Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What is a cadenza

This a triva question for most of you I guess but I'd like to know what a cadenza is.

It's a term I've seen every once and a while and always forget to ask my teacher.

Thanks.

It's basically a part of a concerto at which the orchestra stops and the soloist plays some complicated passages that elaborate on the themes from that movement. In the classical era it was common for performers to make up the cadenzas on the spot to display their improvisation ability as well as their technical prowess. In the romantic period composers usually wrote their own cadenzas, though it is still acceptable in some cases for the performer to create their own and substitute it for the composers.

Short answer, it's the part where soloist gets to show off...

There can be fermata in a concerto which offer the same opportunity for improvisation. A cadenza is a cadence, and is marked by the final resolution of the piece to its tonality.

Other pieces besides concertos may have cadenzas. There are written-out cadenzas in one of Mozart's sonatas and his quintet for piano and winds.

Why do many cadenzas end with a trill?

As BDB said, a "cadenza" is just a very long "cadence" (I put quotes so that you can see the similarity between the two words).

The orchestra plays a big chord which is not very stable and wants very much to be followed by another chord that ends the phrase... instead, after the orchestra plays this unstable chord, the soloist sort of goes off on a big tangent, playing a big cadenza, before completing the cadence and ending the phrase.

Originally, this was improvised, and there could be several cadenzas in one piece. In opera arias, for example, or Corelli concertos, they'd improvise these on the spot and the cadenzas would be very short; in the classical and romantic concertos, these cadenzas were very long and were often written out ahead of time.

But because they were so often improvised, the conductor would have absolutely no way of knowing when to come back in... so to signal the conductor and the orchestra, the soloist would idiomatically end with a long trill. The trill meant, "OK let's go! Cadenza's over!"

By the 1900s, it was not common at all for the soloist to improvise... the cadenzas were all written out by the composer. So, trills weren't really needed anymore, and composers like Bartok and Prokofiev and Shostakovich wrote the cadenzas so that the orchestra would simply know when to come in without a trill for a cue. But in the 1600s and 1700s, it was very common to improvise cadenzas, so that's why trills seem to occur a lot at the ends of classical cadenzas, even those that are written down.

Thanks everyone for such clear answers. Much appreciated.

dont forget that while cadenza's are commonly found in concertos, they can be found in solo compositions as well. quite often you will find them in solo piano pieces

Well, in a rock concert, a cadenza would be when the entire band stops and the electric guitar player starts doing his thing. It's like a solo where the solo player goes wild.

And when the solo player is done the music picks off where it left off.

If you listen to some old Ozzy Osbourne CDs you will hear Randy Rhodes doing some cadenza type stuff. I used to want to be a heavy metal guitar chic like Lita Ford but that just didn't pan out. So I'm just a piano player wannabe now. But a lot of heavy metal guitar types like Bach and stuff. In a way they are on the same level.

Once just before Christmas, I was practizing my skills on the piano, and the phone rang. It was my neighbor, asking me what I was doing. I explained her that I was in the middle of a difficult cadenza.
Well, she said, good for you, I have totally given up baking for Christmas.
My question now is: What does a cadenza taste like? (Inquiring minds want to know.)

Isn't that Jerry Seindfeld's friend ?

Peter

a cadenza is its like a dining room buffett
sometimes its a tall cabinet you put dishes in
or its low and and has drawers on either side for silverware lines and dishes...

No, stupid! That's a crescendo!!

Reminds me of my OTHER neighbors: I was getting rid of my old credenza that came with the house, and since it still was in good shape, I went over to my next door neighbors and told them I was giving away a perfectly good credenza if they were interested. The answer was: No thank you, we just ate.
I'm NOT making this up, you know!