People often talk of something being “overplayed’, but how do they actually know that? Seems like recorded discography is fairly easy to research, thanks to the 'net -- but who ‘keeps tabs’ or statistical records of public performances (or, for that matter, airplay on radio stations)?

I'm sure frequent concertgoers and attendees of recitals would have a handle on the relative frequency of performances of compositions in their own locales. Does any service or organization cast a wider, more official net for that info?

Interesting question, and one I don't know any answer to.

Off-topic, perhaps, but it worries me when people (usually editors or critics) blame the music itself for being overplayed. I think they're worried that if too many people like it, it's pop music

A good piece of music can never be overplayed, except in the mind of the listener or the performer. In either case, it's time to give that music a rest, and go and do something more interesting instead.

Like playing tiddlywinks .

It's very subjective.

If a particular piece is popular at a particular college, and all of the students are playing it, then someone might complain that the piece is over-played. Meanwhile, that same piece may not have been heard for 10 years at a different college.

A piece may be heard in every concert by every pianist, but if a particular audience member really loves that piece, he's unlikely to call it "over-played". By the same token, if someone really hates a particular piece, then even 2 or 3 performances may be considered "over-played".

You know it's overplayed when nobody plays it anymore.

For me, it's a combination of:

-How much I hear many of my peers raving over that piece and they all want to play it
-However many view a video of that piece has on YouTube
-However many videos there are of that piece on YouTube
-How "household" of a name that piece is
-What information about that piece says about its popularity (ex: often times, when reading about Tchaikovsky's 1st or Rachmaninoff's 2nd, you will read about how popular that piece is)
-How often, one way or another, I keep running into that piece...

And probably many other factors.

If it is in my repertoire, then it is overplayed.

Ravel's "Bolero"? Not that again. Groan.

people who have been immersed in classical music culture for a while will find the pieces that are generally assigned to intermediate and advanced students to be "overplayed" -- Clair de Lune, Ballade 1 and Fantasie Impromptu, Moonlight sonata, etc... and orchestral pieces that are played by just about every orchestra on the planet (Beethoven 3, 5 and 9, Tchaikovsky 4-6, etc) to be "overplayed", but what they often fail to see is that beyond the seas of gross misinterpretations and student players struggling through the piece because it's slightly too hard for them, there is a solid musical core, and the only reason these pieces are so "overplayed" is because they are simply the best in their class or at their level. All through grade school i was about as far as you could get from a classical music aficionado, I just played what my teachers assigned me and explored very little beyond, and when I finally started to expose myself to clasical music, the pieces that I fell in love with hardest are the "war horses"...I still remember my first time listening to Fantasie Impromptu in 11th grade and thinking it was the most brilliant thing i'd ever heard in my life.
Even now, my music exposure is based more around my own playing and my own collection of recordings than hearing others play (I attend recitals at school occasionally, but I've unfortunately only been able to see two concerts in the past year) or listening to the radio, so I don't get that overexposure to certain pieces...in my world Rachmaninoff's Prelude in E Major is more "overplayed" than Mozart's K330, so I still don't *hate* those hackneyed pieces quite yet.

"Overplayed" is just a word used by people to discourage someone from playing something badly. (Or in the case of an orchestral performance, just phoning it in without any real intent or effort to inspire.)

As in:

"Ugh...3rd movement of Moonlight sonata? That's SO overplayed!"

(Consider this - nobody ever says that to Perahia.)

Why??

Do you really need to ask?

pieces that are over 200 years old are so passed overplayed...its just inevitable. but what are you gonna do...its not like everytime they're played they're done correctly.

I am pretty sure a lot of people would say Beethoven's most famous Sonata's and Fur Elise are well overplayed, but who can blame the people that play them. They are very well structured and bring such musical delight to the ear. Though, I could be wrong and those pieces could be never considered overplayed. Most pianist usually learn them sometime during their musical journey though.

What's the difference between "overplayed" and "frequently played"?

Overplayed = You don't want to hear it
Frequently Played = You enjoy hearing it

Don't forget that what you find overplayed is being heard - and marveled at - for the first time by someone somewhere.

Whether a work is overplayed is all relative to an individual's own listening experiences.

Regards,

For orchestral performances in the US, the orchestra association does track performance frequency, year by year. Some publishers provide information about number of performances of music they have for hire, but that's also kind of spotty, and won't tell you anything about stuff being performed that's been in public domain for a long time, and that, of course, is the "overplayed" repertoire.

