[silence] prepared piano

[David Badagnani]

By "vertical piano" Nicolas must mean "upright piano."  To answer his question, it's not really possible to prepare an upright piano in the normal way, as many of us have found out the hard way (myself at age eight, soon after attending my first Cage concert, which featured "Amores" for prepared piano and percussion), as gravity usually leads the preparations to fall out.  I think Conlon Nancarrow even tried to prepare one of his upright player pianos early in his career, before quickly giving this idea up.

A related issue to keep in mind:  when using a piano of different length (i.e., with a string length different from that on which Cage composed the work), one must perform mathematical computations to ensure the proper sound Cage originally had in mind is obtained (sometimes drawing a particular harmonic out of a string).  This ensures consistency of timbre between interpretations of a given work.  In the preparation chart, which is different for each work, each string's preparation is specified according to material and distance from the end of the string.  In other words, if using a piano with strings that are longer or shorter than the piano on which Cage created the work, multiplication or division must be done to ensure that the ratio of the distance of the preparation from the end of the string remains the same as Cage originally did it.  At least this is how it was explained to me by Emily Manzo following her performance of the complete
 "Sonatas and Interludes" in Cleveland, Ohio several years ago for the AKI Festival of New Music.  I found her performance (executed on a small baby grand, as I recall) to have the same harmonics and timbres as on the recordings by other performers I own, which were played on full-size grand pianos, and she attributed this not only to her careful preparation, but also her having "done the math" to enture the proper sounds were obtained.  I'm not sure how well known the necessity of doing this is.  Perhaps another list member can explain this more cogently or concisely.

--
David Badagnani
Kent, Ohio
USA

--- On Fri, 11/28/08, al.popoff@free.fr <al.popoff@free.fr> wrote:
From: al.popoff@free.fr <al.popoff@free.fr>
Subject: Re: [silence] prepared piano
To: "Nicolas MOREAU" <moreau_nicolas@yahoo.fr>
Cc: silence@list.mail.virginia.edu
Date: Friday, November 28, 2008, 2:55 AM

Hi,

A prepared piano is not a codified instrument... instead, details of the
preparation varies from one composer to another.
Therefore, you should look for the scores for prepared piano.
For example, John Cage's scores contain a lot of details about the
preparation
of the piano.

As for the "vertical piano", I don't know what you mean, neither
do I know what
would be your purpose.

Cordially,

Alexandre Popoff


Selon Nicolas MOREAU <moreau_nicolas@yahoo.fr>:

> Hi every one,
> do you know where can i fan a table of preparation of a prepared piano ?
> I've looking on the web but i didn't find anything.
> And do you know if it's possible to prepare a vertical piano ?
>
> thank you
> Nicolas
>
>
> --
> To join or leave the Silence mailing list, please go to
> https://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/silence.
> You can find searchable list archives at
> http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/
>



--
To join or leave the Silence mailing list, please go to
https://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/silence.
You can find searchable list archives at
http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/attachments/20081128/57b4bd2a/attachment.html