Classical Music & Chess

Oh - wonderful!! :-) I'm so happy to hear :-) !!!!!

Funny - only now I notice that you wrote Beethoven op. 10 n. 3 -

This video, I suppose - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYtog4JDCQ

I was for some reason under the impression that you wrote "Chopin op. 10 n. 3" (a very well known etude, also known as "Tristesse"...

And I was like, "Really?" - I didn't remember putting that one on the channel... although it's an all-time favorite and I play it a lot. 

<Sco64>

I've been a professional concert pianist and piano teacher between the years 1991 and 2015. 

Unfortunately, due to a remarkable lack of opportunities, I decided on a career change last year in April (when my finances were on the rocks - and I do have a child to feed). 

I decided to contact some companies in the field of TRANSLATIONS - as I speak five languages and have some expertise in some high-demand fields (such as legal, and more). 

Tons of work got in on the first month - immediately. 

I have never looked back... and my finances have recovered very very well. 

This YouTube channel is a great souvenir - with its close to 200 videos, encompassing really tons of repertoire. 

I still hope that someday, a manager will "pick up the glove" and be interested in what I have to offer - this simply didn't happen in all of those years - and I contacted really everybody, planetwide (some 300 agencies, registered in iamaworld, which is their worldwide organization). I sent numerous examples of my music, pretty regularly, in intervals of several years...

But I'm basically a happy guy. I know what I can do - and if I can keep doing it and make a decent living - I'm in, any time. 

The real Mozart is in his Operas...He is simply  great there..He created magic  with the 3  Da Ponte operas as the mount everest of music..

I know. But there are many ways to make things work... 

This is actually a historical truth, and well documented in letters that Mozart sent to his father - about having to cater to the taste of the public...

He does have some more experimental works - especially in his last years - but you find greatness everywhere, also in his most "conventional" works. He still puts greatness into pretty much everything he writes - at least every genre, if not every individual piece. 

He does have some more experimental works - especially in his last years - but you find greatness everywhere, also in his most "conventional" works. He still puts greatness into pretty much everything he writes - at least every genre, if not every individual piece. 

I agree Solskytz...Mozart is heavenly

Ahhh, to see the art in Mozart.  Spoken like a true musician who has been around the block and not a 20 something who has much to learn.  Mozart's operas, as gerberk mentioned, reveal his mastership of the form.

And Sco64, if your gig doesn't work out you can always be the Salieri of the chessboard, and to be fair the same can be said of most of us regarding our play.  Just don't be the Emperor Joseph II of the chessboard and say "There are simply too many moves to consider ... just too many moves."

But there are, <Fighting Bob>... 

So many moves... :-) 

Happy, like when you played Ligeti - Musica Ricarcata I and only had to play two notes, right?  Fantastic job, btw; those aren't the two easiest notes to play on the piano, I'd say...

Thanks for reminding me of that one - it's really a cool one. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en3wYJZVIA0&list=PLN4tRihBt9BzsYVYuEkMYuZ0v4URkH9UR

The second note appears only ONCE - in the very end - as if to say - "Checkmate!!", or maybe - "Gotcha!!"

Until that point, it's ONE note, and ONE only

(but WHAT a note, you know the routine...)

(explanation: of course this piece includes MANY notes - but the point is that they're all ONE AND THE SAME note - known as "A" if you're Anglo-Saxon, or "La" if you're a European or an Israeli...)

(The "A", or "La" appears on a variety of pitches (note heights), in varying rhythms, degrees of loudness - even moods - in this short piece - building to a series of climaxes - amazing what a composer can do with one note only!)

(Musica Ricercata is a collection of eleven pieces from 1951, in which the composer uses only 2 notes in the first piece, then 3 in the second (well known from "Eyes Wide Open" and here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQmU4elZWTA&list=PLN4tRihBt9BzsYVYuEkMYuZ0v4URkH9UR&index=2)

(then 4 notes on the third piece, etc., until all of the 12 note-types of the piano are represented in the eleventh and last piece)

(The 12 notes are A, B, C, D, E, F, G - plus five types of BLACK keys, which are known as Db, Eb, Ab, Bb and Gb - or as C#, D#, F#, G# and A# - where the "b" sign is called "flat" and the "#" sign is called "Sharp"). 

