I consider it a sign of maturity that I no longer swear at Chopin. I have been swearing at Chopin since I was little. Back then I had all this swearing to do and no words to do it with. We didn’t stock that kind of language in my house, so all I had to work with was high-pitched squeals. A few years later I’d picked up some useful vocabulary and I swore at Chopin with it.
The problem was that I found his stuff unnecessarily difficult to read. Little kids want everything written in C major so what they see is what they get. You get over that, though, and the black keys are easier to play on. But one thing Chopin seemed to specialize in was writing things in keys that already had a superfluous number of flats and sharps in them and then spraying them with more flats and sharps like graffiti on an underpass. At that point the casual amateur pianist no longer has any idea what notes he had in mind. Sometimes just for the pure hell of it he drops in double-flats too. Eventually one fears the whole piece will slide off the bottom end of the keyboard.
All these extraneous sharps and flats are called “accidentals” because it’s so hard to believe the composer meant to do them. In Chopin’s case it always seems like he picks a key to compose in and then soon decides he didn’t mean that key at all, but a whole other one nearby. He’ll change his mind about the key signature every few measures just to keep you on your toes. Chopin was a young man when he died. No one actually says anything about murder but I don’t think it can be ruled out.
So, as a younger musician, I used to have to bushwhack through a Chopin piece I was learning by stopping three or four times per measure to work out what the hell chord he was going for. And at that pace a lot of the chords sounded wrong. They’d resolve beautifully when played up to speed but the getting-there was a mess. Learning his stuff was like jumping from boulder to boulder in a roaring stream and calling it a “stroll.”
But I’ve improved my sight-reading ability, even in my dotage, and my swearing has dwindled to the occasional tsk. Even if he presents me something in five flats, I don’t freak out anymore. I might have to saddle up and take ‘er around the ring a few times until she quits bucking, but then it’s usually a smooth ride.
So here I am, all mature and all, and it’s not like I can play everything he put out there, but I can lay waste to a respectable amount of the oeuvre. I dip into it periodically for our recital group, which meets four times a year. In January, I happened to hear a Chopin piece on the radio, and I thought: hey, that sounds like something I can learn in a couple months without breaking too much of a sweat.
I’d never heard it before. I believe, now, it is because it isn’t one of his better pieces. Still, I ordered the sheet music and had at it. Sucker is in G-flat major. That’s six flats. You can’t hardly get many more than six flats. Ehh, I thought, what’s one more flat? I’ll take the spurs to it and it’ll settle down in a few days.
What’s one more flat, I ask? I will tell you. One more flat means it contains a C-flat. And I will state for posterity that there should be no such thing as C-flat. C is stability. C is Switzerland. I have been hammering at this thing for a couple months now, and that C will not flat itself. My brain refuses to accept it. A person should believe in something, and I believe C-flat is just flat wrong.
There is a rare key signature with seven flats that is still rumored to exist in the wild. It’s C-flat major. And we already know that can’t exist.
I’m back to swearing again. Not much, not often, and nothing I ever heard from my mom, but the word “mother” is involved.
Totally agree! There’s only five black keys. Should be enough for any reasonable person.
Chopin was unreasonably gifted though.
Oh, Murr! As a fellow piano student, I can totally relate. I believe Chopin and Liszt were in a battle to see who could come up with the most ridiculously challenging piano music. Sort of a nerdy composers’ version of, “Hey, guys — watch this!” Throw in a few hemiolas and as many accidentals as possible and all the girls will be swooning! But it is beautiful to listen to (at full speed). Thanks for the chuckle.
Laughing out loud–in C major, thank you very much!
Hemiolas and accidentals sound to violent. Liszt was mainly a show-off, I think. He liked to compose things only he could play, and I guess he did make the ladies swoon. Purty boy, when young, too. I don’t know all the music, but when I hear something that sounds mighty difficult and late-Romantic but somehow not as compelling as I’d like, I figure it’s Liszt.
Where’s my edit? “So violent.” Not to violent.
I don’t play the piano, but Paul does. He had to begin with his teacher (as a middle-aged man) with classical music. Neither of us are into classical music. But the teacher insisted he had to start with it, before he could play the stuff he WANTED to play (rock music.) Personally, I’m into jazz. Even though jazz has its classic standards, it gives artists leeway to improvise along the way, and even weave other songs into the one that they are playing. I love its exuberance.
