User:Livedevilslivedevil
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[edit] Livedevilslivedevil
Live devils lived evil is a double palindrome, should anyone have failed to notice this. Given the suffocatingly incomprehensible vastness of humanity, it does not appear at all unlikely to me that it has been produced previously, so I am particularly glad that no-one has chosen it as a user name. The reason I am adopting it as my own is that it was the first home's pun that came to my mind when I decided it was time to rampage ruinously through this encyclopedia.
I would also like to point out that, despite being only half English*, I do not imply the adjective evilly when writing the noun evil. To me, Yllive is not sufficiently similar to any other word to escape the semantic category of rubbish.
(*Should anyone intelligent have got the wrong impression, I actually quite like England.)
[edit] The semi-altruistic, egoistic unit/flow of consciousness employing an allegedly humanoid body to write this (abbr.)
My initials are T. A. T**. I live in a place called Limberland***, which I would advise you not to look for unless you're desperate to miss your next ten appointments or feel like plagiarizing the work of an officially innocent eighteen-year-old boy. I speak both German and English more or less fluently, my French is viable. My Latin is not but this has sociological reasons. I understand more or less well the written forms of Saxon, Bavarian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and Portugese.
My school has found me somewhat useful at maintaining its reputation. Now I have finished helping (myself) there, I intend to engage in saving the world and suchlike, if I ever get a brainwave on what exactly it needs to be saved from. At the moment, I believe in the existence of qualia, though I would be interested in what Daniel Dennett has to say against it. I am not what is usually meant by religious. The idea of a benevolent god would appeal to me, but I prefer writing stories about it to actually believing in it. Officially I am a catholic and advocate certain forms of religion. I attribute no value to the absolute concept of knowing the truth, my philosophy is describable as a variant of hedonistic consequentialism. I will not go into further detail for fear that someone, most likely me, will abuse my ideas.
My interests/hobbys include: Listening to, playing, analysing, improvising and composing music (especially modern piano music); philosophizing (i. e. thinking at base level about all the problems people like me have); trying to encourage other people think about them without getting pompous myself (though I can't say I'm too good at it); speaking and writing (language in general); eating, etc.; daydreaming; ornithology; reading; pretending to know things (this does not mean tricking people!) and recieving good marks at school for it; making the best of anything that appears to be a dilemma.
The epics shortly to crop up in the German "Wikipedia, die freie Enzyklopädie" by the notorious Nonanonolcyclononanon, will in fact also issue from the metaphorical quill of Livedevilslivedevil. The contributions to the English version contain a few insertions on music and a possibly legal user page.
I am the son of User:PJTraill, which I thank him for pointing out, and of MHDTraill, who does not appear to have a substantial amount of interest in the survival of Wikipedia.
The same, I believe, goes for my sister JMTraill.
(**This would permit me particular enjoyment of the anecdotal woman who, it is said, told Churchill she could "give tit for tat")
(***by me alone)
[edit] A few points to be made
- Some people, including me, have a weakness for widespread, exciting-sounding statements, preferably involving the words "nothing", "everything", "life", and "world".
- Accordingly: The world is an amusing catastrophe. A lot of it is just too true to be good.
- And no, I am not a pessimist.
- Ice, light and reason are, to me, among the least disgusting things in the universe.
- Whenever you come across a brilliantly counter-intuitive idea (e. g. the ontological argument for the existence of god), have a look at how the terms are defined. Quite often it's just someone trying to be smart with logic, which is in my experience impossible.
- Here's one!
- To know something means to know one knows it.
- This can be turned into an infinite regress where knowing one thing implies knowing an infinity of things.
- I do not believe, that an infinity of things is knowable in a quantised universe, therefore I do not believe that I know anything.
- I find the resulting paradox most irksome. That which I have apparently concluded logically seems to question causality and logic itself. I do however rather like Socrates's wording of it ("I know that I know nothing").
- Truth and lies are not obvious opposites.
- The intuitive opposite of lies, by which I mean the one which inverts their most easily associated quality, is truthtelling.