(these 12 notes repeat themselves in cycles on the piano keyboard - there are seven such cycles (a bit more actually), where the notes become progressively higher - you get a low A, then pass through the other eleven notes, then a higher A, etc. - the sequence of notes goes A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, Ab - and now again A, only higher than the previous A)

(there are 8 As on the piano all in all, going from low to high)

(the genius composer Gyorgy Ligeti uses all of them to advantage in this spectacular piece!)

(Throughout these 11 pieces,  Ligeti goes through a great variety of musical styles and types of expression. It is an amazing piece, very well worth knowing and playing. I have put ns. 1, 2 and 7 on my channel)

(And by the way - the last note in this first piece is a "D", or a "Re")

And No. 7, so cool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA8KqcibIcI&list=PLN4tRihBt9BzsYVYuEkMYuZ0v4URkH9UR&index=3

Got game(lan)?

This ostinato sounds so sci-fi to me, like a computer churning out sequences of chess moves or something... 

This would be great in a movie about chess...

Right!! Gamelan it is!! :-) 

I don't really know MUCH about this way of creating music - except that it is prevalent (probably) in some Pacific islands (I think) - and that the music goes in cycles - some shorter, some longer. 

The piece has a seven-note cycle on the left hand, which NEVER stops - and what is also remarkable, is that as opposed to "usual" classical music, there is no relation or dependence between one rhythmic cycle, or another. 

In this piece, the lovely songlike theme on the right hand, has a definite rhythm - but that rhythm has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on on the left hand. 

You have to split yourself into two in playing this music - as there is really no relation. 

Robert mentioned Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RzXLcfCAHQ (but the beginning is cut, unfortunately)

In this piece, there's also a complex relation in rhythm between the hands - in the rapid parts (the beginning and the end), for each 4 notes played by the right hand, you play 3 on the left. 

This is complex and very hard to master - ask any pianist who tried... :-)

However - the hands ARE still related - it's really 3 to EVERY 4. 

Not so in our "Gamelan" piece - in which a wholly different state of mind is required - or you could say, a different state of minds. You really split yourself into two in this one...

This ostinato sounds so sci-fi to me, like a computer churning out sequences of chess moves or something... 

This would be great in a movie about chess...

Most probably - or even like ALIEN music...

I stopped after Bartok...He is great in his string Quartets and works for violin

Ligeti and Stockhausen and Cage etc is not my cup of tea...a little Ligeti maybe

What i really hate is Ivo Paert

The thing is, that modern composers are not all the same. 

Some people manage to cast content, emotional and musical, even into the modern composing idiom. Ligeti is a fantastic example. 

How do they do it, you ask yourself, without the convenient frame which ruled music in the pre-modern area (everyone with some musical education would understand what I refer to, but I won't go into terminology, to avoid confusing the general crowd...) - and which still rules all popular music genres to this day. 

An unfathomable challenge! And yet - some meet it successfully. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

I'm not a fan of Stockhausen either. Cage is also more "philosophical - experimental" than actually musical - I have yet to hear anything MUSICAL from him - but Ligeti is a real musician, and this cannot be doubted. 

He's not alone, mind you. There's great music also by other composers - such as Alban Berg, Schoenberg (not in all of their repertoire, admitted) and others. 

One needs to keep an open ear. Writing that looks or sounds disorderly, doesn't necessarily mean that the music won't be able to touch, or to move (touch-move reference unintentional!) the listener. 

Well, looks like it's beddie-bye time for this bird; I guess I'll make like a (split) pea and Ligeti-split to bed now. Getting late here in California.
Lovin' the Ligeti, Bartok, Kodaly, and the Berg, Schoenberg, and other great 20th century masters: Hindemith, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Scriabin, Sibelius, Copland, Bloch, etc... 

Nice!

Mexico City has an even later time than California now - but I've been translating into the night, as so often - spicing it with visits to this thread, for some entertainment and inspiration...

Now it's (almost) my bed time too. Rest well!!

p.s. Scriabin was always a bit too depressive for my preferences - and I didn't go too deeply into Sibelius either - but the other members of your list have some very worthy music indeed. 

Who is he? Do you mean Arvo Pärt ?

The guy is lucky that pseudo-eclectist Manfred Eicher thought he (Pärt) can write music, and issued several of his works at ECM records. The vast majority of these recordings are pompous four-note banalities.

Don't get me started on that last "modernization" of the Magic Flute I watched.