Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Is classical music predominantly fast/hard or slow/easy?

Just what the above says

Musicality is just as difficult as technicality.

Whatever...

And classical music is difficult to define, btw...

Fast isn't necessarily hard - and slow isn't necessarily easy. And whether something is hard or easy depends on the skills of the person performing the music.

A simpler answer to your questions would be - NO, it isn't.

Classical music isn't predominantly any of those.

The answer is:

Yes, no, sometimes, maybe, never, always, and 42.

Nice.

Well that's true.

Maybe I should have left out the hard and easy part of the question.

Considering whats fast, and whats slow:

Here's how I define slow: Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata



Here's how I define fast: Chopin's Revolutionary

Well maybe lets take it from this perspective:

how many notes there are in a piece?

Like Beethovens Pathetique has very little techniques or notes in it, while Chopin's Revolutionary Etude has lots of techniques and notes in it.

What are the ratios of pieces with many notes in them compared to the pieces with not many notes in them?

Claude -

There is absolutely no way to answer your question.

The number of notes in a piece has no bearing on the tempo.

Why do you care about this??

And as for the Beethoven - only the second movement is slow.

Henle gives the "Pathetique" Sonata and the "Revolutionary" Etude exactly the same difficulty score - 7/8 out of 9 (where anything over 6 is considered very challenging). There's nothing easy about those broken octaves in the first movement or the fine balancing and finger legato required for the Adagio.

It's not at all clear what you're asking, and your examples are doing you no good.

Why do you ask?

When we know that, we might be able to do a better job.
But not necessarily.

Well, I'm composing a piece right now, and I was wondering whether I should do it with hardly any technique or a bunch of technique, but since I have already composed some relatively technical pieces already, I thought I should do a mid-tempo/slow one. So I did, and this topic came to mind because I was wondering how much of classical music has pieces with little technique compared to pieces with lots of technique.

Well if "classical" is too broad, maybe I could narrow it down to maybe a specific composer? Like Rachmaninoff, did he like to write more relatively technical songs or relatively non-technical songs? I'm a bit unfamiliar with his work.

If you were a composer yourself, would you write more technical or non-technical songs?

As a generalization I think faster pieces are more difficult than slower pieces from the point of view of just playing the notes in tempo, which is what I assume you were asking.

But it's more like a continuum of difficulty as opposed to one or the other. I think that's why some found your question perhaps silly and replied accordingly. Some fast pieces could be relativley easy and vice versa. Technical difficulty can include more things than just playing notes fast.

In order to compare apples to apples you probably need to use some sort of least common denominator. For example, you might compare pieces by the average number of notes per minute. Give that a try with some popular classical pieces and let us know what you conclude from your analysis.

Well, doesn't the difficulty depend on the player? Because some people might think that Beethoven's Pathetique is easier than Chopin Revolutionary Etude. Then some people might think Liszt is easier to play than Chopin, and vice versa. At least that's what I have heard people around piano forums say.

I thought you were going to reply that you meant the second movement only, no?

Yes the slow movement pianoloverus

Even the slow movement is not that easy, late in the movement you have four different ideas going at once..

since I'm a composer I can probably take a stab at helping you a little (at least from my point of view).

When one composes he should consider a few things like: Why he is composing. What he wants to compose. Who he is composing for, etc...

Why he is composing: You may be composing for a competition, in which case you might want to showcase. You might be composing for your 7 year old kid in which case you want something VERY easy probably, etc.

What he wants to compose: If you want to compose an etude, you better have an idea at what this etude is tackling. If you are composing a piano concerto, you will probably want the pianist to sound good, etc.

Who he is composing for: Already mentioned, but is it for an amateur? A professional? A student? A schoolgirl? your girlfriend/wife?

How difficult a piece is cannot be counted for many reasons. At first it all comes down to the individual pianist: anything with huge chords, octaves, etc comes easy to me. Small fast scales, passages, trills, etc do not. I have rather big hands and I've always exploited this. So Rach seems easier to me than Mozart in some cases (a bit exxaggerating but you get what I mean).

Difficulty can be:
* something difficult to even grasp when reading. Contemporary music does that a lot. If you can't even understand what the heck is written on the score it's definately difficult.
* Something technically demanding. Easy to read, easy to understand, but your hands simply need tons of practice to get around playing that.
* Something musically difficult. You think the Moonlight sonata, or the 2nd movement of Pathetique? Think again!
* Something which takes coordination when played with others. This applies for paino duets, chamber music and more.
* Something boring. Can you sit and study something you actually HATE?

hope the above help a little...

Remember I'm stopped talking about technical difficulty(except for arguing the difficulty of some pieces), and changed it to concentration of notes. Chords, Octaves, filled in octaves, thirds, sixths, etc... each only count as 1 note for the count.

Chopin's Revolutionary Etude is clearly more concentrated with notes than Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata. Disregarding stacked notes.