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A piano can be art in itself
Appearances
do count
A piano is not only a musical instrument, it can also be a work
of art.
When the concerto does not turn out to be what we expected, we
can still admire the cherubs on the piano.
In 1879 Edward Burne-Jones painted a top of a grand piano.
It was a wedding present for the daughter of a friend.
It shows 'Mother Earth' with little 'earthly' nude angels around
her.
It is the period of the 'Pre-Raphaelitism', the artistic trend
of the British poet, writer, designer of wallpaper, typographer
and socialist William Morris (1834-1896).
A keyboard
bent in the wind
In
the dance-performance Typhoon Krisztina de Châtel lets
her dancers be confronted with the force of wind machines.
In a prologue without wind, one can hear the murmuring piano-sounds
of composer Simeon ten Holt, giving the dancers the opportunity
to prepare for what's coming. They look to be off-balance, as
if they lean against the wind. Their arms cleave the air. They
are ready for a battle.
Then the rising sound of the wind machines drowns the soft sound
of the piano. The dancers breathe in to fill their lungs and proudly
fight this invisible force.
A Bösendorfer
equipped with an electric opener of piano tops
The world-famous Austrian architect Hans Holein likes to be surrounded
by extra ordinary objects.
So he designed a grand piano to his taste.
It became a contemporary instrument with an exceptional bright
colour and a lot of shiny brassy parts.
A stick to hold the top a piano would be too simple for Hans Holein;
it had to be an electric-powered hinge. Architects are often asked
to design curious artistic objects.
Sometimes villas are built in the shape of a grand piano
This is the case with the villa Gaudeamus in the Dutch
town Bilthoven designed by Frantz Röntgen for his
father Julius Röntgen.
This proofed to be an inspiring place to work on his compositions:
over a hundred pieces are written between 1925 and 1932.
Gaudeamus became a crossroads for musical activities like recitals
and courses for music analysis.
The 'Gaudeamus' foundation now has taken over the organisation
of these activities in the same house.
The house is renamed the 'Walter Maas Huis'
after the founder of this foundation who turned it into a sort
of guesthouse for contemporary composers.
Louis Andriessen, John Cage, Ton de Leeuw, Olivier Messian,
György Ligeti, Peter Schat, Karl Heinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varèse
and Reinbert de Leeuw all used the house to work on their
compositions.
Walter Maas has kept the guesthouse until he died in 1992 and
managed to combine his hospitality with his activities as 'music-broker'.
There is not much left of the guesthouse now. There were a lot
of big and small rooms and as much as seven bathrooms. On the
first floor one can still detect some room numbers on the doors.
Piano with
a build-in clock
The clock was added because pianists in those days usually had a decent job in the office. Of course they could not risk being late for work.
It is said the clock disturbed the piano music greatly by ticking too loud and offbeat too.
Leopold Sauer, (Prague 1805) build this pyramid piano with hanging action.
These kinds of pianos were sometimes called giraffes because of their long necks.
.
The famous psychiatrist and psychologist Dr Helmholtz who probably
used it for his scientific investigations once owned the instrument
seen here.
Helmholtz gave physiology a purely mechanic character. His students
even denied the existence of the human soul.
All human activity on physical and psychological grounds was described
in purely mechanical terms.
then I
feel that lampshade on my head
that diminishes my tin words and
my voice sings dusky on the muffled sounds of a piano
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