is making solo piano versions of Detroit techno. I've made piano transcriptions of … [Read more...]