Musikalisches Bilderbuch, No. 5 Weisse Und Schwarze Tasten II
According to the German Wikipedia, István Szelényi (no, don’t ask me how to pronounce that) was a not-German and yes-Hungarian pianist and composer, born in 1904. He studied at the Budapest Academy of Music and liked performing and editing Liszt cause they’re both Hungarian and hungary for the satiater that is ~romantic music~. Except Szelényi had “the drive to write a tonal and intelligible, while contemporary music close.” Which means that he was actually an expressionist.
He composed Musikalisches Bilderbuch (Musical Picture-Book) in 1967, just 5 years before his death at 68 years old. This Reliable Source (totally not copied from German Wikipedia) suggests that Musical Picture-Book “is one of the most stimulating educational collections of piano music of the 20th century.”
So why does nobody have a numbered song list of it?!
Music of Our Time, Book 2, Twotone
(Yes, I’m digging through old RCM pieces now that it’s finally over. Do have a listen to Das Artige Kind, another simple study.)
The title of this post is somewhat misleading because Music of Our Time, Book 2 isn’t called ‘Twotone’. Twotone is one of the pieces in the book, but I don’t know which one. Imagine it as ‘Music of Our Time, Book 2, No. ???: Twotone,’ and it doesn’t seem as confusing. Of course, ‘No. ???’ looks appallingly ugly and I wouldn’t write such a travesty if my life depended on it, but…
Music of Our Time was actually a collaboration by renowned Canadian composer Jean Coulthard, and her two students David Duke and Joan Hansen. (I really don’t know how to properly Oxford comma this sentence, so I’ll just leave it as-is.) Twotone was written by Joan Hansen, an enigmatic mortgage sales representative-cum-composer.
…Yeah, that’s not the Joan Hansen we’re talking about. Probably shouldn’t go into so much detail on a composer when we have such a short little piece to talk about.
I really like the polytonality of this. (There’s… not much more to like. What can you like about 11 bars of music?) You can distinctly hear the two different hands, and the dissonances and parallel fifths actually sound alright. The key switch in the middle section seems a bit trivial, since the left hand F-major chord in bar 7 is still natural, and you don’t actually encounter any c-sharps in the right hand there. Actually, you don’t encounter any c-sharps in the entire piece…
If the dynamics aren’t contrasting enough, blame my camera: it automatically makes soft sounds louder and loud sounds softer. I think I did pretty well, though. I fessed up at bar 10 – there’s a two-beat rest, and I only rested for one. I hope nobody uses my recording to help them learn this piece… (which isn’t in the syllabus anymore, lol)
In two words, this piece is pretty cute.
Parallel 5ths
Oh hey, another Musical Monday!
Remember last Musical Monday, when I posted about Stephen Chatman’s Ginger Snaps? Neither do I! Here’s another composition that features parallel fifths like there’s no tomorrow. What’s it called?
…Parallel 5ths.
Preludes for Piano, Book 3, No. 3 Ginger Snaps
Welcome to another (late) Musical Monday! Today’s piece of music is titled… wait, I’ll let you guys guess…
..that’s right! It’s titled Friday, featuring the beloved Rebecca Black Ginger Snaps, written by Stephen Chatman in his music collection, Preludes for Piano, Book 3 between 1999 and 2001. Yep, it’s a recent (21st-century!) composition, and as you’d expect from recent compositions, it defies conventions a little bit.
Les Gymnopédies
I TOLD YOU GUYS I WOULD GIVE YOU MUSIC VIDEOS
SO HERE YOU GO
VIDEOS OF MUSIC. THREE OF THEM. SCROLL DOWN.
Études-Tableaux, Op. 33, No. 8
Oh man, this is HST Week but I’ve done nothing but HSRs; I swear, I’ve got all the musical stuff planned, but school stuff and parental stuff are seriously hampering my efforts to do something. At least I’ve got that Level E 7 post done (for next next day).
Petite suite en Quinze images, No. 7 La Promenade en Traîneau
For some reason, I seem to really like the number 7.
Firstly, there seems to be some time/video delay – as some of you may know, my camera sorta died on me a while ago, so now the only thing it can do is record videos, which it obviously is doing with quite a lot of bugs.
C’mon guys, this is /music/, some time/video discrepancies shouldn’t irk you much if you’re not looking at the video :P
For that matter, the lighting sucked, so the only thing worth looking at at the video was Bulbasaur.
—
As with most influential composers of, well, since the Renaissance, Jacques François Antoine Ibert was born in Paris. The 1890s were the start of quite an… emotionally compelling era, with German expressionism and French impressionism marking their lasting (pardon the pun) impressions on the musical industry.
Conceived in this turmoil of musical clashes, you’d expect Ibert to pick a style and stick with it; on the contrary, he was quite unattached to any style themes, preferring instead to dabble in the mishmash of genres prevalent in Parisian (and indeed, worldwide) society at the time.
This did not mean he was a bad composer at all, for he won one of the most coveted prize in musical composition – the Prix de Rome, waarded only to such geniuses as Hector Berlioz, Georges Bizet, and Claude Debussy.
After decades of productive musical establishment, the Axis-aligned Vichy Regime (of France) banned his music, and Ibert voluntarily moved to Switzerland to continue his career.
