Piano Apocalypse

Eka Chabashvili

"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.

In this exposition we have introduced some new ways of employing and modifying piano. However, how do we answer the question reflected in the title of the artistic research? Actually, we started research trying not to search for answers, but rather to prove that piano music has not come to an end; That it is just the end of one of many lives – transitional period between phases, the Apocalypse and the beginning of the new phase; That the instrument still has the potential to inspire composers to compose innovative, truly contemporary music that reflects the spirit of the epoch. We hope we proved that. Maybe in this case we are not objective, but rather subjective researchers in love with the instrument of great historical importance.

But one of the characteristics of the artistic research is that it accepts subjectivity, as opposed to the classical scientific methods. And it is this subjectivity that enables not only the arts, design and architecture, as Verbeke states, but also artistic researchers to build on their own specific positions in relation to reality.

Though, not anly composers and pianists might build their specific positions in relation to the future of the piano...

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Conclusion

We offer to public two interpretations of the Piano Apocalypse; Both of them have their own perspectives:

ModEkAl, developed within our artistic research needs to be public to fulfill its purpose - to be employed in making music.

Though, public could also enjoy piano in a rather non-traditional role... For instance, this pot-piano standing in the middle of a street in Budapest.

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