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Hello guys!

I want to ask you for some advice. I study piano at the university and I'm starting to write a bachelor's thesis, whose name is: "Pianist - composers of golden piano era and their influence on Sergej Rachmaninoff piano works". I want to focus mostly on Leopold Godowsky, Felix Blummenfeld and Anton Rubinstein as a composers. I will analyse their particular works and than compare them with Rachmaninoff's
So I just want to ask you if you know any resources about this topic I shoud check? I mean books, biographies, websites, recordings of their pieces and so on.

Thank you for any advice!

I'd suggest Rober Rimm's The Composer-Pianists:Hamelin and the Eight. Also From Paris to Pretoria includes a chapter on Anton Rubinstein's tour of the US.

Also, BTW, since you're probably looking up stuff about them, you might miss some possible things unless you drop the extra m from Blumenfeld!

And add the extra l to shoud, and learn the difference between "then" and "than."

Nah, I think just taking out that m from Blummenfeld will do.

Also: Hopefully you realize that similarities in the works wouldn't necessarily tell about "influence," and you're looking to find material in the biographies (etc.) that would tell about that....

If you are going to ask us, maybe you should just hire someone to do your research. Since it seems you have blown off so much of your education, why not blow it all off?

C'mon, that's too tough.
It's common for people doing a project like that to ask for suggestions wherever they can. Also it's a way for him to let us know that he's doing this thing -- and it's interesting.

If you can find any of the Godowsky Edition scores published by Peters and edited by Milan Sachiana, they're quite useful. I wrote my undergrad thesis on Godowsky's left hand Chopin Etude transcriptions, and found that, although Sachiana's prefaces to those scores are not longer than 20 or so pages each, they're quite filled with useful information (and the information between volumes overlaps some but not completely). I'm not sure they're still in print though. I bought 2 of the 5 about 10 years ago, and I kick myself for not buying them all when they were available. I bet you can still find them via interlibrary loan...

Mark--those are still in print. I actually did a research paper in MY undergrad degree on that very topic! Yes, I found Sachiana's little prefaces to be extremely helpful. I also got a biography on Godowsky by an author named, I believe, Jeremy something. There are very few books about Godowsky himself, of course. Rimm's book is a very entertaining and enlightening one as well!

Wow! What was your slant? I did a comparative analysis of several originals vs. LH transcriptions to learn generally applicable LH transcription principles, and then I arranged 25/7 (one of the three that doesn't exist in LH Godowsky version) for LH. It was a very fun project

Pretty much this. Also, English might not be the OP's first language.


Librarians can also be EXTREMELY helpful; if you have access to a fine arts library through your school, go talk to the librarian. They are paid to help you with your research.

Spell-checkers are available in most languages, especially English! Grammar-checkers can be useful, too.

Ha! Cool idea. I've always wanted to know what Godowsky's version sounded like (if I remember correctly, he did write one but it got destroyed? Or maybe it was just that he planned to write it...). My paper was far less ambitious. It was just a research paper for a history class I was in, in which I tried to trace some basic elements of technical ideas stemming from that period, like how Godowsky wanted to make it possible for two hands to sound like four (and what he did specifically to create the illusion of two hands with just one). I ended up talking about how I felt Finnissy's keyboard style is in direct line with Godowsky's ideas (though I feel certain he would have hated Finnissy's music!), which is, I think, particularly true in those vastly orchestral textures in the 4th Piano concerto, for instance. Ferneyhough called Finnissy's creation a "meta-piano" and in some ways I think that might have been what Godowsky was going for, though in an arguably less extreme sense!

Keep in mind it was just a history class, though, and my paper really just amounted to a loose summary of those ideas. It was hardly fleshed out to a high level of detail!