The Contemporary Piano: A Performer and Composer’s Guide to Techniques and Resources by Alan Shockley

Author:Alan Shockley [Shockley, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2018-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

Pianist as Noisemaker

The second section of this chapter covers techniques that involve the player making percussive sounds “near” the instrument (such as vocal percussive sounds, clapping, and stomping) and using the instrument as a resonator for other things, as well as additional tasks for the performer (whistling, singing, moaning, speaking, train sounds, popping balloons, playing harmonica). For example, Crumb’s Makrokosmos, book 1, in the fifth piece of the set “The Phantom Gondolier,” asks the pianist to moan, hum, and sing. In the tenth piece of Crumb’s Makrokosmos, book 2, he requires the pianist to whistle in several ways, including ordinary whistling, with molto vibrato (“quasi Theremin”), and senza vibrato.

Asking the pianist to whistle and make various vocal sounds is not a new thing. Pianist and composer Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins’s piano solo depiction of the Civil War Battle of Bull Run, The Battle of Manassas, has the pianist whistle and make “chugging” vocal sounds, both in imitation of a train (see figure 7.5). More recently Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (1972) and Shockley’s Hoc florentes arbor (2016; see figure 7.6), each a chamber work including flute, employ the pianist’s whistling as a way of approaching the flute’s sound.

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