This video seems to invite analysis by anyone intrigued by the potential reaction of whoever who might be exposed to it. The video shows ten hours of repetition of the solo artist Konstrakta performing a musical piece called “In Corpore Sano”, representing Serbia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2022. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat Ten hours […]
In this 1968 video, pianist Glenn Gould plays bits of Wolfgang Mozart‘s musical compositions, and explains why he, Gould, feels that Mozart was a hack composer. Here’s a partial transcript of what Gould says: “That example came from Mozart’s piano concerto in C minor, one of the last works he produced in that form, one […]
Can the recorded sound of a single note played on a piano be compared to the seismic records of an earthquake? If so, how much (so)? A 2020 research project from the Golestan Institute of Higher Education, and the Department of Civil Engineering, Islamic Azad University of Kish Iran, has investigated. “The comparison between near-field […]
El Espagnol reports “The rocambolesque story of the psychiatrist who ‘scammed’ the US and was sentenced to play the piano“. The news article begins [here machine-translated from Spanish to English]: An American psychiatrist has recently been reprimanded by the US Government Office of Integrity in Research, after having already been convicted. His crime: steal several […]
Does this video, showing sound sculptor Henry Dagg performing ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ on a Faux-Katzenklavier of his own construction, qualify as a fictophonic collapse scenario? First, some background. Musicologists often like to categorise instruments into classes or groups. For example – idiophones (vibrating bodies), membranophones (vibrating membranes), chordophones (vibrating strings), aerophones (vibrating […]
From the Canada Lancet (1899), volume XXXI, no. 8, p. 1121: Neuroses from Piano Practice — Dr. Wartzold (in Jour. d’ Hyg.) blames abuse of the piano practice for the chlorosis and neuroses from which so many young girls suffer. Girls, he says, should not be compelled to hammer on the keyboard before they are […]
Norman Lebrecht, writing in the Slipped Disk blog, debunks a piano, sort of: Leonardo’s instrument? No, it’s a reproduction of an obscure German contraption There has been much press hooh-hah about a bowed keyboard instrument imagined by Leonardo da Vinci and built by an enterprising Pole. But does it pass the acid test of musicology? Apparently not. […]
Takeo Tchinai, head of the Archiving Project for Left-Hand Piano Musicoversees a growing corpus* of music for pianist who, for whatever reason, have lost or never had some or all use of their left hand, perhaps because they have lost or never had some or all of their left hand, perhaps because they have dystonia, perhaps […]
Roberts Musical Restorations restores instruments. They also post videos that may be instrumental in getting people to see instrumental possibilities. The two videos here will, if viewed in order, (1) frazzle your nervous system and then (2) calm what’s left of it. First this. “DEATH WALTZ CANT BE PLAYED ON A PIANO!! The problem is that […]
German and Austrian researchers analysed what happened to pianist Armin Fuchs when he spent more than a full day playing over and over again, nonstop, an oddly-named piece of music by a French composer. They also analysed what happened to the music. This was a tour de force of artistic and neurological repetition. The research […]