CGF 50: Pianistic

Joey takes a journey across the 88 keys

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune is a Maestro Will special, in absentia. Here’s your hint: this composer is a two-hit wonder. Both pieces were staples of classical radio when I was a kid, but I seem to hear them less these days.

As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing. 

Last Week’s Results

Since I (Will) am off galavanting, I’m not tracking the NTT responses, but let me just say this: Joey and I are ready to kill off this feature of the newsletter (along with an upcoming rebrand) because we’re not sure that it appeals to anyone except the two of us and Listener Jeremy. And that’s fine—it may be a feature that just doesn’t transfer well from the podcast medium to the email medium. On the other hand, it is the only feature that drives any commentary at all, so perhaps we shouldn’t kill the one engagement engine?

If you want to keep Name That Tune a part of your weekly ritual, now is the time to clap for Tinkerbell (or weigh in in the comments.)

Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!

Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.

Pianism: The Essay

In the last few years Will and I (Joey) have been talking about “pianism” quite a bit. This goes back to his conception and composition of a sonata for me, but has recently ramped up as he worked on new Bagatelles for piano.

I would often urge him to write pianistically, or teasingly ‘criticize’ his piano compositions as being essentially orchestral works for piano (as if this isn’t a perfectly valid approach with a rich history). As a pianist, I love when a piece feels good to play, which is a vague, but working definition of “pianistic.” But let’s investigate what that means a little more.

“This piece is/is not very pianistic” was a phrase I first heard as a high school piano student, and has intrigued me ever since. There’s an intuitive understanding that immediately comes - one would expect a pianistic piece to fit the particular shape and typical motion of the general hand - that is, the thumb works a certain way, the fifth and fourth fingers are weak in different ways, and certain intervals require the perfect amount of stretch. Basically, the hand and arm rotate, stretch, and move easily in some ways and not others. 

But it’s not so simple as ‘pianistic writing means it’s easier to play.’ Some extremely hard music is commonly considered very pianistic:

…while some easy music is not. 

It’s really hard for me to find a strong predictor of what makes for such music, but some candidates: fewer fast leaps, passagework that conforms to common chordal and scalar patterns, strongly defined musical roles (melody, chord, accompaniment) between different hands/fingers. By the way, as a VERY strong disclaimer, every pianist’s hands are different, because of a combination of size, shape, speed, musical upbringing (what they played most when first learning to play and continue to work on the most), and other factors which I’m not thinking of.

Pianist-Composers Vs. Not

To return to the idea of how the hand and arm ‘typically’ work, however, it’s no coincidence that the works of great pianist-composers such as Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Maurice Ravel (among many others) represent the most pianistic writing. As experienced pianists themselves, these composers were often writing at the piano, for their own performances, so naturally they fit the hand, or at least certain hands, well. Other composers who wrote at the piano but were not pianists, such as Stravinsky, are not known for their pianistic works.

Stravinsky is an interesting case, in fact. As he talks about in this interview, the way certain intervals and chords felt in his hand as he was writing was a big factor in his compositional process. It just didn’t result in pianistic writing. For Stravinsky and other non-pianistic composers such as Dvořák, Mussorgsky, and Martinů (I don’t know why I thought of three Eastern European composers), their writing may not be considered the most pianistic, but to cool effect—their use of the piano is uninhibited by ‘pianistic’ chord shapes and passagework. 

Another type of non-pianistic composer is the “theoretical” piano composer, who may be writing for the instrument without even touching it! Of course, I can’t be sure of it, but I imagine several serial composers to have worked this way. In many non-pianistic composers’ music, there may be gestures toward pianism - the already mentioned arpeggios, fast passagework, etc. - but as a pianist, I can almost just peruse a score and get a sense of the piano ability of the composer.

What Music Qualifies?

Another interesting factor in thinking about pianism is that in my experience, the idea tends to be used to describe music from Schumann and Chopin on. I don’t know if it’s because the keyboard music of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Bach, and earlier is not strictly for the modern piano (usually for harpsichord, clavichord, or organ), because it’s exalted to level of refusing any kind of critical description, or what, but Classical, Baroque, and - God forbid! - earlier musics do not get labeled with the ‘pianistic’ descriptor as often, despite some really well-known keyboard virtuosi (Mozart) and virtuosi (C.P.E. Bach) among these composers’ ranks. Notable exceptions, such as the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, come to mind.

Just as there is pianistic music that is fitted to smaller hands and bigger hands, there are culturally different styles of pianism, as well, an idea recently top of mind as I have researched the music of African pianism. This style of music takes as a basis that since the piano bears resemblance to certain African xylophones, thumb pianos, plucked lutes, and drum chimes, its importance in African art music is outsized compared to other Western instruments. As one can imagine, the pianism of African art music differs greatly from that of Chopin. Even within the traditional European canon, the differences between keyboard styles of France and Germany are a well discussed topic. African pianism tends to be marked by a more percussive approach to the keyboard, akin to what one would take with any struck idiophone.

Finally, I am under no illusion that instrumentally-focused writing is exclusive to piano. After all these years, listeners of the podcast and readers of the newsletter are experts in “clarinetistic” music, thanks to Listener Jeremy’s NTT submissions. I’m curious about other instrumentalists’ and singers’ experiences of the most physically satisfying music to play and perform. Sound off in the comments if you have any burning thoughts. 

Classical Mixtape

Scriabin, Piano sonata No. 4

Alexander Scriabin represents a very specific kind of pianistic writing, idiosyncratic and recognizable by sound of recording or sight of score. His 4th sonata, written while he still maintained significant musical sanity, is absolutely gorgeous, and (I imagine) produces hand-localized dopamine rushes for every pianist who undertakes it.

The Classical Gabfest Newsletter is a spin-off of the now-defunct Classical Gabfest Podcast. It is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)