- The intuitive opposite of truth does not concretely exist. That is how I define it.
- Prokofiev is like a firework full of rock, glass and lemon juice.
- Magic is the art of creating variables.
- "Intuition" means slapdash, subconscious reasoning.
- There is never the reason for anything.
- Two blacks don't make a white, they say. No, they don't, not if you add them. They only do if you multiply them. -1 + -1 = -2. But: -1 * -1 = +1. This is why prevention is much more of a solution than punishment.
- I don't believe I can try to do anything intentionally without wanting to. The sentence I don't want to do this but I will should be avoided in favour of Part of me doesn't want to do this, but it seems to be the smaller part.
- If one has a yet unfounded theory, it helps not to shout about it. A fair portion of people is going to react sceptically, one will feel forced to defend one's ideas and find it all the harder to be objective about their validity.
- Emotions are my goal but not my guide.
- You will hear people say that siblings who develop along opposite lines do so each out of protest against the other's lifestyle/ideology/personality. Perhaps that is part of the story. What I believe is, that the enstrangement relates to a mutual hope of becoming different from one another to a degree that prevents any kind of comparison, the consequence being a protection against rivalry. In the event that this kind of process is subjected to the banner of "demonstrative protest", it loses its protective nature in drawing attention to the matter and inciting external judgement.
- As a child, I saw myself as a body, one living organism. Then I was told, that my hair is dead matter and decided to rethink. I was definitely alive. And if my body (which in my opinion included my hair) was partly dead, then I could no longer believe to be my body. My body was simply something, with which I had a particularly intense relationship, over which I exercised visible control. It was the object which moved around with my person, but it had never been me. What really defines me, the entity behind the "I", is my consciousness, however it may arise. If anyone asked me what makes me talk about "I", my answer would have to be: "A time-extension of (in)felicific awareness, held together by memory and character (these two not being unrelated). But to be my body? I am no more my body than my bike."
- This is fun.
- On a more controversial note: I can further reduce the "I" if I wish. Reduce it so far, actually, that I can dare the pronouncement: "I will never die", the desperate dream of all youth. I can say that --if all that holds my person together, the temporal "mortar" of the Ego, is my memory and character-- then any future being retaing my (and only my) entire memory and character, is in a sense identical to me, even if the body of this future "I" exists long after my body has died. But while this is an exciting notion, it feels dangerous all the same. Imagine I am molecularly analysed and then beamed to two different places, my memory and character (re)instated in both bodies. Which of the two is me? Both have every reason in the world to believe they are me (assuming they know nothing of the experiment), but at the same time, the thought of such duplicity challenges the linearity of the "I" intolerably. I may therefore seek refuge in the opposite extreme: I am only ever a momentary bit of awareness, created, perhaps, continuously by my brain. I remember things from the point of view of a person who has developed into me, but is by no means identical to me! I anticipate the person I am going to develop into and disappear as I do so, to be replaced instantaneously by the next "me" with more or less but not quite exactly the same character and memory as the previous "me". So: I am gone at once. I will never suffer or die. I am incapable of the future. What "I am dead", should mean is: "There is no longer anyone who remembers being me". And if so, I need not, can not worry about it, when it is there.
- A few concepts I cannot make use of: Personal action and guilt; good, bad and (un)important people or things (unless the entire universe/multiverse is taken to be one thing); "the meaning" of life; man-made "law", true laws have admit of no exception and can --at best-- be discovered.
- Doubt in the consciousness of non-humans comes naturally to us, for our anthropomorphic brand of logical behaviourism has proven useful both in understanding each other and in boosting our morale by attemtping to set us apart as a species. To a neutral observer this should look like an excessive measure of arrogance.
- Such mind-spaces as are home to fields of experience, wherupon there flow streams of thought, leading in turn to points of view, sadly do not implement euclidean geometry.
- Dying can't be that bad, or people wouldn't keep doing it.
