Luxembourg Phil is making a toy piano call-for-scores this month! Selected pieces will be performed as part of the John Cage Centennial celebration in December. There were some great scores from our last call, in fact too many for us to perform. Please send your pieces in for another shot at the Toy Piano Summit in December!
Details can be found on at this link.
Since I began playing the toy piano, a tremendous number of people have expressed interest in writing for the instrument but never have the realistic opportunity to do so. This year, I decided to break away from the original UnCaged Toy Piano call-for-scores and invite musicians/composers of all walks of life to propose any idea they might have that incorporates a toy piano. By turning this year into a commissioning project rather than a call-for-scores, I hope that artists who have never written for the toy piano will be equally interested as composers who are already familiar with the toy piano. I am optimistic of the numerous creative musical ways the toy piano can be used and look forward to hearing your ideas!
At tonight’s Toy Bonanza concert, we will hear the world premiere of a new piece by David Wolfson. Read what he has to say about the evolution of the new piece and the collaborative process! This post is used with permission from David’s blog.
Last summer, on a whim, I wrote a piece for a competition. The competition was for music for “toy piano and other toy instruments:” the 4th Annual UnCaged Toy Piano Competition and Festival. My piece didn’t win, but it drew the attention of one of the judges: Margaret Leng Tan, “the queen of the toy piano.” She decided that the piece, “Twinkle, Dammit! An Obsessive Variation on a Well-Known Children’s Song,” was perfect for the new performance direction she’s exploring, which she calls “sit-down comedy.”
That was how I found myself in Margaret’s music room the Monday night before Thanksgiving, along with her two grand pianos, umpteen toy pianos, and one of her many dogs. The toy piano she’d picked for this piece was sitting on the floor between the two grands, and she sat on a (very) low stool behind it, with the music photocopied to one-quarter size so it could rest on top of the toy piano. She offered me a (full-size) piano bench to sit on, which I tried, but eventually chose the floor.
She had come up with a scenario (which she had told me about in a previous phone conversation). She had substituted a rubber hammer and a squeaky rattle for the rubber duck and train whistle I had specified in the score (which she had asked permission to do when she first contacted me). And, as it turned out, she’d also changed tempos, chopped rhythms in half, and added a left-hand part to a passage I’d written for the right hand alone.
Gulp. Was this still my piece?
Did I care?
Margaret’s vision of the piece is personal, idiosyncratic, and self-consistent. And very funny. Everything she’d done, she’d done for a reason—and by the time we got done rehearsing an hour and a half later, we’d made more changes, some of them her ideas, some of them mine. I’ve had a fair amount of experience collaborating in theatrical situations—and that’s what this was. I did my best to clarify what I thought she was trying to do, some of which involved musical choices and some of which involved physical/visual choices. (It’s not often I feel the lack of puppetry experience in my life, but I did that night.)
There are plenty of composers who have seen, and applauded, radical reinterpretations of their music. (I’ve even had it happen to me before; see Tamra Hayden’s acoustic guitar version of Song for an Accident). (She gets some of the chords wrong, but it’s still pretty cool.) But I haven’t heard any stories about that happening for the first performance!
I don’t know whether I’ll ever hear Twinkle, Dammit! the way I wrote it. (It’s not as though there are a lot of concert toy pianists out there.) I suspect that if I did, at this point…I might find it dull.
The 4th Annual UnCaged Toy Piano Festival is happening THIS WEEK in New York City. My piece is being played on Saturday night December 3rd, 8 pm at the DiMenna Center, 450 W. 37th St. Come if you can! If I can get a video, I’ll post it here as soon as I get it. In the meantime, please check out the edible toy piano (which will be featured at the concert).
Tomorrow night, Yen-lin Goh will give the New York premiere of Ge Gan-Ru’s Hard, Hard, Hard! a new monodrama for toy piano and toy instruments. Surely not to be missed! Find out more about the piece in her entry below.
For Ge Gan-Ru’s Hard, Hard, Hard! Tang Wan’s reply to Lu You’s poem (translated by Xu Yuanzhong)
The world unfair,
True manhood rare,
Dusk melts away in rain and
blooming trees turn bare.
Morning wind high,
Tear traces dry.
