Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner For all those small paws out there...

The Gleeks don't read the small print ...
there is no question of "hatred" of big chords ...
the point being made is WHY!!

My earlier comment ...

"Perhaps to provide contrast to an adjacent melodious input" could just be on the money.

First of all. I don't know if the term 'Gleek' was a tpyo (such as this one) or coming from Glee, but I have never ever watched Glee, nor I care to watch it!

now to your comments, since I have a couple of minutes to spare. Before posting I went ahead and checked what both 'strident' and 'raspy' mean. both have a negative meaning of too harsh and so on... So don't you dare tell me that there's no negativity (as always) in your post! Then you disregarded who the composer is (Messiaen is not your middle crappy composer! He's Messiaen) by a simple "Beats me", which could be taken as lightly or as seriously as one thinks. You didn't mention the score, and since it's an expensive score and quit contemporary sounding, I'd assume that you don't own it, and since it's still in copyright you can't take a look in IMSLP to find it and yet you decided to offer up your opinion! Of a general tendency to use big chords: "Beats me"

The why can be left for you to find out. But if you could, for a minute, escape your closed ears and decide that some things can sound good, even if they are not your usual triadic chords, perhaps you could discover much more than just 'contrast to an adjacent melodious input' (which guess what: It's yet AGAIN negative... The opposite of melodious input is... a non melodious input which in your book... beats you...)

Have a great morning there old chap!

Who doesn't know Messiaen ... without his input to the
brilliant Hal movie 2001 ... we wouldn't have trembled
visibly as the astronauts approach the Slab.

I'm not hacking anybody ... the issue was the big chords in excess of an 8th ... which are strident ... and WHY?

My big hands pretty well match those of Rachmaninoff ... so the problem of "small paws" does not come into the picture.

PS The Gleeks is what the Chinese call the Greeks ...
also my admiration of the Golden Age Greeks has no parallel ... I have just been reading up in my bath the
words of Plato

"Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason".

Wonder if Plato played the lyre?

It's more respectful to the composers intentions to make a judgement call on how best to achieve a difficult to reach chord in a way that preserves the character of the music than it is to just roll anything you can't reach as default.

This is the piece I was talking about.

http://soundcloud.com/philipvenables/05-piano-studies-i-for-chords

I often wish there're more Romantic and post-Romantic pieces written by composers with small hands (though if they're writing for other pianists - like Ravel and his LH PC-, invariably they make inexorbitant demands on hand sizes).

One of the appealing aspects of playing the Yellow River Concerto (whose piano part is written by a Tchaikovsky prize-winner who evidently has small hands) is that there's nothing in the whole work - despite its profusion of double octaves, rapid alternating chords galore à la Rachmaninoff - that requires more than an octave stretch in either hand. Would that other composers of big virtuoso works are more considerate of us small-pawed and inadequate pianists....

I have extremely small hands but can still reach a tenth I just extend out my hand and use my wrist

Bear in mind the sort of people these composers were writing for. Ravel may have had small hands, but most of his works were premiered by Ricardo Vines, who did not. When composers write small salon pieces aimed at amateur pianists, they tend to be less technically demanding in all respects.

I've just discovered I'm as guilty as many other composers - leafing through some of the pieces I wrote for myself to play last year, there was one that required several 10ths in the LH. The chords just sounded right like that. But I could (just about) play them because there is time to prepare for those chords, and the piece is slow.

But how does Mozart get away with not requiring 10ths in his piano music?

You know this thread, after posting here a few times, started to feel rather silly:

Difficult music will be difficult music. I don't think anyone would ask, why the Chopin Balads are VERY difficult to perform properly. Or a Beethoven sonata. They just decided to do what they wanted! Same with anything that seems impossible for some pianists...

I don't think there's a need to ask any 'WHY' question about such huge composers as Messiaen, or any other monster of music! You just take what he's provided and treat it with respect. End of story!

I had to apply a couple of the tricks I mentioned to the Suite Bergamasque by Debussy yesterday... But it was fine.

Why do composers write things that are difficult is indeed a boring question. Why do some composers write things that are technically impossible can be an interesting one. Case in point, Ferneyhough.