Piano Guidance
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Is there a 2048th note?

The piece contains the shortest note value ever used in a published work – a 1024th note. It's actually notated incorrectly as a 2048th note – but after that many tails on a note, who's really counting?

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6 times the music you're reading makes you go :-O

Those alarming times that a 1024th note, a thrice-sharpened F or a 'prestissimamente' tempo marking creep up in the score

A mid-bar change from Johann Sebastian Bach

In number 26 of the Goldberg Variations, JSB thinks it's just fine to change time signature in the middle of a measure. The simple triple (3/4) moves to a compound triple meter (18/16) at an alarming speed, and makes our head hurt a little bit.

The triple F#

Yep, it's a rare thing, but it does exist. You'll find a thrice-sharpened F near the end of the last movement of Reger's Clarinet Sonata, Op. 49/2. F### - that's more hashtags than a One Direction fan account that's just been followed by Harry Styles.

The 1024th note

Anthony Philip Heinrich's Toccata Grande Cromatica is an absolute joy to sight-read – slightly hungover – on a Sunday morning. The piece contains the shortest note value ever used in a published work – a 1024th note. It's actually notated incorrectly as a 2048th note – but after that many tails on a note, who's really counting?

Any prestissimo

Beethoven was eager in those sonatas. As fast as possible? Steady on, old chap.

In fact, anything in Beethoven's fair hand

He was a messy one.

Alkan's Le Chemin de Fer ('The Railway') in D minor

Right-hand sixteenth notes with a half note equalling 112 on the metronome (224 quarter notes per minute). You do the maths.

Take a listen (with mind-bending score)

Alkan's Comme le Vent

It's two honourable mentions for the virtuoso composer/pianist. Here's the first from his set of Etudes in all the minor keys Op.39. It's marked prestissimamente (eighth note = 160), is in 2/16, lasts over 4 mintues and contains perpetual triplet demisemiquavers. Yeah, have fun with that.

This graphical score.

Ok, now we're getting silly. Antosca's stave-less One Becomes Two has that feeling of stepping into an elevator shaft, when there's no elevator.

But sometimes there are nice surprises.

Cheers, composer (for once)

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What does chords mean in music?

chord, in music, three or more single pitches heard simultaneously. Depending on the harmonic style, chords may be consonant, implying repose, or dissonant, implying subsequent resolution to and by another chord. In traditional Western harmony, chords are formed by superimpositions of intervals of a third.

chord, in music, three or more single pitches heard simultaneously. Depending on the harmonic style, chords may be consonant, implying repose, or dissonant, implying subsequent resolution to and by another chord. In traditional Western harmony, chords are formed by superimpositions of intervals of a third. Thus, the basic triad results from the superimposition of two conjunct thirds encompassing the interval of a fifth; for example, e–g (a minor third) superimposed on c–e (a major third) yields the triad c–e–g. Superimposition of an additional third produces a seventh chord, for example, c–e–g–b or c–e–g–b♭ (c–b and c–b♭ are, respectively, major and minor sevenths); a further third expands the seventh chord to a ninth chord (c–e–g–b–d′). In Western art music of the late 19th century, seventh and ninth chords, serving as expressive reinforcements of basic harmonic functions, often replaced the triad altogether. Chords of superimposed fourths, for example, c–f♯–b♭–e′–a′–d″, the “mystic chord” of the Russian composer Aleksandr Scriabin (1872–1915), first appeared in early 20th-century works. More recently, “tone clusters” of adjacent pitches (for example c–d–e–f♯) were introduced into music that eschewed the traditional harmonic approach in favour of purely melodic-rhythmic forces. Broken chords (i.e., chords broken up melodically into their intervallic components) have long furnished basic motivic materials for instrumental compositions, especially of the homophonic variety conceived in terms of the diatonic harmonic system that governed the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when triadic themes were favoured. Early in the 20th century, on the other hand, Arnold Schoenberg enhanced his First Chamber Symphony, Opus 9 (1906), with a melodic motto of four superimposed fourths.

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