Expert: Marbeth - 10/7/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi Marbeth,

I'm looking for a bit of off-beat information for a film script I'm writing.

I'm looking for names of classical composers (for piano) who had lost fingers, and/or wrote music that could be played by people with less than ten fingers.

Do you know of any, or where I might look for more information.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tim

ANSWER: You really came to the right place!  I have a file on this very topic on my homepage:

http://marthabeth.com/one_hand.html

Bach, CPE. Solfeggietto in C Minor: I recommend this one particularly for mention if the character is a competent player (LH alone)

If the character is virtuosic and is playing with an orchestra, a tour-de-force piece by Ravel, Concerto in D Major, written for Paul Wittgenstein, a concert artist, who lost his R arm in WW I.

If not orchestra, the variations by Camille Saint-Saens should be used.
Saint-Saens, Camille. Six Etudes for Left Hand, Op. 135

~~

Go to amazon or youtube to find excerpts.

~~

If you would like me to look over the music you work into dialogue and prose, I will be most happy to do this!  I cringe every time a character plays a concerto in the drawing room!  (A concerto requires an orchestra - or at least another player on a second piano, playing a reduction of the orchestra part.)  I salute you in doing proper research, which, obviously, many authors do not!
mb


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Martha,

Thanks very much for your answer, I did indeed come to the right place.

This information will be very useful, there's a point about halfway through when one of the characters mentions several left-hand only pieces, and these are just what I was looking for.

Also thanks very much for your offer to look at the music included in the script, I'll file that one away for future reference.

Apart from that - if I can ask again - there are other points in the film where the pianist has lost different numbers of fingers, and so I'm also keen to find anything written for a pianist who has lost one, two, or any other number of fingers. Do you know of any?

I know it's a long-shot, but if I could find real pieces, it would be so much more authentic.

Thanks again,

Tim

ANSWER: Of what level accomplishment is this character?
mb

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: She's a professional concert pianist.

The film opens with a shot of her giving a recital to a packed concert hall. The emotional impact is created by the thought of what losing her fingers will mean for her career.

In the course of the story, the person directing the torture is revealed to have a similar level of skill and knowledge. He tells her at various points in the proceedings which music she will still be able to play, given the number of fingers she has left.

Sorry if the thought of all this is a bit gruesome to a pianist!

Tim

Answer
I'd have to say the image isn't one I'd particularly like to dwell on!!

First, there is YouTube of a young woman in Korea who has only 4 fingers on each hand (congenitally).  No thumbs, as I recall.  I think you would find that germane.  As I recall, she plays some Chopin, even.  

(I have taught students without pinkies and with missing joints on fingers, but no one without thumbs.  I don't see how this would be possible, but who knows?)

~~

For a solo piano recital (let's make it easy by omitting the orchestra!), a full-on, super-virtuosic recital might include

Beethoven: "Hammerklavier" Sonata (as in, "I’m playing the Hammerklavier tonight."  Everyone would know it would be the Sonata in B-flat, Opus 106).
Or
Beethoven: "Pathétique" Sonata (C-Minor, Opus 13)
[either of these but not both]

Scriabin:  Etude in D-Sharp Minor (Op. 8, No. 12)

Mozart: Sonata in A-Major (K. 331) (this is the one that has the famous "Rondo alla Turca" as the last movement)
[something easier and "thinner" in texture, as a contrast]
(Mozart's works are listed as Kochel numbers, after Ludwig Alois Ferdinand Ritter von Köchel, who arranged Mozart's works in chronological order; it has been revealed through later research that there are some errors and" student works" he missed (yeah, Mozart's student works were composed at age 4!), but, by and large, Kochel nailed it).  Sorry - that's the musicologist in me coming out!)

Liszt:  Hungarian Rhapsody #2
Or
Mussorgsky:  Pictures at an Exhibition, 1874 (takes about 45 min to play; some performers would do this piece + one or two smaller pieces, but our gal is a superstar!)
(Mussorgsky's works are by years, not by opus number.)
[only one of these, not both]

(No Bach on the program - he did not write for the piano! - though you often hear Bach on the piano; since you are going to be accurate and faithful, no Bach.)

For an encore:  Horowitz's arrangement of "Stars and Stripes Forever"

So:
Beethoven
Scriabin
Mozart
[intermission]
Mussorgsky or Liszt
Encore:  Horowitz

As she loses fingers (this is total fingers per hand):
At 4, she could still do Chopin's Prelude in D-Flat Major "Raindrop"  (Op. 28 No. 15); Mozart Rondo alla Turca (maybe the whole sonata…..but definitely the last movement)
At 3, she could still do the CPE Bach Solfeggietto I mentioned earlier (CPE is a son of JS, so he used the piano.)
At 3 or 2, she could do Chopin's Prelude in E-Minor, Op. 28 no. 4 ("Beside a Grave" - also nicknamed "Suffocation," if  you like that better!!) or Prelude in B-Minor "Homesickness" (Op. 28 No. 6); or the CPE Bach
At 1, she could do the above Chopin ("Grave" and "Homesickness"); and with great effort, the CPE Bach.

How'm I doin'?

I also advise you to listen to the pieces you select; YouTube has all of them, I am sure.  Look for a "name" performer playing them, not some kid or teen. (Beware of Gould, however; he plays everything at lightning speed & it isn't particularly musical, IMO.  Horowitz is good; or Richard Goode; try Uchida for Mozart; Kissisn for Chopin.  There's a CD called "Favorites" or something like that by Horowitz that has the Pathétique, Stars and Stripes, and the Scriabin on it.  Look for this.  It's well worth buying.)

That's all I have time for; can't even proof.  Time to go to the piano.
hurriedly, mb