Temperaments reply

[pianoman]

Hi All,
It is always amazing to me that the early masters could know that the
technical music they wrote, that many of their own contemporary pianos
could probably not play, could later be performed on technically superior
instruments as far as expression and responsiveness.
They were truly ahead of their time.
James Grebe
R.P.T. of the P.T.G. from St. Louis
pianoman@inlink.com
"Success is not a goal, rather it is a way of life".

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>
> 
> I undestand completely what you mean about the harmonic differences of
> Chopin's time and ours now; I also completely understand that the way how
> composers write and have written their masterpieces most of the time is
> determinated by the technical possibilities of their instruments and the
> time they lived in.  They have written for their instruments, not for
those
> we play now or for those instruments which have been build 100 years
> earlier.  And that this can cause difficulties for a modern pianist on a
> modern piano, I think it's normal (you can't play f.i . an accent on a
> modern Steinway the way you want to do it on a Pleyel from1800)
> But all of this doesn't mean one can't play an excellent Chopin or
Beethoven
> or, ... on modern instruments.  If those composers had lived in 1998,
they
> still will compose pieces for piano, but for a piano as it sounds now.
> All of this only to tell that I like very much pianomusic, but that we
have
> to understand there is (and will be all the time) a world of difference
> between one plays Beethoven or ... now and one plaied it a century ago.
>

> >
> >