Paul eventually got tired of only learning classical compositions. This was supposed to be FUN, not work.
We were fans of a local chanteuse, who played piano and sang at a night club in Philly once in a while, Laura Shay. She also had this problem when learning piano, and took off on her own to teach herself what she needed to know. It inspired Paul to get the music he WANTED to learn online and teach himself. He doesn’t play as well as Laura did, but he’s not doing it to sell tickets. Plus he can’t sing worth shit. But it’s fun for him, so I just hold my ears and my tongue.
I don’t think you need to be classically trained to play what you like. I do love classical and a whole lot else, but that doesn’t mean ALL classical, and I think if you want to teach someone, you should offer what they like. I lost some interest in piano because my teacher kept giving me some classical stuff and some stuff that was developed specifically to teach children, things like “Pachyderms On Parade” and “Howdy Doody March” (I’m making this up) that might teach some technique and slant things toward kids’ ability levels but fail to inspire. May I say UTTERLY fail to inspire?
I’m always a little puzzled by people not liking classical music, because I wonder what they’ve been exposed to. It’s like saying you don’t like, I don’t know. Books.
My father was a talented pianist and knowing this about Chopin I’m even more impressed with his piano chops as he played Chopin a lot. But he could read music and I’ve never been able to. Me, who can type up any manuscript at 95 words per minute and not ever look at my hands. But put sheets music in front of me and I have to go…”OK, E-G-B-D-F, that’s an F…OK, next note…” I used to just memorize a piece that way but if I made a mistake I had to go back and start all over. Needless to say I never got very far…
You needed a little more time-in. I too am very happy I learned to be a good typist!
I don’t know if my piano skills helped my typing or vice versa, but I, too, am a wizard on the office keyboard.
Sheet music. Not sheets.
Holy Cow! I have think very visually so I have to covert each step to that damn C flat…. I suspect that is not clear but its a process I go through when I sight read. That is my strong point since all the time I took lessons for years I had to sit and sight read a new piece of music at the beginning of each lesson… So while I can sight read pretty good… the worst thing for me is the strange time signatures that exist now… what the hell is 9/2?
BEATS the hell out of me!
I got used to odd time signatures when learning Balkan folk dances. I still remember a couple of mnemonics: ⅞ was “Mortimer’s gonna get it, Mortimer’s gonna get it” and 9/8 was “Money, money, money, wonderful, money, money, money wonderful.” The hardest for me to learn was 4 on 3 for Paraguayan harp music (which I haven’t played in decades — the harp is gathering dust in the corner). For a real treat (you may or may not think it so), check out the 33/16 jazz in Don Ellis’ “Bulgarian Bulge” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUYtWvavvYg
Keyboard instruments are tuned in equal temperament, developed as a compromise in tuning to cut down on the amount of keys needed. In orchestral instruments, there are very subtle differences between, say, A sharp and B flat. Western musical notation evolved similarly to the human eye- it’s functional, but has a lot of Rube Goldberg mechanics within.
“That goddamn piano and organ are ruining music.”- Edgard Varése (one of Frank Zappa’s influences)
It IS hard to bend a note on a piano.
You can bow a piano! Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4alKtwIgScM
Wow, fascinating!
Thanks to Saint Mikey for the link to extraordinary music composed by the late Stephen Scott and played by The Bowed Piano Ensemble.
I am so ignorant when it comes to music I don’t even know what the black keys are for. Or those pedals at the bottom of the piano. I never learned any music at all, though I did sing along with the Top 40 on the radio, but only when no one else was home because no one needs to hear that caterwauling.
I’m with you River. I never learned to play anything but the radio. I don’t speak music.
I’d like to hear you play!
My goodness, what a new insight into Murr and your commenters! I am out of my league but I’ve enjoyed the visit to your solar system with which I am unfamiliar.
Regarding not liking classical music….Agree, Murr, that’s like saying you don’t like books.
My brother had a girlfriend who didn’t like pie.
Well, I guess that’s one way to dodge a gajillion calories over a lifetime, but man…even Boston cream pie?
Makes me wish I hadn’t given my piano to my neighbor so her little kids could learn to play. They moved away and left the piano to the new owners, so I’m out of luck with them accidentals.
My contribution!! — Wonderful film (1991) “Impromptu” with Hugh Grant (Chopin) and Judy Davis (George Sand). Not a true story but wonderful music!