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If you had to play continous 9th or 10th chords in both right and left hand, how would you do it? By small paws, I mean maximum hand range is an octave. (this problem is in my messiaen)

I mean.. if you can't reach them, you can't reach them. So, can you reach them?

Hmm... Do wait for others to chime in, because I have huge paws, plus I no longer practice the piano as I used to, but...

1. It will be extremely difficult to pull it off. The opposite thing is happening to me: Some things which require small hands and delicate playing are simply too difficult to pull off, so eventually I gave them up... I love my large hands and the things I can play easily enough.

2. How fast are we talking about? I think that if it's a bit fast, there will be difficulties in playing every chord from bottom to up. Perhaps you can later once in a while to up -> down? in order to make a better legato, or something I mean...

3. Pedalling. Make sure your sustain pedal works the best way possible...

Not sure I can think of anything else to tell you, but keep at it and wait for the others to join in the discussion...

Lets say you can add rubato and can put lots of pedals.

There are tons of pieces that do not need such a big reach.

My daughter and I have the same problem. She is an advanced player and tells me to roll the chords quickly with pedal. At least I think I have explained what she said. I am not advanced and have a hard time doing it.

I'd roll the chords if I have to, but if the music requires a lot of these and sounds odd with every chord rolled, I'd probably not play it in the first place....

I can stretch a 9th reliably and comfortably at speed but not a 10th except when I have enough time to prepare.

I've got an uncomfortable 9th. Sometimes solutions can be found by redistributing the notes between the hands. This might mean shifting a note down to the other hand without changing the order of the notes, or it might mean changing the placement of a non-critical note to another place in a chord. If that doesn't work, I'd try rolling as long as it doesn't destroy the piece. With my reach, I struggle with tension developing when I play repeated fast octaves so the last and saddest option would be to avoid music with repeated 9ths and 10ths.

I've had never had to worry about this much, but still there are bits which bother. Like the bottom of the penultimate page in the Dante Sonata, where I have to roll the last couple of LH chords.

So, pedal and roll. (no stopping or dropping, though).
Or, play the bottom note as an appoggiatura before the beat and play the chord body on the beat.
Of course, clever splitting between the hands does help, too.

Another option is leaving notes out. Depends on the context.

Depending on the context you can:
1) Roll the chord
2) Leave out the mischievous note
3) Choose the same note in another octave and see how it sounds
4) Use the sustain pedal
5) Help with the other hand (when I do that I use a bracket like this [ to remember).
6) Damn the composer and choose another piece

I was going to say you have two choices, but upon further review (read: correction), it appears you have at least three.

1. Roll the chords. If you can't reach them, you can't reach them.

2. If possible, you may be able to redistribute it between your hands (depends on context).

3. See debrucey's excellent comment.

I heard a piece of contemporary music recently that I really liked. It heavily featured some gorgeous sounding but widely spaced chords. When I looked at the score I realised that I would never be able to play a single chord in the piece, as all of them spanned at least a 11th. The piece was written for a friend of mine, who has Rachmaninoff sized hands. Glumly I resigned myself to the fact that no matter how good at the piano I will get, I will never play this piece.

I can barely reach a 10th so I tend to avoid pieces that have a lot of them.

The OP mentioned there are wide chords simultaneously in both hands, so redistribution would not work, unless the hands overlap when playing as written.

Another way to break up a large chord that you can't reach is mentioned in Ruth Slenczynska's book, "Music at your Fingertips."

She says, "...play as many solid notes as possible on the beat, the remaining notes afterward, so that the essential rhythm won't be disturbed. For example, in the opening chords of Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto, play the left thumb quietly after all the other notes have been struck simultaneously."

She also mentions "...besides breaking a chord from left to right (bottom to top) it can be done the other way around if it agrees better with the context of the music." It would be interesting to see an example of this, but she doesn't mention one.

Kathy

I've got a good nine, an "ify" ten. The nine chords I could play. I might figure out some what to cheat on the tens if there were just an occasional one as I can manage a ten with some difficulty. If there were a lot of tens I wouldn't even attempt the piece. I definitely wouldn't attempt the piece if my reach were an octave and there were multiple nine and ten chords, particularly fast moving ones. I can't imagine the sort of gymnastics necessary to the attempt would be very good for your hands or result in a clean sounding piece.

That's insane, and quite unfortunate. I have to believe most composers specifically avoid such spans because they intrinsically want their music to be widely played by as many people as possible. However, it's nearly impossible to avoid the "specifically-commissioned" piece. Any chance you have a recording of some genetically-gifted individual (perhaps your friend) performing it? I wouldn't mind having a listen to something I, too, would never be able to play.

Chords in excess of an 8th are necessarily strident.
( ie.9ths,10ths, 11ths).

But why include a raspy chord? ... just because of big hands?

Perhaps to provide contrast to an adjacent melodious input.

Beats me.

You may carry on being beaten as much as you want, but since the OP is discussing a work by Messiaen, I'd place my trust in his composing skills and ideas, rather than your hatred towards 'strident', 'raspy' and 'unecessary' chords!

I can reply with great ease on why big chords. In fact I actually made a thread about this very issue: Was composing a trio (with piano of course) and the method and idea I used to compose the 2nd movement was filled with rather large chords. My problem, as Brucey described, was that my hands can reach an 11th with relative difficulty, and even a 12th in my left hand, so I'm definitely not the best judge of such chords. Thus I posted here and changed a couple of things, but not everything.

While I support the freedom of the performers and the idea that a performer should take liberties, at the same time I would appreciate just a tiny bit more appreciation and respect towards what the composer writes in the score. I think it means there's mutual respect there.

As Brucey mentioned, btw, some works just are out of reach for some people (I also mentioned that in my first post here).