I’ll write to you what’s in my heart,
Leaning on rails, speaking apart,
Hard, hard, hard
Each goes his way,
Gone are our days,
Like ropes of a
swing my sick soul
groans always.
The horn blows cold,
Night has grown old.
Afraid my grief may
be descried,
I try to hide my tears undried.
Hide, hide, hide!
Inspired by Phoenix Haripin, a heartfelt Chinese poem by the famous poet of Song Dynasty, Lu You (1125-1210), Ge Gan-ru wrote a melodrama Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!for Margaret Leng Tan in 2006. This melodrama utilizes not only toy piano, but also other toy instruments that she had collected. Lu You is known as one of the greatest patriotic poets in ancient China. However, this particular poem does not dwell on his political aspirations but has as its subject his own tragic love story. Lu You grew up with his cousin Tang Wang, with whom he was first married. Even though they lived very happily together, Lu You was forced by his tyrannical mother to divorce his wife. They remained deeply in love with each other. Eight years later, in the spring of 1155, Lu You by chance met Tang Wan in the Shen Garden. Both had been remarried. Tang Wan offered Lu You golden teng wine. Lu You’s heart was broken when he saw her in tears and he spontaneously wrote the poem Phoenix Hairpin on the garden wall. This poem, in the Song Dynasty ci form following the ci convention, is in two stanzas. The first stanza ends with the word cuo repeated three times, which is the Chinese word for “wrong”. After Tang Wan read Lu You’s poem, she immediately wrote one back in response, using the same form. She was so sad that she became very sick and died soon after she wrote the poem.
My performance of Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! in 2010 led to the commission of a sequel from Ge Gan-ru based on Tang Wan’s reply to Lu You’s poem. Pianist Genevieve Lee has later agreed to join me as a co-commissioner. This companion piece, Hard, Hard, Hard! uses a similar instrumentation: toy piano, toy harp, toy glockenspiel and paper accordion, as well as other toys I have collected. Like Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!, Hard, Hard, Hard! gives “voice” to Tang Wan’s poem, further revealing this unforgettable 800-year-old Chinese romance.
Ge Gan-ru, described in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as “China’s first avant-garde composer,” is regarded as one of the most original composers of his generation. His music is known for its immediately identifiable individualism and unique sound. Ge has composed music for concerts as well as theater, dance and documentary and feature films. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ge was already known in China as the first composer to employ contemporary and avant-garde techniques, which were prohibited at the time. He was criticized for his individualism, which was directly at odds with the prevailing ideology. His cello piece “Yi Feng,” written in 1982, marked the first avant-garde composition in China’s music history. Ge Gan-ru’s music reflects his deep interest in amalgamating Eastern and Western musical aesthetics. He writes, “I try to combine contemporary Western compositional techniques with my Chinese experience and Chinese musical characteristics to create a unique and highly individual sound world.”
Have Schoenhut, Will Travel
LXXIX. Extended Toy Piano
For the past several years, I’ve been spending a large amount of time playing a very small piano. It all began when I was asked to write a short piece for toy piano—played by the amazing Phyllis Chen—and two violas, for the 2004 ICE Toy Piano Zoo. I was enchanted by the evocatively nostalgic sound of the instrument, produced by tiny plastic hammers tapping metal rods. In 2009, Phyllis asked me to write a work for two toy pianos for a concert in Tokyo, the last movement of which is for one toy piano, four hands. Later that year, I incorporated a toy piano solo into a large work for two pianos and percussion.
While I was composing the latter piece at an artists’ colony, I performed my first toy piano improvisations as part of a multi-media presentation by an interdisciplinary artist who was in residence with me at the time. Further collaborative pieces followed, as did free improvisations with some amazing musicians. In attempting to blend with other instruments, I found myself playing the metal tines directly in order to produce a greater variety of sounds at volumes other than the mezzo-piano to mezzo-forte range typical of the toy piano itself. Schoenhut Toy Pianos, the premiere contemporary manufacturer of these instruments created an instrument specifically for me in order to allow me greater access to the working innards.
