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strinasacchi
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« Reply #15 on: 00:49:07, 30-12-2007 » |
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Hmm, Ollie, it sounds like you've had quite an extensive and illustrious page-turning career. Can you share with us any insights on historically informed page-turning? Aleatory or improvisatory page-turning? Vibrato, I'm sure you'll agree, is much to be discouraged in effective page-turning. What about unusual types of paper? Questions of temperament? The temperament of the player for whom you turn pages may very much affect your state of mind...
(Off topic: I've still been scribbling the Bach-temperament-doodle from time to time. I'm not completely convinced that it has to be upside-down, because drawing it in either direction requires that the pen move backwards, which is what causes the nib-stuck-in-parchment problem. Was Bach right-handed? Would it matter if he wasn't?)
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autoharp
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« Reply #16 on: 08:13:05, 30-12-2007 » |
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I've often enjoyed page-turning for solo pianists, especially if the piece is unfamiliar. I feel I get a musical experience which is unavailable to anyone else present.
The downside was provided by one neurotic (and quite well-known) pianist who hissed, tutted and glanced angrily whenever he felt that the page was turned over a millisecond early or late and failed to thank me afterwards. On one occasion he turned for me - that was uncomfortable as well!
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #17 on: 11:20:35, 30-12-2007 » |
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I've often enjoyed page-turning for solo pianists, especially if the piece is unfamiliar. Isn't that a bit like ticking a box that says 'Please send me details of all special offers and services provided', or expressing great interest when some telesales person calls you?  |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #18 on: 11:22:17, 30-12-2007 » |
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historically informed page-turning? Aleatory or improvisatory page-turning? Vibrato, I'm sure you'll agree, is much to be discouraged in effective page-turning. What about unusual types of paper? Questions of temperament? The temperament of the player for whom you turn pages may very much affect your state of mind... There exists, I believe, an article by Ton Koopman: 'One to a part? Then who turns the pages?' (or some similar formulation). I haven't read it. Indeed vibrato is out but portamento is sometimes desired by page-turnees: sometimes the music is printed single-sided and there's nowhere really safe to turn so the only thing is to slide the right-hand page over while it's in use. And when the music's unbound it doesn't always sit happily at its destination: since you're turning from the top of the page the bottom of the page doesn't always end up right against the stand. Sometimes in these cases a discreet push against the bottom of the left-hand stack from time to time can be necessary to avert a later avalanche.  And then there's the matter of turning pages for oneself while playing. It's a very delicate business indeed to get two landscape-format A3 pages in a position where they can all be seen while playing a contrabass clarinet seated and yet be no further than arm's length away. And glasses don't help the issue. Unless they're the 1980s Aimard model for example. (I don't think you can ever avert a certain amount of backwards travel if you're drawing a circle... all the same I'm not unhappy with the notion that he probably did draw the thing upside down. Can't quite put my finger on why but it does seem more normal for me in joined-up writing to join loops at the bottom, for example. And the flourish at the end would seem weird for me at the beginning... on the other hand someone who actually knows about handwriting should be able to tell very easily which way it was actually drawn.) |
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autoharp
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« Reply #19 on: 11:43:08, 30-12-2007 » |
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I've often enjoyed page-turning for solo pianists, especially if the piece is unfamiliar. Isn't that a bit like ticking a box that says 'Please send me details of all special offers and services provided', or expressing great interest when some telesales person calls you? Eh? Those pianists who ask me to turn pages in concert are almost always friends who play interesting repertoire. |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #20 on: 11:51:12, 30-12-2007 » |
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There are a few basic principles I generally ask of turners, and was interested to know whether they concur with those of other players (or what other turners have experienced)?
1. In a bound score (increasingly I photocopy most of these onto single-sheet copies to diminish the likelihood of turning problems), the page wants to be over by the time I play the first note on the new page (but not too much before).
2. On a single-sheet copy, the page should be turned just at some point on the right-hand page, preferably one of the easier places (but not generally during a silence; a sustained sonority can sometimes be OK).
3. Single-sheet pages should be shifted quickly (even if that produces a tiny rustle - better that than a page moving slowly, which I then find impossible to read), without lifting the page at all. It should be moved from the top, without fingers covering any of the notes.
4. In a single-sheet score with many pages, accumulated pages on the left should be discreetly moved to one side at certain points, to diminish the likelihood of the pages falling off.
And without fail, I always double-check the order of pages just before going on (especially if the page-turner has been looking through them, after one occasion where a turner did this, resulting in two pages of a Sciarrino Sonata being in the wrong order).
Some of the most tricky occasions for turners, apart from the Hoban and Amy pieces that ollie mentioned earlier (the latter of which, with its turning forward, turning back aspects, must present the most virtuosic challenge to any page-turner, and ollie did flawlessly), have been pieces which involve various stuff played inside the piano (plucking, damping, stopping harmonics, striking the frame, etc.), necessitating the stand being placed well back inside the piano, under the lid, to enable access to the strings and body of the instrument. Once I felt very bad for an extremely petite Japanese page-turner who was simply unable to reach the pages when they were that far back, other than by craning forward and standing on tip-toe!
