Showing papers on "Piano published in 1984"

Timing in Solo and Duet Piano Performances

Abstract: Perhaps some of the most refined forms of timing arise in musical performance, particularly in the coordination between musicians playing together. Studies of timing in solo and duet piano performances are described, in which the musicians gave repeat performances of the music. In both solo and duet performances there was expressive use of timing, modulating the tempo of the music and the phase relationship between the voices, and the expressive forms were similar in successive performances of the piece. There was also evidence of separate timing control of the metre and of the production of notes and rests. Thus timing in musical performance is best modelled by assuming two levels of timekeeper, one pacing the metre and the other contained in the movement trajectories of note production, computed by motor procedure in relation to the metre. It is argued that expressive forms are derived from an interpretation of the music rather than memorized; and that coordination between voices in the music is achieve...

An Investigation of Reinforcements, Time Use, and Student Attentiveness in Piano Lessons.

Abstract: This investigation was a survey of natural rates and ratios of reinforcements, time use, student attentiveness, and interruptions of student performance in 96 private piano lessons. Forty-eight tea...

The age of Mozart and Beethoven

Abstract: Giorgio Pestelli examines one of the crucial periods of musical history, from the middle of the eighteenth century to the era of Beethoven. This was a time of great cultural, technical and social changes. The free professional composer, in direct contact with the wide musical public, replaced the dependent court musician. Instrumental music became the centre of new developments, and sonata form, the cornerstone of nineteenth-century musical architecture, dominated its language. With the decrease in private patronage came the birth of the public concert; there was a vast increase in music publishing, and important developments were made in instrumental techniques, the dominant feature being the rise of the piano. Standing out from this common background are three major figures; Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, whose specific characteristics are discussed in detail, along with their links with many other musicians. Dr Pestelli also emphasizes general lines of development: the galant style, the passion for antiquity and curiosity for the exotic, the debate over 'literary' opera, the Sturm und Drang movement, the influence of the French Revolution and the Restoration, and the origins of romanticism. The originality of the book arises from the fact that it views the music against the background of social, political, philosophical and cultural trends of the time, rather than relying on detailed analyses of specific works.

Conversations with Glenn Gould

Abstract: One of the most idiosyncratic and charismatic musicians of the twentieth century, pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82) slouched at the piano from a sawed-down wooden stool, interpreting Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart at hastened tempos with pristine clarity. A strange genius and true eccentric, Gould was renowned not only for his musical gifts but also for his erratic behavior: he often hummed aloud during concerts and appeared in unpressed tails, fingerless gloves, and fur coats. In 1964, at the height of his controversial career, he abandoned the stage completely to focus instead on recording and writing. Jonathan Cott, a prolific author and poet praised by Larry McMurtry as "the ideal interviewer," was one of the very few people to whom Gould ever granted an interview. Cott spoke with Gould in 1974 for Rolling Stone and published the transcripts in two long articles; after Gould's death, Cott gathered these interviews in Conversations with Glenn Gould, adding an introduction, a selection of photographs, a list of Gould's recorded repertoire, a filmography, and a listing of Gould's programs on radio and TV. A brilliant one-on-one in which Gould discusses his dislike of Mozart's piano sonatas, his partiality for composers such as Orlando Gibbons and Richard Strauss, and his admiration for the popular singer Petula Clark (and his dislike of the Beatles), among other topics, "Conversations with Glenn Gould" is considered by many, including the subject, to be the best interview Gould ever gave and one of his most remarkable performances.

Player piano music as therapy for the elderly.

Abstract: With the increasing geriatric population, more research is needed to identify strategies for enriching the quality of life for older adults. Music therapy has been well documented for its beneficial effects on physical and mental health. The notion of using player piano music as therapy for the elderly evolved because of the absence of this approach in the literature. Eleven elderly clients in a midwestern retirement center participated in an ABA experimental design to measure responses to player piano music. Cognitive, affective, and behavioral data were collected through observational and subjective interview tools. Results demonstrated marked increments of rhythmic and extremity responses to musical treatment. Additionally, player piano music was enjoyed and enhanced a state of well-being and youth, enabled retrieval of specific long-term memories, and provided "action-oriented" cognitive themes and stimulation.