[edit] To authors, playwrights, film-makers and anyone who spends a lot of time at the input-end of the media:
If you want to move the masses, dont make pleasing the intellectuals your prime target. Cleverness has a habit of trying to show itself, so if you know you've got a fair amount of it, be sure to keep it in check. This doesn't mean being stupid, quite the opposite! It means being smart enough to move people in your direction, who wouldn't usually want to be shifted at all.
So never let them sense the shadow of a superior mind looming over them. All that does is discourage them. The average human doesn't want difficult, heavy-going literature, stuffed with subtle hints. It only satisfies those who feel they understand it, that is: a.) the ingenious and b.) the self-flattering. People feel much more at home with the kind of swift, elegant prose you're likely to find in a good newspaper or in a book by Terry Pratchett.
Don't bulge with symbols and metaphors, don't clutter up a text with more stylistic devices than it can bear. Anyone who lives up to the name of poet knows where to stop. If at the end you can still imagine what your work sounds like when read for the first time, well and good. But as soon as you lose sight of the starting line, as soon as you go utterly abstract, complex, must-not-be-understood-even-the-fifht-time-round, you merely enstrange the larger part of your audience.
[edit] On a current issue
There seems to be no power to prevent society's adaptation to progress. The vision of a completely different life somewhere in the far-off future, a motivating force common to a multitude of self-proclaimed pioneers, deludes us just like the dream it is.
I have one good reason to withdraw some of my erstwhile faith in salvation through science. It may indeed be impossible in practice to compare happiness in different individuals, yet all the same I am inclined to doubt that the assumed increase in well-being through scientific advance matches the material cost at which it comes. To us for instance, the lightbulb, despite all its genius, is not what it probably was to the people of Edison's time. We are quite used to it, it seems no more special than a sharp stone must have felt to prehistoric man.
We laugh at those who marvel at modern technology, ever eager to emphasize our own intimacy with it. If a more modest approach were normal, if enthusiasm and admiration were nothing to be ashamed of in company, we would feel far less need for further improvement. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with true, childlike amazement, strip it of all religious connotations if you wish. It is does not betray minor intelligence.
As it is, many --particularly the young and rebellious-- never show wonder for longer than the present convention allows, for fear of being branded uncool. "Throw away yesterdays treasures, immoderate spending is in fashion!" An unrealistic and unhealthy attitude, as it invites us to forget that we must be efficient to survive. In the face of an imminent ecological problem such as climate change we cannot afford a wasteful lifestyle. We must train ourselves to a lower demand. It would, I admit, be way into the idealistic to assume that our numbers could switch to making ends meet as hunter-gatherers or crop farmers without suffering a severe loss (in quality) of life. Nor do I advocate this as a solution. It sounds too easy. It is too easy. There is no point throwing away all that we have learned, only to make all the same mistakes all over again. I am opposed to anti-scientific romanticism. As I say above, while I believe that positive emotions are what it counts to achieve, I do not trust them as guides.
Nevertheless we must, in bringing up the next generation, enable them to enjoy life whether or not it is "enriched" by luxury goods such as television sets***. They must be taught what some of us seem to have rejected: the principle of saving; to admit of limits. Everything concrete is bounded. If we have a great time today, posterity (and we ourselves) will only suffer all the more. If you love your children and would prefer them to understand this, have care to retain your far-sightedness. The more they get, the more they will want. Luxury is an addictive poison, a drug. You will do best to deny them an overdose. Just apologize and explain.
There seems to be no power to prevent society's adaptation to --, that is the annihilation of-- progress. I very much hope there is, but that it just has not shown itself yet.
(***No, you do not need a TV to get the news if you can read this.)
[edit] This is my POV-motivated Analysis of Piano Concerto No. 2 (Prokofiev), which is due to be removed from the article as OR. I leave it here for potential admirers
Andantino-Allegretto
The first theme is quietly introduced in the beginning.The first movement is opened quietly by strings and clarinet. After a two-bar staccato tune, which appears to be no more than an intro, the piano takes over, constructing a second G minor narrante theme upon a left hand accompaniment of breathing undulation. A brief forte, backed by the orchestra, leads to a third, expansive, walking theme performed again by the solo pianist. Still carried by the wavelike motions in the left hand, the music ebbs and flows, gradually receding to a piano. The orchestra returns and, at the second attempt succeeds in leading the music to a first climax marked cantando ed espressivo by the composer. Strings and woodwind steadily wander through the said extensive third theme, attaining at last fortissimo. The volume then rapidly diminishes to piano before the soloist comes to a stop.
