Music - Performance Appraisal.

Authors Avatar

Angela Conway – GCSE Music June 2005.

Performance Appraisal.

All three pieces were written in the Romantic Period of music, at the end of the nineteenth to the start of the early twentieth century. By this time, the pianoforte was a well established instrument.

The piece I performed is Etude in F by Stephen Heller, which is the most contrasting piece I studied. As such, it requires a wide range of dynamics – the whole piece is made up of very similar phrases, which sometimes only vary by dynamics, such as the melody in bars one and two which is piano and the same melodic phrase of three notes which is played sounding mezzo forte in bars nine and ten. Lied by Lévy, also explores the dynamics of the piano as it ranges from piano to forte. Whereas Chant de L’alouette by Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky only ranges from pianissimo to piano using a total of seven crescendos and four diminuendos, thus showing that it uses the gradual change of dynamics to change the mood of the piece in different places. There are no crescendos or diminuendos in Lied as it changes mood more suddenly than Chant de L’alouette. Lied is generally a lot less flowing and more staccato than Chant de L’alouette and so these sudden changes are a reflection on the piece as a whole.

The main melody in Chant de L’alouette and Etude in F is played in the right hand with accompanying chords, arpeggios and harmonies played by the left hand. Whereas Levy’s Lied has the main melody mostly played in the left hand, with accompanying staccato chords in the right. This changes in bar eleven as the hands swap and the right plays the main melody, then changes back again in bar nineteen. In Etude in F, the accompaniment helps the piece to sound flowing and smooth with the arpeggio-style patterns filling in any gaps in the music.  Lied, on the other hand, uses the accompaniment to give a more staccato and tense feel to the music, with many seventh chords which sound unfinished, like they need to lead into another chord to finish the phrase.  Also there is the strict crotchet pattern which is followed by the accompaniment throughout the piece. In Chant de L’alouette, the accompaniment is used to give a fuller, happier sound as it is in a major key.

Join now!

The pieces that I studied are not typical of their period as they do not have any pedal markings, but the pedal on the pianoforte by the end of the nineteenth century was being used. However, this does not mean that the pedal cannot be used at the player’s discretion, but simply that the composer has not suggested any suitable places for the pedal to be used.

Etude in F has the most constant dynamic changes of the three, which requires the player to maintain control over the part they are playing. For example, piano has to ...

This is a preview of the whole essay