| Keywords: | piano, sonata, contemporary pianosonate |
| Duration: | 2007-2012 |
| Period: | 17th century music, 18th century music, 19th century music, 20th century music |
| Musician type: | keyboard |
| Host institution: | Leuven University |
Most pianists have been trained mainly with classic, romantic and early 20th c. music. Consequently, their musical imagination has been moulded by a language governed by tonal principles and their comprehension of the form is limited to shapes with a more or less directly perceivable syntax.
It is therefore easy to imagine the difficulties they experience when facing a contemporary work. What sorts of skills and knowledge may help them? In order to conduct a fruitful inquiry, I have limited my field of investigation to the piano sonata. It is indeed impossible to find a universally suitable answer for the problems faced in contemporary music.
What information is useful to conceive an original performance of these musical pieces? By considering all collected data, do these sonatas share commonalities with each other? In other words: after this research, will the words ‘contemporary piano sonata’ acquire a specific signification for a performer (as complex as this signification may be)?
There are other research questions that are as important as the questions already posed, but which can only be answered musically; that is, with only a performance of the sonatas. These questions include: which skills are needed to play these compositions? How can these scores be translated into sound?
Jan Christiaens (promotor), Renaat Beheydt (co-promotor), Dr. Jan Michiels