In these interconnected days, you'd think it should be possible to search a worldwide database for all professional performances of any given piece of music, within a given time frame. And produce lists of all professional performances sorted and grouped in whatever way you want. But we're not there yet. Maybe people don't really want to know.

While an exact definition of idea of being "overplayed" is pretty slippery, it seems at the same time to be a fairly prevalent idea, the idea that some works get played too often. But that all depends on who is listening...

Speaking for myself, as person who has had decades of listening experience, it seems that all of the so-called "core" repertoire is overplayed. It's overplayed if I don't particularly look forward to another performance of it. It's overplayed if I don't go a concert by a performer I respect and admire, simply because the repertoire is so hackneyed. It's overplayed if, in a major international competition, more than two competitors play it (the limited concerto choices notwithstanding). It's overplayed if there are more than ten good recorded performances available (ten is an arbitrary number, but you know what I mean).

To me, the idea of music being overplayed is tied very closely to a strong sense that the general repertoire has become stagnant, with a sort of classical "Greatest Hits" syndrome taking complete hold over what you can hear. And, on the other hand, it is also tied in a negative way to knowing that there is a vast amount of high quality music that is basically not getting played at all. For example, I really don't need to hear either of the Chopin concertos again for very long while (possibly never) and would rejoice at the chance to hear, instead, top-flight pianists in some of the very worthy concertos that are rarely heard, from Hummel through Stenhammar and beyond.

For the people who say that there are always new listeners coming up who haven't heard the music in live performance before, I understand the need to revisit the masterpieces, but I don't think the frequency with which they are revisited is really justified by that argument. And the existence of multiple great recordings of that repertoire makes live performances less urgently needed, IMO.

I can certainly understand that argument but, at the same time, the stuff you regard as overplayed packs the halls. It's a brave concert organizer that puts on a program of little-known works.

And it isn't just the organizers -- it takes a brave musician to commit a lot of time and effort to mastering music that there's no certainty anybody wants to hear.

In principle, amateur or student events ought to fair better in that respect, but all the student musicians are learning to play the 'classical top 100' because they, too, want to pack the halls one day.

In my view, it needs a healthy injection of public subsidy to bring less-known works to public attention.

Leave it to Kreisler to hit the nail on the head, at least as far as I am concerned. Any music played well cannot be overplayed. Any music played poorly is by definition overplayed since it should not have been played in the first place. Fur Elise, K545, and Bach Inventions are all great pieces of music that when played well can move me, but if I have to listen to them in many intermediate student recitals they can be just so many notes.

I don't agree -- I think a piece can be overplayed even if it is played exquisitely well. By that I mean that less well-known pieces are squeezed out of performance by things we've all heard hundreds of times already. I don't want to hear (say) Fur Elise again, however well played, if it stops me hearing great music that I haven't heard before. There's only so many concerts, and only so many hours in the day.

Just my $.02, of course.

Sorry to double-post... It occurs to me that people might be using the word 'overplayed' in different ways. I'm interpreting in a completely neutral sense -- something is overplayed if, however well it is played, other music is starved for performance. I'm aware that some people use 'overplayed' in a rather derogatory sense -- played too often not very well. That isn't what I'm talking about.

It is overplayed if you type it into youtube and there are 500 different renditions (sometimes awful) of people playing it. Example: fur elise, pathetique or any chopin etude.

All kidding aside, when something gets overplayed, I think it buries lesser-known but equally valuable material.

I have to admit that when I see the Schumann concerto on a programme, it's a big groan -it would take Argerich to get me to that concert if the other pieces were the standard stuff- but I suppose I shouldn't forget those heady days in my youth wherein the discovery of the Schumann concerto was big news for me.

Paraphrasing Yogi Berra?

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.

How do you know if it's overplayed? If it makes you want to vomit after hearing it, it's overplayed..

Haha... this ^

I couldn't imagine being a judge and having to sit through Beethoven sonatas and Chopin all day. After awhile it's just too much... For me at least.

I've done just that and trust me Pogo is right. One year after listening to maybe the 14th rendition of the Mendelssohn violin concerto I was ready to puke. Guess what? Not a single violinist made the finals. Hahaha!

If you've heard something you like too often, all you need is a long break.
Don't listen to it for months, or a year. Then listen again and it will almost be like discovering the music for the first time.

Never figured out how the jurors at the Tchaikovsky competition manage to listen to that concerto... how many times? I might need a vomit bag, or at least a very stiff drink.

