While once in a while listening for enjoyment is fine, it's the copying that I irks me. My teacher doesn't think it's a good idea and I agree because when people try to copy what another person does, they lose originality in their style. It's basically musical plagiarism, imo...

I agree. Listen to music because you like listening to the music. Or because a professor assigned it to you. :p

But use the score, not a recording, for figuring out how to play the piece, figuring out how it should go, etc.

I don't know. I don't see the harm in listening to a recording if you get stuck or a part doesn't make sense. It has helped me before, and I wasn't "copying" someone's interpretation. Also, I think it might help if you listened to a lot of different recordings of a piece you are working on to get used to listening very closely and to get ideas about how it COULD sound, not necessarily to copy it.

Perhaps only if you get stuck or have problems rather than listening to it immediately before studying a piece, which shouldn't be done IMHO.

If listening to someone meant you'd end up copying them, then everyone would sound like Horowitz.

My teacher says that a lot of pianists today ARE sounding too much like each other...little originality

Sometimes I think I might TRY to copy another pianists recording of a piece I'm learning.

I don't think it would be that easy - think what happens when a 10-year old tries to copy, for example, a Rembrandt painting. How closely would it resemble the original? I've seen art students in museums trying to do just this. I think a lot can be learned about nuance, phrasing, and things like how much rubato and dynamic contrasts go into a musical rendition (I know I tend to be conservative on the last two things when I compare my recordings with professionals).

My point in doing this wouldn't be to play a concert exactly like Horowitz but to be able to learn from him.

Good point. I've been sitting here thinking about it very hard, lol. I've listened to Zimerman's recording of Schubert Impromptu op 90 no 3 many, many times, and I'm pretty sure when I play that piece I sound nothing like him. I think it would take a tremendous amount of control to be able to play something exactly like someone else, and in gaining that control over a piece, I feel like you would have to get to know it really well for itself, even if you listened to other people playing it. And then, if you weren't really stubbornly set on copying someone else, you would discover how YOU can make it sound good. Idk, sorry for the rambling, I might be totally off, but that's just what I'm thinking.

You appear to assume that listening to a recording will result in copying. I don't think that's necessarily the case at all. And "once in a while listening for enjoyment" puzzles me a bit too. I listen to music frequently for enjoyment. I suppose I know what you're getting at, but the way you've expressed it all seems a bit anti-musical to me, as if you daren't listen to anything in case you can't help yourself copying it...

I'm talking about listening to the particular piece you're working on for enjoyment WHILE you're learning it

I know - so was I, at least partly.

Well, maybe, if Horowitz recordings were the only ones they listened to. But, you know, it seemed that in the late fifties and early sixties, some pianists DID sound like Horowitz, or were trying awfully hard.

I avoid listening to recordings of music I am working on because I've found they have a way of intruding on what I am trying to do. Some of it is like copying, but it is unintentional copying. It's usually along the lines of some random inflection of a phrase or timing of a rest or some small thing like that will turn up while I practice, and I realize that it came from a recording I'd recently heard. It's kind of weird, when it happens.

Once in a very great while I will listen to a recording to help me figure something out about music I am working on. Just in the last few days I have been thinking it might be a good idea to turn to YouTube for help in understanding a couple of spots in WTC that have me puzzled about execution. But in general, I think it a very bad idea to listen to recordings to find out "how it goes", because I believe it is really important for musicians to know to do that from the score.

A couple of times, I've heard pianists say they have modeled their interpretation of a piece on some recording they admire, which I thought was strange. I don't quite understand how someone who could play pretty well would either need or want to do that.

I certainly agree with you there.

I don't understand this. Why do I so often hear this regarding this subject? Are we all not being educated sufficiently?

I see no problem.

I've been listening to music - on radio, concerts, cassettes, LPs, CDs - ever since I was a child; and probably since my early 20s, I've rarely learnt a piece that I haven't heard before from someone, somewhere. In fact, often it's hearing the music that prompted me to learn it for myself. And I've never played like any of my idols, not because I consciously make a point of not copying, but because I prefer it my own way . If I was to consciously avoid learning any music that I've previously heard before, I'd end up playing only obscure contemporary music and Byrd, Gibbons and Couperin....

