Chopin Nocturnes
My piano recital was last Sunday, so I have technically moved beyond the first two movements of the Beethoven Sonata I've been going on about for about a year. While I'm still learning the third movement, it's much easier than the first two so far, as I understand what I'm aiming for, and I'm really focusing on something new.
I thought about Brahms.
Brahms took Beethoven's depth and drama and noise and fury and amplified it, added more complexity and more depth and more grandiose beauty. Brahms was the leader of what became the Germanic romantic style. Wikipedia.
But I'm playing in a completely different style. My piano teacher played me 10 of Chopin's (wiki)21 nocturnes tonight, and I can't really say that I understood or heard very much of it until about the fifth. I still don't completely understand. Joe says that Chopin played completely differently. The diametric opposite of Brahms. Hated each other.
There's also trying to understand exactly what a Nocturne is. Reminiscent of the night...dreamlike, yes, it flows more than Sonatas do. And yet it also sings, it also breathes. The melody involves all of the voices, and it doesn't make sense to me when I'm playing them all separately.
I've been listening to this, trying to absorb meaning.
Delicacy, yes. But otherwise, I really don't know.
I'm confused about meaning, and nothing seems to have it at present. It's not as though I'm making anything up. I feel as if I've already been in this position, as if I've already thought everything I could possibly write down and already determined that it was wrong. Even my writing seems backwards again.
Does anyone, whom I don't talk to on a regular basis, play Chopin or love Nocturnes?
Are you there?
I thought about Brahms.
Brahms took Beethoven's depth and drama and noise and fury and amplified it, added more complexity and more depth and more grandiose beauty. Brahms was the leader of what became the Germanic romantic style. Wikipedia.
But I'm playing in a completely different style. My piano teacher played me 10 of Chopin's (wiki)21 nocturnes tonight, and I can't really say that I understood or heard very much of it until about the fifth. I still don't completely understand. Joe says that Chopin played completely differently. The diametric opposite of Brahms. Hated each other.
There's also trying to understand exactly what a Nocturne is. Reminiscent of the night...dreamlike, yes, it flows more than Sonatas do. And yet it also sings, it also breathes. The melody involves all of the voices, and it doesn't make sense to me when I'm playing them all separately.
I've been listening to this, trying to absorb meaning.
Delicacy, yes. But otherwise, I really don't know.
I'm confused about meaning, and nothing seems to have it at present. It's not as though I'm making anything up. I feel as if I've already been in this position, as if I've already thought everything I could possibly write down and already determined that it was wrong. Even my writing seems backwards again.
Does anyone, whom I don't talk to on a regular basis, play Chopin or love Nocturnes?
Are you there?