Lesson 2- Music For The Piano

During this period, the piano, invented by Bartolommeo Cristofori, became an famous and important instrument. Composers created beautiful music for this instrument.

Many good players of this instrument became known as virtouso. Many composers made compositions for this instrument such as Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Johann Strauss and others.

Some of the instrumental forms for the piano are:

1. Nocturnes- is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. The name nocturne was first applied to pieces in the eighteenth century, when it indicated an ensemble piece in several movements, normally played for an evening party and then laid aside. In its more familiar form as a single-movement character piece usually written for solo piano, the nocturne was cultivated primarily in the nineteenth century. The first nocturnes to be written under the specific title were by the Irish composer John Field, generally viewed as the father of the Romantic nocturne that characteristically features a cantabile melody over an arpeggiated, even guitar-like accompaniment. However, the most famous exponent of the form was Frédéric Chopin, who wrote 21 of them. Other examples of nocturnes include the one for orchestra from Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1848), the set of three for orchestra and female choir by Claude Debussy (who also wrote one for solo piano) and the first movement of the Violin Concerto No. 1 (1948) by Dmitri Shostakovich. The first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata has also been considered a nocturne.

Nocturnes are generally thought of as being tranquil, often expressive and lyrical, and sometimes rather gloomy, but in practice pieces with the name nocturne have conveyed a variety of moods: the second of Debussy's orchestral Nocturnes, "Fêtes", for example, is very lively.

2. Etude- is a technical study for the piano and an instrumental musical composition, most commonly of considerable difficulty, usually designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular technical skill. The tradition of writing etudes emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano. Of the vast number of etudes from that era some are still used as teaching material and a few, by major composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy and Charles-Valentin Alkan, achieved a place in today's concert repertory. Composers of the 20th century variously composed etudes related to the old tradition (György Ligeti), etudes that required wholly unorthodox technique (John Cage) and etudes that required unusually facile technique.


3. Prelude- is a short piece of music, usually in no particular internal form, which may serve as an introduction to succeeding movements of a work that are usually longer and more complex. It generally features a single rhythmic and melodic motif that is used in every measure throughout the piece. Stylistically, the prelude is improvisatory in nature. The prelude can also refer to an overture, particularly to those seen in an opera or an oratorio. It can be thought of as a preface. It may stand on its own or introduce another work.


4. Fantasies- is a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation. Because of this, it seldom approximates the textbook rules of any strict musical form. In the Baroque and Classical music eras, a fantasia was typically a piece for keyboard instruments with alternating sections of rapid passagework and fugal texture. The term also referred in the Baroque era (more specifically British Tudor music) to pieces for viols, characteristically- though not always- alternating, in this case rapid fugal sections with slower sections in slow notes and sometimes clashing harmonies. According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Music's entry the instrumental fantasia was closely related in its history and form to the motet. Henry Purcell's fantasias are the last Baroque representatives of the breed, although Walter Willson Cobbett, in the opening decades of the 20th century, attempted to resurrect something of this style via a competition, to which works like John Ireland's and Frank Bridge's phantasie-trios, Benjamin Britten's phantasie-quartet (for oboe and strings) and other music owe their existence. In the Romantic period, two contradictory trends greatly affected the fantasia: one was the decline of formal improvisation as a test of the compositional technique; the other was the move by composers toward freer forms. Chopin's Fantasy in F minor op. 49, combines various keyboard textures of the stile brillante with the classical sonata paradigm, resulting in a work of unorthodox but sophisticated form. Schumann's numerous 'fantasy pieces' are character works on a smaller scale, often bearing descriptive titles.


5. Mazurka- is a stylized Polish folk dance in triple meter with a lively tempo, containing a heavy accent on the third or second beat. Its folk originals are: slow kujawiak and fast oberek. It is always found to have a triplet, trill, dotted eighth note pair, or ordinary eighth note pair before two quarter notes. The dance became popular at Ballroom dancers in the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century. The Polish national anthem has a mazurka rhythm, but is too slow to be considered a mazurka. Several classical composers have written mazurkas, with the best known being the 57 composed by Frédéric Chopin for solo piano. Henryk Wieniawski wrote two for violin with piano (the popular "Obertas", op. 19), and in the 1920s, Karol Szymanowski wrote a set of twenty for piano and finished his composing career with a final pair in 1934.


6. Polonaise- is a rather slow dance of Polish origin, in 3/4 time. Its name is French for "Polish." The notation alla polacca on a score indicates that the piece should be played with the rhythm and character of a polonaise. It had a rhythm quite close to that of the Swedish semiquaver or sixteenth-note polska, and the two dances have a common origin. At the end of the 18th century, it became a popular salon piece. Virtuoso and lyrical piano polonaises composed Michał Kleofas Ogiński. His polonaises influenced a young Chopin. Chopin's late polonaise developed a very solemn style, and has in that version become very popular in the classical music of several countries. Polonaise is a wide-spread dance on carnival parties. There is also a German song, called "Polonäse Blankenese" from Gottlieb Wendehals alias Werner Böhm, which is often played on carnival festivals in Germany about this dance. Polonaise is always a first dance at a studniówka (means: "hundred-days"), the Polish equivalent of the senior prom, which is ca. 100 days before exams.


7. Waltz- is a piece of music in triple meter, most often 3/4 but sometimes 3/8 or 6/8. A waltz has a 1.2.3. - 1.2.3. count and (generally) a slow tempo. Waltzes typically have one chord per measure, with the root of the chord as the first note. Classical composers traditionally supplied music for dancing when required, and Schubert's waltzes were written for household dancing, without any pretense at being art music. However, Chopin's 19 waltzes (5 he wrote as a child), along with his mazurkas and polonaises, were clearly not intended to be danced. They marked the adoption of the waltz and other dance forms as serious composition genres.

♪FREDERIC CHOPIN♪
Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period. He is widely regarded as the greatest Polish composer, and ranks as one of music's greatest tone poets.Chopin's extant compositions were written primarily for the piano as a solo instrument. Though technically demanding, Chopin's style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than virtuosity. Chopin invented musical forms such as the ballade and was responsible for major innovations in forms such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu and prelude. His works are mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century classical music.

♪RRANZ LISZT♪

Franz Liszt (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was an Austrian-Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist of the 19th century. He was a renowned performer throughout Europe, noted especially for his showmanship and great skill with the piano. To this day, he is considered by some to have been the greatest pianist in history. As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind a huge oeuvre, including works from nearly all musical genres.

♪ JOHANN STRAUSS♪
Johann Strauss II (October 25, 1825 – June 3, 1899) was an Austrian composer known especially for his waltzes, such as On The Beautiful Blue Danube. Son of the composer Johann Strauss I, and brother of composers Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss; Johann II is the most famous member of the Strauss family. He was known in his lifetime as "the waltz king" and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century. He revolutionized the waltz, elevating it from a lowly peasant dance to entertainment fit for the royal Habsburg court. His work enjoyed greater fame than his predecessors, such as his father and Josef Lanner. Some of his polkas and marches are also well known, as is his operetta Die Fledermaus.

♪ FELIX MENDELSSOHN♪

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German composer, pianist and conductor of the early Romantic period. He was born to a notable Jewish family which later converted to Lutheranism; he was a grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. His work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano and chamber music. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.