“THE SPACE BETWEEN THE NOTES”
Silences and resonances in keyboard music
from J.S.Bach to Hosokawa
In spite of its capability to produce a really considerable amount of sound, the piano is one of the instruments more suitable for a dissertation on the relation between music and silence.
Its constructed peculiarities make it different from winds and strings not only because of its great possibilities as a eminently polyphonic instrument, but also for its specific limit: the decay of the sound.
A single sound produced by the piano not only cannot grow during its length (as opposed to a sound produced by a flute or a violin) but has actually a pre-determined life, and indeed a short one. As with the man, we could say that a sound born at the piano is for sure destined to die.
In the attempt to deal with , take advantage of, and to try to go beyond this limit, great composers have written masterpieces. Great pianists have themselves not only given back the greatness of the pieces interpreted by them, but in some cases added a further thought largely based on the problem of the relation between sound and silence.
Because of the complexity of the topic, in this “Listener’s Guide “ we intend to focus specifically on silences in the piano literature, giving more attention tothe detail with the aim of a better understanding of the works through the specifics.
Avoiding on purpose the complete performance of a few pieces, we will propose instead a significant number of silences taken form the works written by Bach and Scarlatti for the predecessors of the piano, then following with excerpts by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms until a great Japanese composer, Toshio Hosokawa, that on the relation between sound and silence created almost his complete production.
Its constructed peculiarities make it different from winds and strings not only because of its great possibilities as a eminently polyphonic instrument, but also for its specific limit: the decay of the sound.
A single sound produced by the piano not only cannot grow during its length (as opposed to a sound produced by a flute or a violin) but has actually a pre-determined life, and indeed a short one. As with the man, we could say that a sound born at the piano is for sure destined to die.
In the attempt to deal with , take advantage of, and to try to go beyond this limit, great composers have written masterpieces. Great pianists have themselves not only given back the greatness of the pieces interpreted by them, but in some cases added a further thought largely based on the problem of the relation between sound and silence.
Because of the complexity of the topic, in this “Listener’s Guide “ we intend to focus specifically on silences in the piano literature, giving more attention tothe detail with the aim of a better understanding of the works through the specifics.
Avoiding on purpose the complete performance of a few pieces, we will propose instead a significant number of silences taken form the works written by Bach and Scarlatti for the predecessors of the piano, then following with excerpts by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms until a great Japanese composer, Toshio Hosokawa, that on the relation between sound and silence created almost his complete production.