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From the last century to the present day, pianistic experimentation of all kinds has gone hand in hand. All with the same aim: to change our perception of this key instrument and shake up the way we hear it. From Henry Cowell to Claudine Simon and Eve Egoyan, here's a look back at the experiments that have turned our famous 88-key keyboard upside down, and led audiences to renew their attention.
In 1802, in Prague, Czech composer Václav Jan Tomášek recounts hearing composer and pianist Jan Ladislav Dussek in concert and being surprised by the way he arranged his piano on stage. Legend has it that Dussek was endowed with a beautiful profile and wanted to share it with his audience, so he took to placing the piano at an angle for his ladies to admire. For a simple question of aesthetics, piano scenography was changed forever. Another story: in 1832, a Hungarian by the unpronounceable name of Liszt, a teenage piano virtuoso, dared to give a concert entirely on his own: no opening act, no other instrumentalists and no dances or anything else to entertain between pieces. The recital was born. A few years earlier, a pianist in her early twenties began playing Beethoven's extremely difficult works without the score. Clara Schumann - for it was she -, in her desire to distinguish herself from these gentlemen, attempted the unthinkable: to play by heart pieces of such virtuosity that only a man was supposed to compete with them. Since then, playing with eyes to the sky has become the norm.
As we can see from these three examples, it was in the 19th century that a certain relationship with the public was changed - and changed forever. The piano, the instrument we call king (but which, in fact, is simply bourgeois), is the instrument which, in the history of music, has given rise to the most musical creations and technical innovations. You only have to look at the piano sheet music aisle in a music store, or lose yourself in IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project), to appreciate the (dis)measure of this repertoire, which reached its apogee in the 19th century.
A violent precursor
Born in the Ukraine in 1893 and emigrating to the USA in 1906, Leo Ornstein is credited with inventing the cluster: a musical technique in which notes are played together simultaneously (in a cluster), with no intention of forming a "classified" chord. The result is still as striking and powerful as ever. Ornstein, who died in 2022 at the admirable age of one hundred and eight, had a tumultuous youth and was one of the most innovative composers of his time (and one of the most violently criticized). He quickly established a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, an ardent defender of the works of his contemporaries (Schönberg, Scriabin, Bartók, Stravinsky, etc.), while incorporating into his recitals his own works featuring innovations unheard of in their time (clusters, martellato melodies, jolting rhythmics and brutal attacks). Ornstein himself was astonished by his own violence (and that of the audience): "At first, I really doubted my sanity. At my second concert, devoted to my own compositions, I could have played anything; I couldn't hear the piano myself. The crowd was whistling and screaming, and throwing objects at the stage." From 1920 onwards, his language mellowed, returning to its Slavic-Romantic roots. These few revolutionary years gave way to a music that was neo-romantic, but as virtuosic as ever. Ornstein was no longer concerned with public performance and promotion, and fell into relative oblivion. Without him, Henry Cowell and John Cage would probably not have received the impetus for their innovations.
Pianistic autopsy
It was in the early twentieth century, in the United States, that the desire to broaden the sound palette of the piano was born, through ways of playing it, of (mis)treating the instrument rather than the musical language itself. The old continent of Europe, meanwhile, was musically torn between a nascent atonalism(Schönberg, Scriabin) that would give life to serialism(Berg, Webern), and the broader - but still controlled - harmonic vision of Debussy, Fauré and Schmitt. This musical world, with its heavy Wagnerian heritage, does not seek to use the piano in any way other than with its fingers - preferably pearl-played. On the other side of the Atlantic, the noisy expansion of industrial modernism certainly helped to influence composers in this mechanical, repetitive and relentless "new music". Music that was to find its place with the nascent jazz of African-Americans.
After Ornstein, a movement was launched: Henry Cowell, John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow all set about "reinventing" piano texture. Cowell developed and popularized the cluster technique and succeeded in giving it a musical dimension of great intensity in his Three Irish Legends He was also the first to instruct the pianist to play directly inside the piano, scraping, tapping or caressing the strings. As for Cage, he began to prepare the soundboard by sliding bolts and screws into the strings to directly transform the piano's sound: the famous prepared piano. This revolutionary technique continues to inspire pianists to this day (from François Tusques and Benoît Delbecq to Ève Risser). Anecdotally, it was for the choreographer Syvilla Fort that John Cage improvised and discovered the prepared piano to make up for the absence of percussionists who didn't have the space to be on stage... It was also to replace musicians that the Mexican composer Conlon Nancarrow decided in the 1940s to compose exclusively for player piano (an American invention, needless to say), so as to be able to produce Études of diabolical technical complexity that only a machine could execute. Needless to say, this did little to bring his music to the attention of the general public. Composer and musicologist Kyle Gann sums up Nancarrow's hard-nosed aesthetic attitude: " Inspired by Stravinsky, challenged by Cowell, he is the only composer to have completely integrated the micro-rhythms of the one with the macro-rhythms of the other, the only one to have solved, rather than circumvented, the Schoenberg/Stravinsky rhythmic dilemma. Nancarrow achieved this feat, of course, at a price few composers would have been willing to pay: he sacrificed the possibility of human performance."