The orchestra is left suspended in a reverie which slowly transmutes into a new, faster, more forceful kind of breathing. The piano reappears in a very free A minor, continuing the drive with a new theme. Over the next pages, piano and orchestra chase each other, the orchestral bass section finally cantering up to two fortissimo hits. The volume decreases a little, though never allowing the music to relax. Four whipping bars, ff as well as marcatissimo, put a more or less vicious and peremptory end to the phrase. After a more thoughtful four bars of p the soloist leaves the stage with a widespread arpeggio. The flutes sink into a dreamy melody, soon to be joined by the oboes and tremolando strings, the melody gyrating somnabulistically and evanescing pp after eight bars.
The soloist awakes as the orchestra departs, yawning in G minor as it were, and beginning a notorious five-minute cadenza. It is noted as one of the longer and more difficult cadenzas in the classical piano repertoire, taking the listener all the way to the climax. Noted in two staves, the piano plays a reprise of its own opening theme. A third staff, which requires the pianist to perform large jumps with both hands frequently, contains the initially orchestral accompaniment. Another short forte gives way to an entry of the third theme, which then hides ever more effectively beneath shivering and growling bundles of notes. Quickly regaining clarity a crescendo emerges, spreading out a grand fortissimo rendition of the soloist's opening theme, striding along theatrically above a broadly extended form of the undulating triplet accompaniment which the piano enters into the piece with. The triplets are replaced by thudding full-length quavers, as the volume achieves a momentary fff. Several seconds of grotesque crashing, which arrange themselves around an arcane opening theme culminate in a whirl of sextuplet semiquaver chords, up down and up once more, spanning almost the entire breadth of the piano. "Only" ff but pesante with moody determination there follows a combination of the epic third and a regularly repeated, if abbreviated second theme, alternately played by the right and left hand. The piano is, again, noted in three staves. Con effetto initiates the last four bars of this event, a discordant cluster of syncopated electric shocks and explosive flashes.
The colossale portion of the cadenza is profuse with giant runs and large chords. The accumulated charge is then released in a premature climax (G minor), fff and colossale, which consists of oscillating triplet semiquaver runs across the upper four octaves of the piano, kept in rhythm by a leaping left-hand crotchet accompaniment. Prokofiev himself describes this as one of the very hardest places in the concerto. However, the first movement is considered to be the easiest among the four. Embedded in this from the beginning on is yet another entry of the third theme lasting ten bars, as does the original. Again, there is adjoined an only slightly quieter combination of the third and second theme, where heavy chords, each with its own acciaccatura-octave, suggest trembling foundations. Here is the only place in the concerto where the piano once makes it all the way up to C8. The next four bars are recognisable as those four, that follow the very first entry of the third theme. The ear is tricked into hearing yelling glissandi in what sometimes are and otherwise approach hemidemisemiquaver rushes. The last bars before the absolute climax drown themselves in thundering bass notes, occasionally sending up ineffectual distress flares. They are marked tumultuoso and reach supreme discord as C sharp minor collides with D minor.
As both hands move apart, to embrace the piano fff in D minor, an accent on every note, the orchestra announces its return, string quartet and timpani swelling furiously from p to ff. The listener is exposed to the apocalyptic blare of several horns, trombones, trumpets and tuba, which stretch the seemingly unimportant staccato opening theme to twice its length and then repeat it, seeming to quieten down a little, while piano, flutes and strings still shriek in unison up and down the higher ranges. Two towering cymbal crashes end the cataclysm in G minor.