He died in 1962, when he was 71.
—
In 1943, after the outbreak of war, he composed ‘Petite suite en quinze images’ – Small suite, in 15 images (I BET YA DIDN’T KNOW THAT HUH). A completely solo piano work, he delicately paints many idyllic scenes of a peaceful time. Strangely, it seems (I just can’t find good recordings for all of them) that none of them are very loud. A perfectly natural thought for one wanting to escape the war.
The 7th piece in the collection, ‘La Promenade en Traîneau’, actually means ‘the Sleigh Ride’, rather than what I thought it was; ‘the Train Station’. Because of this, I tried to evoke visualizations of a quiet train station, with the suddenness and swiftness of a train arriving and leaving in the middle of the night. It seemed so much more… obvious. Before I searched up the real translation, I just couldn’t get why everyone else was basically slamming the notes to make it stand out against the seemingly unimportant bass. Really, it was quite… disgusting. Horrifying.
But what am I, to criticise others’ perceptions? What difference what that be to brutally sabotaging others’ inner mentality? When not even I, am properly expressing the dynamical nuances, the whole… calmness of the scene.
—
Yet, a train station would make much more sense. The quiet left-hand Alberti footsteps motioning the train to come faster, quicker, so that they could fially go home after a long day’s work. The sudden plunge into organized noise as the vehicle slowly slides into the platform. Quick pit-pats of shoe on ground, growing faster, louder, as swarms of people flood onto the train.
And then it’s gone.
Ten Pieces for Piano, Op. 12, No. 7 Prelude ‘Harp’
…That’s a mouthful.
Anyways, for, like, two weeks, I thought Bleach was going to end, so I was about to make a post about it ending…
…but it didn’t. DAMMIT KUBO MOTHERFUCKING AIZEN IS MOTHERFUCKING IN PRISON FOR TWENTY FIVE MOTHERFUCKING THOUSAND YEARS ALREADY, AND ICHIGO’S LOST ALL OF HIS MOTHERFUCKING SHINIGAMI POWERS. NOW WILL YOU STOP STOP STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP THE MADNESS?!
Next up, I recorded another recording of something, but THE CAMERA DIDN’T CATCH MY DYNAMICS, which was the ENTIRE POINT OF THE PIECE. Oh well, I guess I can re-record it again…
Finally, a day after I recorded the dynamic-fail piece, I recorded this; on October 23rd, to be precise. My computer was still dead then, so what else to do with my time?
There are numerous mistakes here as well, but my camera (yet again, I place the blame on something else) is set on one side of the piano, so the place where I wanted less volume to be actually got increased more in volume.
OH WELL
I probably rushed this as well; it’s supposed to have much more of a ‘harp’ sound, as it’s actually written for either piano or harp. You can play this on a harp. Yeah.
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Russia. Not SOVIET RUSSIA because that wouldn’t exist until Prokofiev became 26.
Anyways, from a young age, Prokofiev began demonstrating his ability to be superior over everyone else. When he was nine, he wrote an EPIC OPERA, first performed in NINETEEN OH ONE by SOME PEOPLE for an audience of SIX.
He obviously entered a prodigious musical academy while being considerably younger than the other students, and demonstrated a extreme passion for mus(ry
…
…
…
…His first major work was for the famous impresario Diaghilev, the very same who commissioned Stravinsky’s three Ballet Russes Ballets (Petrushka (F# MAJOR GO GO), L’Oiseau de Feu (the Firebird), and Le Sacre du Printemps (the Rite of Spring)), the Chout ballet.
Eventually, SOVIET RUSSIA began to appear and socialize much of Russia’s art forms; his experimental, modern tones had to move to San Francisco.
After the first world war was over, he returned to Russia to much more favourable conditions. However, Prokofiev died on March the 5th, 1953 – the same day as Joseph Stalin.
As an aside, because everyone was SAD about Stalin’s death, they couldn’t carry Prokofiev’s body out for the funeral until the 8th.
His Opus Twelve is a collection of 10 works for either piano or harp, each one being completely different from the others (e.g. Number 5 is ‘Caprice: Allegretto capricciosamente’). It was composed between 1906 and 1913, and had its premiere in 1914. Number Seven (this one) is the ‘easiest’ to play…
Anywho, Prokofiev was an awesome man. I mean, anyone who composes anything that has a title like ‘The Love for Three Oranges’ has to be awesome.
…right?
Nine Tales, Gallop
Here’s me playing Gallop, by Christos Tsitsaros.
Anyways, for some backstory – my piano (RCM, though if ya live outside of Canadia ta means nothin to ya at all >_>) examination is coming up on ta Saturday, so I’ve gotta prepare for it and stuff.
:V
Ya play a total of seven pieces, so I’mma upload all of those during ta week.
In the order I’mma play them in.
Gallop’s a modern piece, composed by Tsitsaros in 1996 in his “Nine Tales” collection.
I think it’s supposed to portray something galloping, but ya wouldn’t know cause I played it too horribly to listen to :V
I might say more stuff here but there’s nothin to say.
I realize there are tons of mistakes, and I’ll speak about ta later on. But not now because I need ta paint ta fence or somethin :/
O-New 