After taking in half a dozen renditions of the Rondo alla Turca by celebrated pianists, I hit upon this one, performed -- if that is the right word -- “put forth”, perhaps -- by a computer:
Surprisingly, it has something valid and additional to offer. Just as a structure, this is not minimalist -- all the notes are there. But it deftly removes the layer of human emotion.
No doubt much of the early keyboard music would pass over pretty well on MIDI -- sort of a gussied-up player piano. After all, the limitations of the harpsichord filter out a lot of human expression. But surely very little thereafter, even from the purely piano literature. To include the lovely and emotionally varied first movement of Mozart’s Sonata in A. (The second movement, by contrast, though I kind of like it, always struck me as opaque and rather inhuman. It perhaps were best transformed by an autist or extraterrestrial.)
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Yet more minimalist, in that strictly analytical:
“Für Elise” was the first piece I learned -- indeed, I took up piano (albeit briefly) as an adult, in large part lured on by this. Yet I didn’t quite realize what I was playing. The pictured keyboard is much more intuitive and immediate than the (late-learned) staves.
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Einstein, re Bach (his favorite composer):
Listen to his work, play it, love it, honor it … and otherwise shut up about it.
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Minimalism and the faux-naif:
Kimya Dawson’s “My Rollercoaster”, Juno version
(Yet not unrelated to Bach ...)
A-A-and... this:
http://www.youtube.com/user/coffeescup#p/u/8/-c_ba2VD-vM
A-A-and... this:
http://www.youtube.com/user/coffeescup#p/u/8/-c_ba2VD-vM
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