How to spot end game Mozart Piano Playing

Michael BarryClassical Music Leave a Comment

Musicians nearly unanimously refer to Mozart as the hardest composer to master.  He requires the highest agility to play, physically and mentally.  

I think the majority of Mozart players who fail at Mozart fail mentally.  Logically there is no other explanation as we have heard them convincingly play much harder works.  Listening to masterful Mozart playing is among my joys in life.  Here are some discoveries I’ve made as to what you are actually hearing when you hear “good” Mozart on the piano.

Smoothness and Long Phrases in Mozart: 

Mozart requires the pianist to compensate for the natural tendencies of the fingers and instrument.

If one applies equal pressure to the piano in this range there is nearly always an increase in apparent volume while going upwards.

For example in this excerpt (above) the piano will want to crescendo on the the bar marked “legato”.

The pianist must resist this and remain neutral in order to play the long phrase (all of the 16th notes are one phrase).  

The fingers will also want to set anchor points where the direction of the scales change  but this too must be resisted. The line needs to be continuously gradual. 

It takes a bit of sustained effort and compensating to do this.

The pianist must mask the 1-4 and 4-1 crossings to smoothly present a long line

In this phrase (above) the fingers want to bring out the 1-4 (downwards) and 4-1 (upwards) finger connections but the brain must resist it.

The fingers also want to set the E natural (the second note of the second bar RH) as an anchor point of a large scale but the brain must resist it and place it dynamically appropriately.

Listening To The Instrument

Slow movement Mozart often requires the pianist to be aware of the decay of the piano and to align the dynamics of the new notes to match the decay of the old note.  This is the truest form of decrescendo/legato on the instrument which has no true monophonic legato.

This phrase is surprisingly hard to keep “weightless”

In this example (right) the low E# in the left hand has the tendency to punctuate the texture and interrupt the right hand melody which despite having a rest appears as one long line.

Sensitive pianists will listen to the decay of the F#/D chord and place the E# in that same area (which is really contrary to what the fingers want to naturally do – they want to play it heavier).

There are also times where the hands are equal partners. 

What is the more likely rhythmic motif of the right excerpt – continuous sixteenth notes? or a sixteen rest followed by three sixteenth notes?

It is A for me – continuous sixteenths – which hand the motif is played on is secondary – it doesn’t matter.

There are also times where taste comes in. 

Out of all the moving voices in this A to D major chord passage I think the yellow line is the prettiest.

Orchestral Awareness

Another thing I notice is high level Mozart is that the pianist is obviously aware of the accompaniment.  

The french horns have the tune in the second bar above

Most pianists anchor this low E (second bar) octave seemingly unaware that it is part of the blooming French Horn line which blooms more convincingly if the piano doesn’t obliterate them on the first beat. 

Sometimes you hear a pianist using a “pizzicato” touch when doing trading passages with pizzing low strings.

Notes on Notation: Exploiting Vagueness In Notation

Michael BarryEducation Leave a Comment

When I was studying at USC my venerable professor the wonderful composer/orchestrator Jack Smalley told us “if you’re scoring something uncomfortable make the orchestra uncomfortable.” He was speaking specifically about composing jumping large intervals while a series of jumps occurred in the film. Sort of like this example below (which I think is similar to the one he showed at the time.)

The inherent concept being that the natural stress of the orchestra (via the playing of jumps) would come through and make the cue more stressful sounding.

It’s also a sort of musical onomatopoeia which you can hear in frequent use in film scoring (bees sounding “swarmy” in the score, falling cartoons with falling chordal wind motifs and the like.) Even in classical music the onomatopoeia exists with the Vaughn Williams “The Wasps” perhaps being the most famous example.

I’ve discovered a useful tangent to the use of literal, finite musical notation Smalley taught us – the negation of it – vagueness.

At first glance you would think these two note values are identical, but if you put this in front of a jazz ensemble they would be played distinctly different.

The first would have a “release sample” placed directly on the beat and the second wouldn’t.

The tied eighth makes all the difference. In Los Angeles studios – the tied eighth note gives you a hard off value just like in a jazz ensemble.

(as opposed to in-between or dotted values)

I’ve found whole values like these (above) also have a sort of universal agreement – less concrete than the tied 8th but mostly uniform.

But if you are looking for a more tapered release you can use vagueness to your advantage.

The dotted quarter is interpreted sightly differently from each player

Due to the purposeful vagueness in the notation not everyone is going to release at the same moment – and thus the note ends with a delightful blur. This is especially useful when you want to subtract players from the ensemble without the listener noticing them.

In this solo clarinet example I’m purposefully unclear what dynamic the start of the hairpin crescendo should be – this asks the performer to use their audio context clues or instincts.

In this example I’ve given a written instruction to gradually slow down trem. – instead of of trying to do any sort of fancy notation with feathered beams. Its clearly notated but I don’t think any two players would do it exactly the same.

Education

Michael BarryEducation Leave a Comment

While good teachers will teach important concepts to you, great teachers will teach you how to teach important concepts to yourself. A great teacher will prepare you for continued success outside of their tutorage.  There should never be a point where you become too satisfied with your own craft; you should always be looking to improve and learn new tricks.

I am also a firm believer in the ten thousand hour rule.   No amount of short term study or tutorial watching can make you great at anything.  To succeed in such a difficult field, you need to really get in the trenches and become saturated.  You need to consistently study just to keep up with what you are forgetting, and you need to be purely obsessed to make any sort of progress.

I first started composing in college and was a fully self taught composition student.  Going to a liberal arts school, we didn’t have a dedicated composition teacher, so the maestro of the university symphony orchestra invited me to sit at every orchestra rehearsal with a score in hand.  It was here I first learned how the architecture of the orchestra works.  When I found something amazing or something I couldn’t quite figure out, I went to the library with my score and did a piano reduction of the passage.  It is in the spirit of the “teach your own-self how to learn” that I’ve been writing a series of educational tutorials aimed at composers looking to further their abilities through classical music study.

What I’ve been sharing is basically my own experience in my own studies.  It is full of tips and tricks and concepts that I hope are useful to the inquisitive mind.

Part One:

How To Classical Score Study
From The Perspective Of A Film Composer

Part Two:

Maximize Your Orchestral Compositions By
Understanding One Important Concept

Part Three:

A Set Of Tools To Use
In Any Composition

Part Four:

Captaining A Session, Forensic Listening
(and a bonus listening quiz)