Musings on my neverending quest for sugar

The insanity of music

For those of you, including myself, who think playing classical music is hard enough (Rachmaninoff is a bridge between classical and semi-avant-garde, I guess...), you really ain't seen nothing yet. I've attended several piano concerts featuring modern music, and I can't even imagine having to read the notes that are written there, because it really sounds like the composers threw a bunch of random notes together in some random rhythm. But you know it really can't be that haphazard and so the pianist must sit there for hours picking out notes one by one and then trying to figure out what sort of rhythm it is. (At least I would. Certainly concert pianists are better sightreaders than I am, and I sightread pretty well..) It hurts my brain just thinking about it.

Gayle took advantage of that statement during my piano lesson to show me how truly frightening modern music looks like on paper. Her concert on November 6 with flute, cello, violin, and clarinet, features music by George Crumb, who was inspired by humpback whale songs to write a nocturne (or was it an etude?). That in itself should be eyebrow-raising, but here's the cool part: Gayle will have little random interludes where she sticks her hand into the bowels of the piano to hold down strings, pluck strings, bang strings with paperclips, put a piece of glass onto the strings to get a rattle, etc. There's even a point where she takes a chisel to a string. A chisel. (I commented that that couldn't be good for the piano. She agreed with me. Maybe George Crumb has a Liszt complex)

But the sheet music was truly terrifying. I've seen musical pit orchestra scores, and I've played in a pit orchestra, but this Crumb stuff was NOTHING like that. Random measures were strewn around the page (with no measure numbers), and the measures weren't even connected. Instead, there were little notes and arrows pointing every which way. In certain parts, the piano system goes around in a little circle that takes up half the page. Like, all of the bars and the notes go around in a full circle instead of a line. I forgot to look if the notes are written upside down on the bottom, but in any case...oddities!

My next question was: Did the music publishers actually have to acquire a special program or some machine to print out this circular music? *scratches head*

But yes! I will be there on November 6, to watch Gayle and her box of piano-tinkering toys. It will be beyond entertaining. Also, because that humpback whale piece calls for "three masked players." Heeeeeeee.

posted by sugarfiend @ 12:18 PM