We might also mention Charles Ives, George Crumb, George Antheil, Blind Tom Wiggins, all of whom were forerunners in the mechanical explosion of the Romantic piano. Crumb, for example, in his Makrokosmos (1972), for example, asks the pianist to play inside the piano, to whistle inside it, to sing while playing so as to bring the soundboard into resonance, to declaim text, to strike not only the keys but also the wood, and so on.
New lutherie
Sometimes technology requires creativity to adapt. Quite often, the opposite is true. An innovation appears, and artists seize it, improve it and transcend it. From the 80s onwards, it was no longer enough to tinker with the piano and search for sonorities acoustically without amplification. Composers began writing for piano and soundtrack(Luc Ferrari, Jonathan Harvey, François Sarhan), integrating sounds other than those of the piano (nature, other music, noise, etc.). Field-recording has made its way into the piano repertoire, with some splendid successes: Collection de petites pièces or "36 Enfilades" (1984) by Luc Ferrari or Série Bleue by Pierre Jodlowski (2013).
But in recent years, a new era has appeared in the piano sphere: the extended piano. Several terms coexist to identify this new approach to piano making, in which technology extends the musical capabilities of this old instrument. French pianist Claudine Simon is one of the leading figures in this field, with her concept of the pianomachine : " This technology allows me to open up a new playing space inside the piano, to perform a kind of sonic autopsy. By grafting machines into the body of the piano, I'm getting closer to the notion of the 'desiring machine', also envisaged as a 'body without organs' in the reflections of Deleuze and Artaud." Pianist Edouard Ferlet explores the relationship between man and machine - always the machine - in one of his latest albums, Pianoïd, in which he uses the Yamaha Disklavier as a new hybrid instrument, halfway between synthesizer and traditional piano. In his own words: "This instrument allows me to produce sounds and modes of play that a human being could not play with his hands, while respecting the acoustic and natural diffusion of the music. I surround myself with two Yamaha pianos, a Silent and a Disklavier , which I control via a Midi control surface that synchronizes them. This controller acts on computer parameters that will be played acoustically.
Piano NEXT
For years, Armenian-Canadian pianist Eve Egoyan has devoted herself to exploring the "augmented" piano repertoire. She increases and expands the piano's range of sound, turning the piano into a visual instrument while maintaining the physical relationship between piano and pianist. Interview.
How did Piano NEXT come about?
I'd always dreamed of exploring the inner workings of piano sound, imagining that the piano was capable of doing things beyond what we know how to do, such as holding a note forever, or building a crescendo on a note. On an acoustic piano, the sound naturally decays once a note is struck, and the pianist can't prevent the sound from disappearing (except by layering more notes). Under the generous auspices of the Canada Council for the Arts, I was able to develop what I call Piano NEXT. At the time, I was working with a Disklavier.
How exactly does this software play with the realtime sound of the piano?
The software itself does not modify the sound of the acoustic piano. The sound of the piano itself remains unchanged. Although I used a Disklavier when I first developed this project, I'm now working with a piano scanner developed by the Augmented Instruments Laboratory at Queen Mary University of London. This scanner has optical sensors that sit on top of the piano keyboard and track the movement of the keys as I play. In my own augmented/acoustic piano work, I use software that accurately models all the physical parameters that determine the sonic character of an acoustic piano. This software allows me to modify any of these physical characteristics (string length, hammer hardness, harp stiffness, sympathetic vibrations, etc.) in real time. This allows me to extend the character of the piano sound beyond its normal range. You hear both the acoustic and the modeled piano. For example, when the acoustic piano declines, the modeled piano can maintain a crescendo, giving the impression that an acoustic piano is behind it. There are many different types of sound that the modeled piano is capable of producing, for example a vibrato, a leslie effect, revealing harmonics at different pitches. These sounds blend with the acoustic piano. The two pianos are, in essence, in duet with each other. I use two additional pedals: one for the degree of expression (for example, the speed of a vibrato), the other to bring the sound of the modeled piano in and out, adjusting its volume in relation to the acoustic piano.
I can also trigger sound sequences. These are recordings of real sounds that I refine in sound editing software. For example, I've recorded my daughter's voice so that when I play, you hear piano notes that match her voice.
I understand you've composed for this new playing technique. Is this your first time composing for yourself?
Piano NEXT has enabled me to explore composition and improvisation in a new way. For years, I've performed the standard repertoire and works by living composers. Many composers have also written works for me to create. I love the repertoire. However, this deep love for what I play has also made it difficult to find my own voice as a creator. I'm filled with other people's musical languages. Recreating the piano for myself has allowed me to develop a unique language that engages and inspires me to write more.
What do you think this brings to the public?
The piano has an incredible history. By re-imagining the piano in this way, I'm trying to take this esteemed instrument to a new place. It's quite natural to listen to Piano NEXT as the interventions are quite discreet, and yet it's something extraordinary and magical at the same time.
François Mardirossian
