Research Catalogue

Since 2018, we have been conducting an artistic research that aims to research sound production techniques of piano in the 21st century. We have been inspired by the words of Karlheinz Stockhausen who declared, in 1992, that “piano music has come to an end and something quite different is coming… With the claviers made up to this time, there is nothing new to discover anymore.” The research resulted into a piece composed by a composer Eka Chabashvili in interaction with pianists Nino Jvania and Tamar Zhvania for 2 pianos, modified piano, video-installations and the virtual piano orchestra. The main aim of the piece “Has Piano Music Come to an End?” is to contradict Stockhausen and demonstrate various new possibilities of engaging acoustic piano in contemporary music. In this exposition we offer two different presentations of the same artistic research introducing some of the research results employing, on one hand, academic and, on the other hand, creative writing styles.

"Piano music has come to an end and something quite different is coming. I sense it clearly: with the claviers made up to this time, there is nothing new to discover any more," declared Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1992. Truly, the piano, a brainchild of its era, has gradually been alienated by our epoch. Contemporary composers engage themselves less and less with the piano – particularly as a solo instrument. Though, we have to consider that a musical instrument is a musical chronicler with the structure, tuning system and performance techniques reflecting to certain extent the epochs it was created and employed in. Consequently, the main principles of music representative of every epoch lead to transformation of the instrument, its renewal, refinement, enrichment of performance techniques. Each epoch adapts the instrument to the principles of the corresponding musical thinking in order to make it capable of producing contemporary sound. Using our artistic imagination, we compare this situation to the Apocalypse, trying to find some ways of dealing with it. In this exposition we present some results of our experiments with the piano and its sound conducted within the artistic project "Has Piano Music Come to an End?". Methodology we employ is comparative and experimental. Analysis of piano music repertoire, its compositional and performance techniques and instrument's structure in various epochs led us to the reconsideration of the piano and inspired us to offer to you some new experimental options of its employment and modification, the latter resulting in a new instrument “ModEkAl”. Of course, no artistic research about music and a musical instrument could be conducted without making the research and its results public. Publicity is an inherent part of music which has to be performed and perceived in order to fully fulfill its purpose.