WEEK ONE Updates: Main Thread - What a delightful theme Beethoven wrote!
Hello and welcome to the WEEK ONE Main Thread for this challenge! 
Alright everyone - this is the thread where we'll all be posting our daily updates.
Make sure you've read the rules before replying (<- click)
Twice a week between September 20th - 27th I hope to be reading your daily updates in this very thread right here!
Download the music:
Beethoven: 6 Variations on an Original Theme
Please use the following format when commenting (feel free to copy & paste!):
- Variation you worked on:
- One thing you found easy:
- One thing you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing it!
Sample daily update:
- Variation you worked on: No. 1
- One thing you found easy: Learning the notes, and rhythms were rather straight-forward, and not challenging!
- One thing you found difficult: Shifting the Hands was a bit tricky to get smooth!
Feel free to make these updates as short or long as you wish!
-
Variation 1
-
Dominic Cheli Thank you so much! I appreciate the encouragement!
-
Brett Gilbert Thank you Brett! It鈥檚 funny, I think I am making more dynamic contrasts, but when I listen to the recording it is not as apparent so either I鈥檓 imagining I am playing them or the recording isn鈥檛 picking it up.
-
-
-
Susan just lovely and played with great affection for the music.
-
Susan Very well played!
-
Monika thank you so much! I am glad to hear you felt my intention.
-
Juan Carlos Thank you so much!
-
Susan Great job!! Wonderful presentation of the theme. Looking forward to more!
-
-
Week 1, video update.
Variations I worked on: The whole piece.
For the first week I just wanted to memorize the piece, not looking to deeply into the music.
As you can see in the video (If you want to watch me battle it out with memory...), I have not practiced putting the variations together so I had to think quite a bit.
For this version I choose to not do the repeats because I have not worked on that yet, but I will work on it for the next one.
What I found easy: Since it's theme and variations, the harmonies are repeated. So it's an easy way to remember "what's next".
What I found challenging: Today it was a challenge to put the pieces together on a time-limit. Also there are technical aspects that are challenging. I will look more on that for next week.
For the coming week I will dig into the music of the piece.
-
Sindre Skarelven Great job, Sindre! It is a hard work to memorize the whole piece in one week.
-
Sindre Skarelven great job! I love how you memorize EVERYTHING. You inspire me.
-
Sindre Skarelven I鈥檓 impressed ! Watching you figure out where you needed to go next with the piece was particularly interesting for me . I鈥檓 still struggling with this memory stuff ! Looking forward to hearing you play this again soon !
-
Sindre Skarelven Thank you for that most impressive performance. That's quite a feat you pulled off! I find it fascinating to watch someone play a piece I know and see the wheels turning in their head in ways that are surprisingly familiar. Re: repeats: Var. III has the cute repeat of the second section written out but I wonder if repeating all the repeats in a piece with many repeated parts isn't too repetitive. I watched a tonebase lesson with Garrick Ohlson where he says that (in Schubert) the repeat signs are AN INVITATION only. That seems reasonable. Thoughts?
-
Sindre great job putting so much together in one week! Fantastic.
-
Sindre Skarelven Good start Sindre. I'm looking forward to your next video.
-
Juan Carlos Olite Thank you, Juan Carlos! Yes, it it is! I enjoy the prosess of ingraining a lot of music in a short time, but the brain has to be at work :)
-
Gail Starr Thank you, Gail! I'm glad i'm inspiring you to work on memorization! Looking forward to hear you play it
-
mariannejhampton Thank you, Marianne! I'm glad you found it interesting. Often we just hear the end-result, but it is interesting to see what's going on on the way!
-
Susan Thank you so much, Susan!
-
Richard George Littlewood Thank you, Richard! Yes, it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.
-
Sindre Skarelven That is amazing, memorization based on the harmonic structure of the piece and you remembered all the detailed notes too. You are awesome.
-
Monika Tusnady Thank you, Monika! You pull up a great discussion about the repeats, and I will like to share some thoughts. I agree that the repeats are optional. One thing we should consider is that at the time of Beethoven people in general didn't hear a lot of music. So, if they first sat down to listen to music, it would be nice if it was going on for a while.
As a performer, I will sometimes take the repeats, and sometimes not (you can see this in the Liszt challenge). For sonata-movements I generally take the first repeat but not the second, because it usually feels that the piece is ended. But if one choose to do the repeat, one must consider deeply how to finish the first time opposed to the second time. Also, one may have some ornaments planned, making it interesting on the repeat.
We must also consider how much time we have to play. A piece like the one we are playing now will be considerably longer if we take the repeats, and sometimes we don't have that time. Is the piece a small part of the recital, or is it the "main dish"?
If we just consider the music and choose to do the repeats, I think we should do as Juan Carlos did, by creating something interesting with changing it up a little on the repeat. That's a task I would like to take on. Especially since this piece is now "the main dish" as I called it.
I also have an opinion that since Beethoven did write a variation within the 3 variation, the piece will be asymmetrical if we don't take those other repeats. I think that would be an argument that Beethoven wanted the repeats. At least, I would like to have that symmetry between the variations.
Anyway, great discussion! Feel free to ad some thoughts on this :)
-
Daniel Chong Thank you so much!
Yes, I think very much about harmonies and melodies when memorizing -
Sindre Skarelven Great job! Awesome job on tackling the memorization right off the bat. I am the same way, I like to get everything into my head as soon as possible so I can start focusing on the music as quickly as possible! And you are 100% right about the repeats in Beethoven. Again, if he was performing this piece, it's possible that the audience might NEVER hear it again so he wanted to make sure he would make an impression. And repeats always allow us to explore the improvisatory world that Beethoven was so famous for :)
-
Sindre Skarelven So great that you can already play from memory!!! I have not yet dared to do so, although I feel I may already have memorized some parts...... Congrats! Looking forward to your follow-up video(s)! :-)
-