A decrescendo brings the music back to an almost spooky piano within the next two bars. The piano, accompanied by strings and its own now only feebly undulating left hand, timidly puts forth the second narrante theme, echoes its last notes, repeats it pianissimo, ever fading. Pizzicato strings meaningfully point several more times to the opening theme, the significance of which has now been revealed. Both piano and orchestra decline to minimum volume, playing at last nothing more than the fifth and the octave. One deep G ends the movement.
[edit] Scherzo: Vivace The scherzo is of an exceptionally strict form considering the piano part. The right and left hand play a stubborn unisono, almost 1500 semiquavers each, literally without a moment's pause. At around ten notes a second and with hardly any variations in speed, this movement lasts circa two-and-a-half minutes and is an unusual concentration challenge to the pianist. It displays the motor line of the five "lines" (characters) Prokofiev describes in his own music. (Other such pieces include Toccata in D minor and the last movement of Piano Sonata No. 7).
Unlike the other three movements, it is mainly in D minor.
A fortissimo trill leaps at the listener announcing the energy that prevails throughout the movement, then slowly calms itself a little, finding its way down to a mezzoforte. The orchestra eggs the soloist on with its regular quavers. As soon as the volume steadies itself, the trill begins to descend chromatically, never resting. Nearly two octaves below the initial pitch, the piano makes several crescendo efforts to rise again. As it settles on a consistently ascending two bar pattern, mp, the orchestra gives up the few irregularities it has recently adopted, driving the music upwards. A second trill charges forth, a major seventh higher than the first and is left behind involuntarily, the percussion trying to prevent the descent, before soloist and orchestra join forces to attempt a third outburst, an octave above the original. This takes only a moment to fall back into a series of uncertain modulations of key as well as volume.
The tireless piano runs lead the way seamlessly to an A-flat major side theme of a dance-like character, just slightly less hectic than the trills. The orchestral accompaniment adds to this effect by interrupting its hurried pulse for a moment.
This, too, doesn't last and twenty seconds later the music is well on its way to a fourth trill. The decrease and following return of tension do not work the same way as they have done previously, the music appears to be steering towards another sudden fortissimo but then becomes stuck in repeated, strident discords between brass and piano. The last bursts before the end beginn to descend pretty well immediately, leaving no time for the volume to die down before the melody can sink in its own turn. Bars before the movement reaches its conclusion the piano whirls around between several tightly-packed, hinted trills, then gathers momentum and rushes from the bottom up, finally firing four consecutive notes at the tritonus (G sharp) and closing off the movement with a unison tonic quaver D.
[edit] Intermezzo: Allegro moderato A walking bass theme thuds heavily (pesante) and fortissimo out of the silence following the Scherzo. The music has returned to G minor. Strings, bassoon, tuba, timpani and gran cassa (bass drum) march along with moody determination. Trombones sharply pronounce a D, followed by tuba and oboe in a sudden diminuendo. For several bars, the orchestra issues ever waning threats, at the same time making indeterrably for the tonic. At which point the piano enters and the music immediately gains force, jerking its way up octave by octave percussively, then sinking back and gathering weight. The music speedily flies up to an exuberant, prancing ff which retreats slowly and unwillingly. After a brief, more pensive piano part, the orchestra launches into action, articulating again its crescendo threats. The piano takes over once more, this time tripletting its way up to the top and redrawing chromatically. A second fortissimo phase follows, similar to the first, but shortened and possibly less significant. The staunch, stomping four-four rhythm, which is emphasized rather than confused by the frequent syncopation, continues through the next piano, restlessly beginning a new crescendo after four bars. Before the listener knows where he is, the mounting tension is lifted in a pianissimo anticlimax.
Flute, oboe and bassoon sound a thin, nocturnal tune, the pianist guides it onwards with quiet, brushing sweeps. A tambourine is all that keeps the metrum going. The theme is promptly inverted, sustained by a perhaps unusual piano part, where the right hand glisses alternately down the black and white keys while the left plays triplet semiquavers.