Probably the greatest advantage of performing on this instrument is that it’s significantly easier to transport a toy piano than a regular piano. I’ve been focusing more and more of my attention on this small box, including composing a concerto for myself to play along with a chamber orchestra. In preparation for a performance on the UnCaged Toy Piano Festival this December, I’ve been working on solo improvisations. I want to share with you some of the extended techniques possible on the toy piano, some of the available sounds beyond its typical bell-tone. I recorded myself improvising on an amplified instrument, using a Kaoss pad in order to record and play back for a more layered sound. All the noises you will hear were originally produced by the toy piano itself within the improvisation, without any sound processing, even though you will hear some only as recorded and reproduced electronically.
My biggest frustration when performing on toy piano along with other instruments has been the inability to create a sustained tone. In order to transcend this difficulty, I’ve been working with several different techniques for bowing the toy piano itself, as you will see in the video below. As I continue, I bring in knitting needles in order to create a truer bell sound than that created by the instrument’s plastic hammers.
Watch video here.
In this second excerpt, I strum the metal tines to produce a gentler attack than the typical toy piano sound. In the background you can hear some other bowed toy piano sounds being played by the Kaoss pad.
Watch video here.
In addition to the difficulties creating a sustained tone on the toy piano, I also get jealous when I’m performing with other instrumentalists who play glissandos. While it’s not as clean as a swooping tone on a violin, I have created a technique for glissandos and microtonal inflections, as you can here in this next excerpt. As in the second excerpt, the background will include some sounds from earlier in the improvisation that have been recorded without further manipulation.
Watch video here.
For me, the biggest draw of the toy piano is paradoxically found within its limitations. I enjoy the creative problem solving needed in order to match the tone and musicality of other instruments, and I believe that it’s an excellent exercise towards creating new compositions. The same process that has forced me to rethink the possible performance techniques for this toy instrument can be applied to the piano itself or to any instrument for which I’m composing, and has allowed me to re-consider my basic approach to sound itself.
This article originally appeared on NewMusicBox. Join the discussion here.
Many people have asked me about previous UnCaged winners’ compositions. Fabian’s Toy Toccata was the winner of the 2nd UnCaged Toy Piano call, Virtuosity. Here are some notes on this piece:
Toy Toccata (in Black and White) is a short but intense piece for toy piano. Technically, the basic concept of the piece is the rapid alternation between white and black keys. On another level, the piece can be seen as a toy piano’s (attempted) rebellion against its own inherent cuteness and innocence.
The piece was not only the winner of the 2nd UnCaged Toy Piano, but it was also shortlisted for the 2010 Gaudeamus Prize. To view a preview of the score, check out Fabian’s website.
Wendy Mae Chambers begins her new bird-inspired pieces!
For the Birds – by Wendy Mae Chambers
Oliver Messiaen is one of my favorite composers and I was inspired to also use birdsong as a point of departure especially since I am currently living in a ‘bird rich’ environment in Key Largo. I also volunteer at the Key Largo Wild Bird Center and the songbird room is my bailiwick.
When Phyllis Chen commissioned me to compose a piece for toy piano I was very excited as I felt that birdsong is much better suited to the toy piano as opposed to the ‘real’ piano. Bird songs are articulate and percussive yet dainty and so is the toy piano. Plans are to continue on with an entire catalog of toy piano pieces based on birdsong.
The wonderful thing about the toy piano is that it’s portable and space friendly. The Schoenhut 37 keyed instrument is an instrument of high quality and the sound and action is wonderful. I suppose I like the limitations too when I’m composing. It’s kind of nice to only have 37 keys and it’s not such a ‘big deal’ to write for the instrument, but, most of all, I just love the sound.
This week, we hear from the one and only Margaret Leng Tan about the stunning piece Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! by Ge Gan-Ru. Watch a video of the piece from her performance at Present Music… or come see her live at the toy piano festival this year!
(photo by Michael Dames)
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! is a poem of sorrow and anguish by the illustrious Song dynasty poet, Lu You (1125-1210). This renowned poem was written spontaneously on a wall of the Sun garden in 1155 following a chance encounter with his cousin and former wife Tang Wan, whom he was made to divorce on the decree of his tyrannical mother. (The “malevolent East Wind” in the first stanza is but a caustic metaphor for the hateful matriarch!) The girl wasted away from a broken heart while Lu You composed poems of loss and abiding love into his autumnal years. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! speaks of her grief while clearly reflecting the torment of the poet himself.
