Piano

About: Piano is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6760 publications have been published within this topic receiving 33580 citations. The topic is also known as: pianoforte & grand piano.

Council for Research in Music Education

Abstract: As viewed through the theoretical frameworks of Lave and Wenger’s situated learning, leisure theory, and quality-of-life theory, the purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics, attitudes and perceptions of adult community band musicians (N = 275) in nine randomly selected ensembles in order to glean insights into how music education might facilitate (a) more meaningful connections between school and community, and (b) greater lifespan engagement with participatory music making. The “typical” survey respondent was over 45, physically healthy, white, nonsmoker, nondrinker, churchgoer, well-educated, upper-middle class, married with children, active in the community, studied piano and sung in a choir at some point, learned their instrument in school, enjoyed classical music, and chose to play in the band for both musical and social reasons. Significant differences between those who learned to play their instrument in school and those who did not were minimal. Implications for music educators concerned about the “car-ryover” of school music to music making later in life are discussed. The contrast between the world of school music and actual musical conditions in the world outside is startling. (Gordon, Zanzig, & Tilton, 1933, p. 17)

Transmodal Sensorimotor Networks during Action Observation in Professional Pianists

Abstract: Audiovisual perception and imitation are essential for musical learning and skill acquisition. We compared professional pianists to musically naive controls with fMRI while observing piano playing finger–hand movements and serial finger–thumb opposition movements both with and without synchronous piano sound. Pianists showed stronger activations within a fronto-parieto-temporal network while observing piano playing compared to controls and contrasted to perception of serial finger–thumb opposition movements. Observation of silent piano playing additionally recruited auditory areas in pianists. Perception of piano sounds coupled with serial finger–thumb opposition movements evoked increased activation within the sensorimotor network. This indicates specialization of multimodal auditory–sensorimotor systems within a fronto-parieto-temporal network by professional musical training. Musical ''language,'' which is acquired by observation and imitation, seems to be tightly coupled to this network in accord with an observation–execution system linking visual and auditory perception to motor performance.

Multipitch Estimation of Piano Sounds Using a New Probabilistic Spectral Smoothness Principle

Abstract: A new method for the estimation of multiple concurrent pitches in piano recordings is presented. It addresses the issue of overlapping overtones by modeling the spectral envelope of the overtones of each note with a smooth autoregressive model. For the background noise, a moving-average model is used and the combination of both tends to eliminate harmonic and sub-harmonic erroneous pitch estimations. This leads to a complete generative spectral model for simultaneous piano notes, which also explicitly includes the typical deviation from exact harmonicity in a piano overtone series. The pitch set which maximizes an approximate likelihood is selected from among a restricted number of possible pitch combinations as the one. Tests have been conducted on a large homemade database called MAPS, composed of piano recordings from a real upright piano and from high-quality samples.

The Romantic Generation

Abstract: Preface Music and Sound Imagining the sound Romantic paradoxes: the absent melody Classical and Romantic pedal Conception and realization Tone color and structure Fragments Renewal The Fragment as Romantic form Open and closed Words and music The emancipation of musical language Experimental endings and cyclical forms Ruins Disorders Quotations and memories Absence: the melody suppressed Mountains and Song Cycles Horn calls Landscape and music Landscape and the double time scale Mountains as ruins Landscape and memory Music and memory Landscape and death: Schubert The unfinished workings of the past Song cycles without words Formal Interlude Mediants Four-bar phrases Chopin: Counterpoint and the Narrative Forms Poetic inspiration and craft Counterpoint and the single line Narrative form: the ballade Changes of mode Italian opera and J. S. Bach Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed Keyboard exercises Virtuosity and decoration (salon music?) Morbid intensity Chopin: From the Miniature Genre to the Sublime Style Folk music? Rubato Modal harmony? Mazurka as Romantic form The late mazurkas Freedom and tradition Liszt: On Creation as Performance Disreputable greatness Die Lorelei: the distraction of influence The Sonata: the distraction of respectability The invention of Romantic piano sound: the Etudes Conception and realization The masks of Liszt Recomposing: Sonnet no. 104 Self-Portrait as Don Juan Berlioz: Liberation from the Central European Tradition Blind idolaters and perfidious critics Tradition and eccentricity: the idee fixe Chord color and counterpoint Long-range harmony and contrapuntal rhythm: the "Scene d'amour" Mendelssohn and the Invention of Religious Kitsch Mastering Beethoven Transforming Classicism Classical form and modern sensibility Religion in the concert hall Romantic Opera: Politics, Trash, and High Art Politics and melodrama Popular art Bellini Meyerbeer Schumann: Triumph and Failure of the Romantic Ideal The irrational The inspiration of Beethoven and Clara Wieck The inspiration of E.T.A. Hoffmann Out of phase Lyric intensity Failure and triumph Index of Names and Works