A sudden crescendo forces the music from pianissimo back to forte in only half a bar. The piano proceeds with dry (secco), staccato triplet runs, rejoined by the orchestra after a slightly surprising nine bars. In the end the soloist adopts a clear direction, climbing step by step and bursting into a ponderous fortissimo of full-fisted chords, sustained by tuba and horns in the bass. This is soon followed by another much shorter triplet run with rather less drive, that doesn't quite get to the top of the hill before falling back again. The original roles of piano and orchestra are reversed, as the music reaches a brief climax of the prancing kind found twice near the beginning of the movement. The volume decreases one more time, then rises with the chromatic ascent of chopping piano chords clad in arpeggios and acciaccaturas. There is a rush up to what for a moment looks to be the climax, cruel whole-tone harmonies in the piano and a whip-lashing orchestra. A crescendo hardly seems possible at this point.
It follows after three harrowing bars. Piano and orchestra swirl up into one blazing, diabolic cacophony in which the practised ear may detect the thumping opening theme of the movement. As in the climax of the Andantino, the piano plays fff and does its best to emphasize every single note.
Unable to bear it any longer, large sections of the orchestra resign after a further three bars, leaving the piano to play a unison trill reminiscent of the second movements lightning-flashes while the woodwind pants exhausted triplet chords. The music soon sobers up a little, down to a piano, the piano breaks off for a moment. Not even now is the rhythmic beat interrupted. Just to make the point, the very last pianissimo g, played by both piano and orchestra, is accentuated.
[edit] Allegro tempestoso Five octaves above the intermezzo's end note, a fortissimo tirade pounces out of the sky, written in four-four-time but played in seven-eight (one-two-three-four-one-two-three etc.). After six enraged bars it settles down in the broader vicinity of middle C, the horns groaning about painedly somewhere below. Running up to an acid semitonal acciaccatura in both hands, the piano goes over into a sprint of octave-chords and single notes, jumping manically up and down the keyboard twice a bar. A relative tune is recognisable, quivering around the fifth (D) at various altitudes. During a piano and staccato repetition of the theme, the strings and flutes rush up, bringing the music to the briefest of halts. A moment later the piano goes back to forte and the sprint sets off anew. It is repeated three more times in total, piano and orchestra both becoming ever louder, the leaps turning ever more implausible. In the end, the piano performs a stormy gallop of triads (tempestoso), the hands flying apart more or less symmetrically, while the strings throw in a frantic accompaniment of regular staccato eighths. The piano puts a momentary end to its own fury with a barely feasible manoeuvre, both hands jumping up three or four octaves simultaneously and fortissimo in the time of a semiquaver. Two bars of furtive string-rhythms later, the soloist crashes back into the scene, growing up out of a powerful tuba-throb. Tritoni and octaves walk up to the highest F on the keyboard and down again in quavers. After no more than a bar, a second boom follows, hardly quieter than the first, one-and-a-half bars later a quieter third and at last a fourth, mezzoforte. Moments later the decrescendo arrives at piano and enters into a more meditative dialogue between piano and orchestra. Once or twice the latter attempts –rather apathetically– to regain its former rhythm, before both make towards a steady walking pace.
The piano stands aside for eight bars while the strings, still mf, embark on a new voyage. Still within the orchestra's metrum the soloist begins a solivagant cadenza, developing a wistful theme of a character similar to the first movement's piano opening theme. The volume alternately ranges about mezzopiano and pianissimo, until after several almost revealing seconds of forte the pianist has the music retire into a pianissimo mystery in which it would, it appears, remain immersed indefinitely. Quiet redirection subsequently issues from the bassoons, which take up the wandering piano-theme, while the piano itself goes over into a pp semiquaver accompaniment. Over the next eight bars, the piano's motions circle ever higher with hardly a crescendo, then drop for a moment, summoning force. The music hardly grows any louder, only to a piano, but it is emotionally so intense that it cannot possibly remain there. Oboe and clarinet, underlined softly by pizzicato strings, drift through a modification of the piano's cadenza-theme at half the original speed, while the piano itself whispers an octave above, playing the same tune twice in a row. The right hand plays in two voices, bedding the theme on a blanket of regular semiquavers, while the left sustains both with triplet quavers. Bassoons and flutes enter one after another as the piano goes into a more acute mezzoforte run, dense with repeated notes, octaves and fourths. With a sigh in the strings, and a second in the horns, the whole ensemble collapses into a first forte apparition of a combat of two equally yearning themes. For several bars the volume draws back, then erupts into a powerfully sad fortissimo with heavy, dissonant chords in the piano part.