BTW, I'm reading the John Ogdon bio by his wife, Brenda Lucas. John has just won first place in the 1962 Tchaikovsky competition- a dual first place with Ashkenazy, who was expected to win without any company. For Russian judges to award a dual first place to Ogdon... well, this definitely says something about Ogdon.

A year is not nearly long enough. I am pretty sure that a normal human lifespan is not long enough for me to have pushed the reset button for the Tchaikovsky 1st concerto, for just one of many examples I could give.

Just reading that made me want to seek out some kind of pharmaceutical calming agents.

It was a wonderful concerto, for the first few thousand times I heard it (I am exaggerating the number only a little, I think). Now, through no fault of Mendelssohn, it has become an instrument of torture. And particularly during that Twilight Zone of the classical music world known in the US as "drive time music".

On the one hand, I don't think there's a limit to the number of times I could listen to this with pleasure. On the other, I'm sure there's other interesting stuff I could be listening to instead.

I can't see why it would actually evoke a vomit response.

Well nothing is overplayed if it is played well.

We have two classical radio stations in my area. One is a small private station that serves our fairly wealthy community of retired people. The other is the large public station WHRO, that serves a metro area of perhaps 1.5-2 million people.

The small private station could best be described as the classical version of Golden Oldies. I suspect they play Williams' Thomas Tallis Fantasia at least once per week. Ditto for the Concierto de Aranjuez, the Water Music (or Fireworks), the Hallelujah Chorus .... you get the picture. I'll bet the station has never played a single work by John Adams, let alone Ken Fuchs. This is a perfectly normal response to their "base." Now, "I" may find the tastes of that group rather pedestrian, but even I like the "Classical Top 50" on occasion. And if I get bored with what's on, I can easily turn the dial to ....

WHRO, on the other hand, mixes things up quite a bit more. And if you go onto the WHRO digital service you can find downright obscure stuff!

I guess that means, then, that all the overplayed stuff is never played well.

What's odd is that I bet a lot of pianists don't even know those two pieces. (And probably don't know who composed the second or which Williams composed the first.)

Then to that crowd I guess they're not overplayed.

I imagine you could probably add the Barber 'Adagio'?

The classical music station in my area, KING-FM, plays its share of 'box office' selections, but every now and then we'll get something completely out of the way, and often most enjoyable! (Even John Adams.)

Sunday mornings can be a real treasure trove: I've heard Haydn string quartets, Schubert sonatas, and recently Spohr's delectable Nonet.

I'm still fairly new to classical music (I didn't develop an interest until much, much later in my life), and I read this section of Piano Forms because I have very little interaction with anyone in the classical music world other than my teacher. I learn a lot here. Some dances of the Bach Partita that I am learning take my breathe away, but I bet it's old news to everyone here. It would help me to know which pieces experienced pianists consider in the "classical top 100." Is there a list of the "standard repertoire" that someone could direct me to? I have a lot of leeway in the music I choose to learn and I would like to know what pieces everyone else knows in such a way as to be considered an over-familiarity with them. Piano is a culture unto itself and I would like to get up to speed. However, even I know that Fur Elise is overplayed.

, well certainly not at a professional piano recital! (BTW, I'm surprised Godowsky didn't have a go at it- can you imagine the contrapuntal horrors he would have inflicted upon its innocence?)

But otherwise, it seems a bit unfair to dump on Fur Elise. It's a neat little piece, and usually the first Beethoven a young student studies along with those wonderful sonatinas in F & G.

I well remember studying Fur Elise as a young boy- here I was actually playing a composition by the composer who wrote that overwhelming 5th symphony... which I did know (somewhat) back then. And can you imagine my delight when I was ready for the Op 49 sonatas?

Speaking of contrapuntal fur elise!...the other day, my friend and I were in a room with 2 pianos and randomly decided to play fur elise in a round. It sounded really really strange, but not all that bad haha

is Michelangelo's David over'watched', is Tom Sawyer over'read', is the smell of roses over'inhaled', are good works of art/nature ever over'enjoyed'? I don't think so, are some of those badly played/represented: yes, but that is an other story...

If Lang Lang plays it...

Michelangelo's David is definitely a cliche. And anyway, how many people go see it enough times to become satiated with looking at it, which would be the closest analogy to music being overplayed? I think you are confusing the individual's experience of one work of art many times with the fact that a work of art may be experienced by many people.

And I think that most of us who do have the feeling that something is overplayed also realize that it's highly dependent on the actual music - some things bear endless repetition better than others.

I can't even listen to it once, haha!