Brahms's Performances of Early Choral Music

Abstract: Today Johannes Brahms is best remembered as one of the great composers of the nineteenth century During his own lifetime he was also well known as a performer-first as a pianist, and in his last twenty years as a conductor of his own works His activities as a conductor of music by other composers also played an important part in the development of his career Especially remarkable was his emphasis on works of the Renaissance and Baroque periods-music which in the mid-nineteenth century was only beginning to find a place in the repertoire of most choral societies A brief account of Brahms's career as a choral conductor demonstrates how large a place early music occupied in the repertoire of his groups, the single exception being the small amateur men's chorus he conducted in the village of Winsen during the summer of 1847, just after his fourteenth birthday' At the court of Detmold, where Brahms held his first regular paid position for the three autumn seasons 1857 through 1859, his duties included conducting the court choral society, along with giving piano lessons to the Princess and playing for concerts Here he found the first opportunity to perform some of the Renaissance and Baroque vocal music that he had begun studying and collecting several years earlier2 Meanwhile, during the months spent at home in Hamburg, he began to direct a women's

Voice timbre in solo and choir singing: Is there a difference

Abstract: Professional and amateur bass/baritone singers with experience both as soloists and choir singers heard their own voice mixed with a piano accompaniment while they performed a specially composed solo selection. Then the piano accompaniment was replaced by a recording of a choir made in the bass section during rehearsal and the subjects were asked to sing the bass part. In each case the subject's voices were recorded, and comparisons were made between similar vowels sung at the same pitch and sound pressure level. The output spectra are noticeably greater in the region of the singer's formant [J. Sundberg, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 55, 838 (1977)] in the solo singing mode. However, differences in the source spectra, obtained by inverse filtering of the formants, are not consistent among the singer subjects.

Electronic musical performance

Abstract: A keyboard for an electronic music instrument is made to have a "piano key feel" by bracketing an end of each key with the legs of a weighted A-shaped action arm which pivots about a single point and actuates a leaf spring switch.

Jazz in the Classroom

Abstract: Music as a whole is richer for the coming of jazz. Although its natural performing habitat is the night-club rather than the concert-hall, the fact that many recordings have endured in the public consciousness over several decades, and that jazz-lovers return to these recordings again and again to find new and life-enhancing things expressed in their sounds, would seem to indicate that jazz is more than just ‘entertainment’, although, like the music of Haydn, agreat deal of it is very entertaining. Jazz has openedup new realms of expression, and is capable of conveying deep feeling in the subtlest shades. It has also made a major contribution to the language of music, in giving us new approaches to melody, harmony and rhythm, and extending the range of tonal colours for both instruments and the voice. Its extensions of instrumental virtuosity have formed one of its most impressive achievements. Some instruments, the saxophone for example, had to wait for the emergence of jazz before their full potential could be realised. But the repertoires of established instruments such as the trumpet and the piano have also been greatly stimulated by their encounter with jazz. The theoretical side of jazz is rich in new concepts, or new ways of looking at traditional things such as harmony and scale-patterns. These techniques, together with the individualistic ethos of the jazz performing tradition, have had a profound influence on the popular music enjoyed by huge numbers of young people. The musical language of pop music, of rock, reggae, soul, and other styles, is steeped in the grammar and structures originally developed by jazz musicians.

The Digital Piano and the Patch Control Language System.

Abstract: Two defleshing machines of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,157 are modified so that they receive skins to be defleshed through respective feed openings directed in opposite horizontal directions, and discharge the defleshed or partly defleshed skins downwardly. A transfer conveyor receives the skins discharged from the first machine and raises them to the feed opening of the second machine. If the feed openings are directed toward each other, the skins are discharged from the second machine to an off-loading conveyor with their hair sides up. If the feed openings are directed horizontally away from each other, the fully defleshed skins are discharged to the off-loading conveyor with their flesh sides up.

Interviews with Soviet Composers

Abstract: (On 21 May, while in Moscow for the International Festival of Contemporary Music (see TEMPO 150), a young New York violinist of the Citizen Exchange Council group and I met Alfred Schnittke, whose music is published in the West and who is, with Edison Denisov, probably the best-known contemporary Soviet composer outside the USSR. His styles swing a pendulum between free atonality and the neo-Romantic tonalism found in some parts of western Europe and America nowadays; his Fourth Violin Concerto, premiered in Berlin, will be played in Cleveland soon. Our conversation took place in a Moscow park, and was translated by CarlosJuris, a graduate student in piano of Moscow Conservatory.)