IMSLP Forums

Now, I know why I never heard of composer Yves Klein. He was primarily a painter and author of a book on Judo. The composition that consists of a single chord held for 20 minutes, plus 20 minutes of silence, was the only musical piece by Klein mention of which I was able to track down. Still, I feel...

I should have learned from Die Meistersinger that one should not argue with Beckmesser, but Wiki defines a chord thus: In music and music theory a chord is a set of three or more different notes from a specific key that sound simultaneously -- and that is good enough for me. I can think of one other...

Here's one by the German composer and poet Peter Cornelius. http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/5/5b/IMSLP40407-PMLP88493-ein_ton.pdf I can think of at least two more such pieces (with the same note repeated from start to finish.) One is a delightful joke by a very, very old composer. Incidentally...

Le Gibet is one. http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/e/e0/IMSLP03178-Ravel-Gaspard.Durand.pdf A harmonic tour de force. The repeated Bb is used in every chord imaginable. This piece makes an electrifying effect in the recent orchestration ofr Marius Constant -- where the Bb is played by a bell. Th...

How many pieces can you name in which one note is repeated over-and-over, from start-to-finish? Some of them are on IMSLP.

MS

Verdi's Otello is the right answer. The unaltered chord is terminated after about 4-5 minutes, following the tempest when the chorus sings the clouds have vanished from the sky. Eric Leinsdorf once recounted that several bricks were places on the organ pedals for a performance he conducted at Tangle...

What is (by far) the longest held single chord in a published work? This chord is held unaltered, tied for more than a hundred bars. Name the (famous) composer and the (famous) work.

MS

There's also a PC by Britten -- but it is not PD.

MS

I would be interested in anything and everything by this remarkable composer who died at 33 and was known as the "Paganini of the Flute."

MS

How many piano concerti can you name that begin with solo timpani?

MS

For those who are eagerly planning to use scanned orchestral parts of PD works in concert performances -- and thus save themselves the fees from rental houses, such as Lucks and Kalmus -- you might first want to consider some of the practical problems involved. The printing of parts for a large scor...

Richard Strauss may have thought of himself as a first-rate second-rate composer -- but Ferruccio Busoni thought of Alkan as a first-rate first-rate composer. Around the turn-of-the-century, Busoni published his Complete Works of Franz Liszt series. In the introduction, Busoni wrote that Liszt was o...

When Rachmanninov died, reportedly he was working on a Concerto for Organ and Orchestra. If any of that material has survived, none of it has ever been made public -- as far as I know. (I would love to be proven wrong, here.) The idea of a Rachmanninov Organ Concerto must pique the interest of all d...

I hope Warenberg didn't arrange or perform Rachmanninov's Second Symphony into a piano concerto in the EU -- where all of Rachmanninov's music is still protected. I am particularly interested in Rachmanninov's copyright status, since I have arranged his Cello/Piano Sonata into a cello concerto (in t...

Although my bailiwick is "classical" music -- and so, I have found the IMSLP to be an invaluable resource -- I have more than a passing interest in popular music, especially from what I call the Golden Age of American Popular Music, by which I mean popular music published and/or recorded i...