The mood changes abruptly after six or seven bars of wayward decrescendo. As the soloist waits, pizzicato quavers hurry along a twisted version of the piano's cadenza theme in the bassoons, everything still piano. The piano itself joins in with the pizzicato after eight bars. For a moment, things seem to calm down, then a sudden crescendo in the orchestral staccato pumps up a fortissimo, illustrated by a wild, sliding piano part. The horns howl into the fray, trying in their own turn to convey one of the cadenza's motives. As the force dies down –first to mf, then to piano– pianist and orchestra engage in a hectic conversation, until both land at a pianissimo. The orchestra has the last word with two ff chords, the latter consisting of nothing but long-held Ds.
This is where the second cadenza begins, of a much more liberal style than the first, alluding to the dialogue earlier in the movement. Prokofiev wishes it to be played penseroso (thoughtfully). After a while the piano goes into a vagrant, introspective crescendo of D-sharp and F-sharp minor chords, which leads nowhere in particular, ending ritardando. A second follows, seizing up in a harmonically lateral D-minor chord with the character of an isolated, lofty vantage point.
The third crescendo begins differently. An eerie, moonlit pianissimo, ever repeating the same figure slightly changed, slowly grows and accelerates to a ff sonoramente. Sextuplet semiquavers sail up and down, bearing along a variation on the leaping piano theme from near the beginning of the Allegro. The orchestra joins in after some time, reintroducing the piano's cadenza theme, while the soloist's part still flows across the octaves. The key regularly changes from A-minor to C-minor and back again, the music becomes ever broader and harder to play. Rhythm and tune then fall into an abrupt piano, no less threatening than the previous forte. Trundling chromaticism has the music roll up to a fortissimo, the orchestra still proclaiming the originally wistful piano-theme. This is the only place outside the andantino where the piano exceeds the older range of seven octaves, jumping two octaves up to B7 just one single time. A long diminuendo of gliding piano rushes brings the volume to a minimum pp (Prokofiev does not once use a ppp in the concerto's piano part). The soloist sinks into an ametric F-minor variation of the cadenza theme, floating on a cello and clarinet tremolando in a slowing andante, finally repeating the same G 15 soporific times.
A ferocious blast (ff) starts off the reprise. The initial tirade returns. Everything is foreshortened. Several bars of the leaping piano theme immediately lead to a crazed abbreviation of the gallop, which the beginning of the Allegro thunders into. The soloist momentarily points to the pizzicato following the first cadenza, before the orchestra lets off a second blast. The leaping theme and the string's accompaniment of the tuba throb are combined, before the piano part of the latter runs madly up and down the keys several times. There is a slightly more extended repetition of the aforesaid "hectic conversation", seeming to put an end to the rage.
One more subito blast initiates a series of jumpy staccato crotchets. The pianist at last smashes down the same chord thrice before speeding up the keys in unison G minor. One after another double-basses, celli, the remaining string section, the brass and the woodwind join in, the music opens out into a screaming pandemonium. A barely audible ff septuplet of semiquaver chords and two rabid glissandi are thrown in by the soloist, before piano and bass section end the movement in five different Gs.
[edit] Originals
- Piano Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev)
- Piano Concerto No. 4 (Prokofiev)
- Piano Concerto No. 5 (Prokofiev)
- Piano Concerto No. 6 (Prokofiev)
- Colossale
- User:Livedevilslivedevil
- World Ocean
[edit] Notable contributions
- Piano Concerto No. 2 (Prokofiev), my favourite