I did once suggest to Dieter Schnebel the idea of a piece for solo page-turner (thinking of his piece nostalgie for solo conductor), but to date nothing has come of that. I'm trying to think of pieces that have explicit instructions for turners. In Richard Barrett's Tract, there's an instruction for the page-turner to turn the page as if in slow motion; in Marco Stroppa's miniature estrose, there are four-hand chords at the beginning of each piece to be sustained with the third pedal, which are pressed down by both the performer and the turner. Can't think of any others off-hand (nothing I know of Kagel or Schnebel, both of whom might be likely to do such a thing), will keep thinking....
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #21 on: 01:05:58, 15-01-2008 » |
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I witnessed one of those page-turning nightmares this evening when Julius Drake's turner knocked the music onto the floor between verses of Schubert's 'Normans Gesang' (sung by Thomas Quasthoff).
There was an audible fluff in the accompaniment though no hint in the tempo that anything was amiss. Perhaps Quasthoff, facing the audience, didn't notice anything awry beyond a wrong note - and to her credit, the turner did retrieve the missing page in probably the slickest and fastest manner possible.
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Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #22 on: 04:49:53, 15-01-2008 » |
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Am I wrong in remembering that the page-turner in the "four hands" version of Petrushka is supposed to play the triangle for the "carousel" music? Judging from the misadventures listed above, it seems that page-turners could take a leaf out of the "I'll do the dishes!" ruse... which involves popping-up enthusiastically to wash the dishes after supper, but then doing it so extremely badly that you're never asked again |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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time_is_now
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« Reply #23 on: 11:47:08, 15-01-2008 » |
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Ian's list of basic principles sounds quite reasonable to me, and I sometimes wish more pianists would know exactly what they wanted from a page-turner, since it seems to me that although there are a few absolute rights and wrongs there are also personal preferences that particular pianists have, which there's no way you can know unless they tell you (e.g. some prefer the page to be turned quite early, some at the last moment; some prefer single sheets to be moved very quickly away, some prefer them to be slid across s-l-o-w-l-y so that the next page is visible before it's actually begun). Ian is, strangely enough, just about the only prominent new-music pianist in the UK I haven't turned for. Do you actually tell these things to page-turners before you go on stage, Ian? Quite a number of pianists in my experience seem to want you to guess their preferences, although that doesn't stop them casting you annoyed glances when you guess wrong.  I seem to have been generally successful when I've turned pages, and a number of pianists I've done it for have specifically asked for me again, which is always nice. Someone in the audience at one of the Cutting Edge concerts last autumn told me that I turn much more quickly than most page-turners; so it's possible my nervousness and uncertainty doesn't come across, but that doesn't mean it's not there! I think anyone turning pages never stops feeling a bit nervous. However, basic principles I find helpful are: however little time you have with the pianist beforehand, try to get them to warn you about any repeats, especially repeat marks near the end of a page or single bars/small sections that repeat multiple times. Try to get an idea of the basic tempo and also of how quickly the pieces moves within this tempo (i.e. not only the underlying pulse but also what note values you're going to be reading most of the time). This goes for new music rather than old, really. There are some specific tricks that can help, which are mainly about not getting so nervous that you stop using commonsense and lateral thinking. For example, if you're turning for Xenakis's Evryali you're liable to slip up if you just look at the number of notes on the page and become immediately daunted, whereas if you notice it's in 4/4 throughout and at a constant tempo then it's suddenly quite easy. Also, one particular thing I always do, although no one's ever commented on it so maybe it's not as important as I think, is pretend to keep following the music once the pianist's on the last page, as if there might be another turn coming up. I think it really has the potential to affect the audience psychologically and make them 'switch off' if they see the page-turner sit back in his chair and realise the piece is about to finish. The clothes issue can be difficult. I would always aim to wear a black jumper, if not also trousers and shoes, but as Ollie says sometimes you don't find out you're turning till you're already on the way to the concert! |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #24 on: 11:58:46, 15-01-2008 » |
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Ian's list of basic principles sounds quite reasonable to me.....Do you actually tell these things to page-turners before you go on stage, Ian? Yes. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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strinasacchi
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« Reply #25 on: 12:14:31, 15-01-2008 » |
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The clothes issue can be difficult. I would always aim to wear a black jumper, if not also trousers and shoes, but as Ollie says sometimes you don't find out you're turning till you're already on the way to the concert!
I recommend wearing trousers and shoes when turning pages. You may think you're not visible to the audience from the waist down, but you are. |
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Andy D
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« Reply #26 on: 12:16:52, 15-01-2008 » |
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The worst cock-up I've witnessed was during Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen at a live broadcast from Pebble Mill. Can't remember without looking it up who the 2 pianists were. Both turners seemed to be struggling, then the turner for the second piano turned far too many pages at once, the pianist tried to flick the page back but obviously ended up on the wrong page so he had to stop playing and leaf through the score to find his place. Meanwhile piano number one kept going so if you were listening on the radio and didn't know the piece well, you probably wouldn't have realised what was wrong. This was in the first half of the concert and after the interval both turners had disappeared and presenter Chris Wines and the producer did the turning.
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #27 on: 12:24:29, 15-01-2008 » |
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One thing that brings its own dangers is playing from wafer-thin, flimsy, pages, which instantly gravitate in the direction of the keyboard/floor without a continual effort on the part of the page-turner to keep them in place.
Once I played Xenakis Eonta and a piece of Ian Willcock on single sheets on the roof of a building - the (three!) page-turners had their work cut out then, with respect to the wind.....
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #28 on: 12:26:59, 15-01-2008 » |
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To play in the wind and turn pages is very challenging.
I wish they would come up with some sort of device (remote control) to turn pages.
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