Piano Means Quiet
I have finally gotten around to arranging a page for some of my piano and virginal playing. These are mostly drafts, but I find them listenable, if you have developed an ear for that sort of thing, that is. The first one on the list, me noodling away on my piano, d332. is my favorite. It really captured something deep down inside, something I feel I could never expressed in words, perhaps, the most personal item on this entire website of mine. Every word I have written here, every picture I have taken, none comes as close to my heart as this piece. I also consider it a remarkably rare instance where I am entirely lacking in self-consciousness (I have terrible stage fright!) and it came off sounding very natural. Enjoy!
Me at the piano without realizing the recorder is on (piano) (type: mp3 size: 1.6 mB)
Michael Nyman - Big My Secret, from the movie the Piano" (piano) (type: mp3 size: 2.8 mB)
J.S. Bach - Goldberg Aria (piano) (type: mp3 size 1.6 mB)
J.S. Bach - Goldberg Variation 13 (piano) (type: mp3 size 1.6 mB)
Robert Dowland - Allemande (virginal) (type: mp3 size: 1.7 mB)
Greensleeves (virginal) (type: mp3 size: 1.3 mB)
Robert Burns - Ae Fond Kiss (virginal) (type: mp3 size: 1.2 mB)
Adrianus Valerius - Engels Malsims (koto sample) (type: mp3 size: 1.4 mB)Anonymous: Ma Belle Si Ton Ame (virginal) (type: mp3 size: 1.1 mB)
Piano is a dynamic marking in music notation, signifying softly, quietly, gracefully. These were qualities that have always attracted me to playing the piano. I discovered long ago that my personality was such that I would never be able to carry off playing the bombastic, bravura pieces that many have come to associate a virtuoso with. I had no interest in music as a vehicle for displaying one's technical equipment. Matching, comparing, measuring seemed to me aspects belonging to the scientific and medical labs. Competition and scorecards are best confined to the sports arena where they belong.
Choosing to play a piano piano greatly limits my repertoire. The typical response to my playing usually relates to the great simplicity of the pieces. I am not bothered in the least by my modest abilities or restrained selections as a pianist, because speed and volume are quantitative issues that can be reduced to numbers. Complexity doesn't necessarily guarantee music nor does it indicate insight.
Pogorelich once said that Bach gave you so few notes, that the risks increased dramatically and each note counted that much more.
The attraction to simple, unadorned music stems from my lifelong distaste for gaudy boasting and unnecessary extravagance. Speaking for myself, there is infinitely more magic in discovering a secret in the pause between two notes than there are inspirations amidst rapturous soaring glissandos of Lisztian dimensions. The delight of music, whatever genre, lies in the fact that all sounds are born from silence.
My piano, purchased used, makes quite a few mechanical sounds behind the fallboard. Combined with my introverted and private sense of playing, those sounds become quite apparent. The school of listening I belong to has Cage somewhere in its alumni. We are often so caught up in the digital perfection of modern times that we have forgotten the sheer joy of music making. We strive for mechanical perfection in our playing and our instruments, while we have lost touch with that elemental wonder of simply pressing a key and making a sound.
To this day, I will sit at the piano and quietly recall the joy of the very first time I opened my mouth and made a sound, moving the air. Filling the void.
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