I think you'd have to have no musical personality of your own to end up copying what you heard from someone else when you learn a piece.

I always find it distracting to listen to recordings of a piece while I'm learning it - a little less distracting while I'm 'finishing' or molding an interpretation. I might listen to a couple of contrasting recordings if I'm stuck on something.

I advise my students that it's preferable to listen to 2 or 3 different recordings of a piece while working on it, than to listen to just 1.

Maybe because I was young and impressionable when I first heard them, but it took me years to erase the Pollini from Wanderer Fantasy (tempo) and the Gould from the Italian Concerto (articulation).

I find it funny when I'm working on a piece and then start listening to recordings of it which I previously liked and then find myself disagreeing with everything that I'm hearing.

IMO learning something about a piece by listening to a recording is no different from learning something about a piece from a teacher or learning something from a piece from an edited score. Since most students spend most of their time on fairly standard piano literature, haven't most them heard performances of those pieces on recordings or in master classes before they've begun to learn them?

Why do many studios have two pianos if not for the teacher to demonstrate? I would broadly classify teachers non technical instructions as interpretive "suggestions" or more extremely "that's just wrong, and it should be played in this way"(something that's clearly in the score but the student isn't doing correctly). Should a student never take any of this advice just because it wasn't from his own mind?

If you agree that a student should learn something from a good teacher, then what's the difference between that and listening to a recording?

I think it's important to listen, but if you listen too much to one recording you could end up unintentionally end up copying that one recording. However, if you compare lots of different recordings of the same piece it's a lot more constructive as you can compare the different things each pianist does.

I agree, but the question is why. I think part of the reason is that pianists tend to spend way too much time in the practice room and not enough time exposing themselves to the arts - visual arts, theater, literature, music for other orchestra and other instruments, choir, etc..

I also think part of the reason is that pianists spend far too much time worrying about fidelity to the score. As a result, they end up playing as if they were simply trying to do what the composer wanted, and not putting anything interesting of themselves in the playing.

I listen intently and often, and don't feel i copy an interpretation. It is such a wondrous shortcut to know the score intimately.

jmo

Why, you have no imagination? I'm sure you do. A lot of times people don't give themselves enough credit when it comes to this. Come on!! You can read music, can't you? You're more than capable of interpreting it. And as of the many ways it could sound - you have yourself, what better tool to explore this?

I hate to say it, but I think the biggest problem with originality is ourselves, the audiences and critics attending concerts, and our attitude towards those who dare to be different. Just take a glance at the many threads on this forum that castigate those pianists with individuality (who you can tell within a few minutes, if not seconds, who the pianist is).

This wasn't the case 80 years or so ago, before the widespread dissemination of recordings. In Chopin, you could hear Horowitz, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, Cortot, Koczalski, all of whom had individual (and subjective) takes on this composer. We'd call anybody who played like them 'mannered' (if not worse) if we'd to hear them in concert today. It's interesting that the pianists who also composed tended to be the ones with real individuality (of the above, three composed copious amount of music while the other two arranged a lot of others' music).

Even if you listen to the piece trying NOT to copy someone's interpretation, you will subconsciously pick up on various things and they'll stay with you. And you will be convinced that is the right way to play it because subconsciously you'll remember it that way. It's natural.

But why? Richter wasn't going around listening to recordings. Or Horowitz, or Rachmaninoff - and their playing is SO unique. There is so much you can get from the score itself - there's a lot in there that will open many doors for interpretation, and different interpretations too.

It's so much more interesting and more challenging to work from the score alone. Modern recordings have DESTROYED so much of performance today. That's why everybody sounds like [censored], and the same, because of the heavily edited stupid recordings which are note perfect. So you have a student learning a Chopin concerto and listening to some perfected and fake recording (I hate editing), and so the student gets used to having this "holy" note bulletproof interpretation, and even if they don't realize it they spend SO much time trying to be that. And music making goes out the window, because there is such a huge focus on the mechanics and not having any slips. If you listen to any of the live recordings of the old masters, you'll RARELY hear a note perfect performance, in fact you'll most likely not. The whole thing makes me so mad. Individuality is getting lost (and if anyone dares to tell me being a performer of classical music isn't original, you'll be receiving instructions from me on where to shove those words).

Read more music, listen to NON piano music, which will open your ears and will be so benecifial for you. Pianists often remain that - pianists. It's one thing I want to avoid when I finish school. I want to be a musician.

I hope I didn't offend too many people. But then again, a lot of people here are offended by so many things, it's hard to know when to shut up. So I didn't.

That's completely different than listening to a recording. First of all, it's bad teaching. "No, this is how it goes" - who does that?! That's extremely bad. Teachers use words, they explain things, while listening to a recording - you'll do whatever you hear but you won't know why they did that, and often artists have very good reasoning behind their choice of interpretation. And if you just go and blindly copy, it'll sound different and obvious that it's pasted. A good teacher will communicate and rarely demonstrate and insist the student copies it. Unless it's something to do with mechanics - like producing sound, working on posture, etc.



Are you really asking that? Have you ever had a teacher? A good one?

I probably didn't state things clearly in my attempt to describe something in a brief phrase.

I didn't mean the teacher literally saying that or doing that.

I meant to contrast two kinds of comments:

1. At one extreme, a suggested interpretation(where the teacher may very well say something like "another idea/possible way of playing that phrase that you should consider would be"...)

2. and the type of comment I have seen thousands of times at master classes with conservatory students where the student has made an error not really open to opinion. (Blurring the pedalling where the was no reason to do so, not playing something as written in the score without even realizing they did so, using an awkward fingering when one suggested by the composer is easier, playing a note in a phrase way too loud or soft again without perhaps even realizing they did, an obvious interpretive error, etc.) I certainly didn't mean to imply that the teachers didn't explain whatever they say to the student also.

In either case, or for cases in between, I think the student may learn something from the teacher and use it in their performance. Same as listening to record and learning something as long as one is thinking about about why something on the record is good or bad.

Many of the master classes I've heard in Mannes have really been like listening in on a private lesson because they are held in tiny rooms with only a handful of people listening.

As an example of learning from listeing to a recording, I have recently been playing this Jarrett piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iENQgr0l2Qw

Since I think he plays ballads incredibly beautifully, I listened to his performance and noticed that he often starts a phrase loudly and ends softly. I'd put this in the category of learning another "suggested interpretation" because although I sometimes do this, I don't think I did so to such an extreme as Jarrett does.

I don't think it's necessarily the case that one when listens to a recording "one will do whatever you hear, without knowing why they did that". That assumes the listener is not capable of figuring anything out for themselves.

BTW(in reference to another later post) Richter did listen to many concerts both live and on recordings. His journals are filled with comments both good and bad on those recordings.


Yes. Yes. Yes.

Well, most people who listen obsessively to something they're playing just for ideas aren't capable of figuring it out for themselves. That's why they go to the recording in the first place - because they can't make sense of the score. But it's not a skill you're born with and it can be developed.



Richter didn't copy. There is a difference between hearing a recording and listening to it obsessively - and a lot of people do the latter. There's nothing wrong with learning, and definitely you can learn a lot from recordings. I listen to recordings all the time - but pretty much always to things I'm not playing. Especially orchestral stuff, chamber music and opera.


Yes.Yes.Yes.[/quote]

I don't quite believe the last answer, but whatever.

There's an easy way to avoid this. Just listen to lots of recordings of the same piece.
As a person who has to have music playing constantly from when I wake to when I sleep, and considering that I only learn music I love, I don't like the prospect of going several weeks (or however long I hold onto a piece for, months sometimes) without being able to listen to a particular piece except through my own playing.

I don't think it's a bad thing to listen to the pieces. it's not ideal to completely copy, but if a particular issue regarding rhythm or something is irritating you - then go for it. I listen to pieces A LOT when I'm learning them, but I don't feel the need to copy that Pianist's interpretation, I just listen for enjoyment and if I'm having trouble with a particular section - not to plagerise that pianist's play