From my toy arsenal Ge chose the toy piano, a toy table harp (which he could treat as a toy qin or zither), toy glockenspiel, and a percussion battery consisting of two claves, three cup gongs, one beaded gourd rattle, a pitched plastic hammer and a Japanese toy taiko drum. The hammer, plastic flute, and a paper accordion endowed with a two-note compass each cost one dollar in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Electronic frog and cricket boxes, along with a water warbler, completed the ensemble.
Given the limitations and idiosyncrasies of my untrained voice, Gan-ru allowed me free rein to experiment. In offering my own personal take on the Chinese operatic tradition I do not claim authenticity, but I have tried to capture something of the nasal timbre and melismatic flights of fancy so characteristic of the woman’s singing as well as the peculiar guttural texture of the declamatory male voice.
Ge Gan-ru, described in the New Grove Dictionary as ‘China’s first avant-garde composer’, came to the USA in 1983 where he established a reputation for writing music marked by an immediately recognizable individualism and a unique sound. His CD, Fall of Baghdad (Naxos), was chosen as one of the best recordings of 2009 by The New York Times.
Since 1985, Ge Gan-ru has composed for me Gu Yue (Ancient Music), inspired by traditional Chinese instruments and an unusual piano concerto, Wu (Rising to the Heights). Two decades later he created Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!, a Peking opera-inspired melodrama for my voice self-accompanied by a toy orchestra of 16 instruments.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! (1155 AD)
by Lu You
Hong su shou, Her hand rosy, tender,
Huang teng jiu, Pours the yellow t’eng wine,
Man cheng chun se Spring hues adorn the city,
Gong qiang liu. Willows embrace garden walls.
Dong feng e, The East Wind malevolent,
Huan qing bo. Conjugal bliss evanescent.
Yi huai chou xu, A heart sorrow-laden,
Ji nian li suo. Cruel years steeped in loneliness asunder.
Cuo, Cuo, Cuo! Oh, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!
Chun ru jiu, Spring as in days of yore,
Ren kong shou, So wan and wasted is she,
Lei hen hong yi Rivulets of tears
Jiao xiao tou. Drench her pink kerchief.
Tao hua luo, Peach blossoms falling,
Xian chi ge. Stillness pervades pond and pavilion.
Shan meng sui zai, Vows immutable as mountains,
Jin shu nan tuo. Yet how futile a lovelorn epistle.
Mo, Mo, Mo! Ah, Woe, Woe, Woe!
Translation by Margaret Leng Tan and Wan-he Ge ©2006
www.margaretlengtan.com
www.geganru.com
This year’s festival will feature instrument-builder/sound artist Ranjit Bhatnagar with his robo-toy piano. We are excited to have a robot performer as part of the festivities!
In Ranjit’s own words, “I bought a toy player piano on ebay. It arrived all smashed to bits. I rescued the hammers and chimes and added mechanical actuators to bring it back to life!”
Here, you can read about the 19-hour Satie Vexation marathon the robo-toy piano endured.
…Or watch a short clip of the robo-toy piano playing a small part of Phliip Glass’s Modern Love Waltz originally written for Margaret Leng Tan.
I am very excited to be recording Karlheinz Essl‘s Whatever Shall Be for toy piano, gadgets and electronics next month for my third toy piano album. After performing his other two popular works for toy piano Kalimba and Sequitur V, I asked him to write me a new piece for the 2010 Look & Listen Festival in New York City. Here are his notes about the piece:
At the beginning of the 3rd millennium, I had a strange encounter with a strange instrument: the toy piano, which – at the first glance – didn’t attract me that much. On the contrary, I didn’t properly estimate its restricted sound possibilities and regarded it quite uninteresting and boring. My immature prejudice changed entirely when I borrowed a toy piano from Isabel Ettenauer who was asking me since years to write a piece for her. And now, after being forced to dedicate myself to this instrument I soon understood that it has nothing to do with the piano as we know it. When I hit a key on a regular piano, I am not just hearing a note, but also the whole history of this instrument with its repertory from Bach to Boulez that the piano sound transports. This fact always makes it difficult for me to compose for piano as it always reminds me of historical music that I love – and also abhor. This didn’t seem to happen to me when I was playing on the toy piano because its sound has nothing to do with a conventional piano. Instead of strings this instrument has metal rods which are hit by a hammer, producing sonic qualities that rather remind me of bells or a celesta, Asian gamelan, or even an African kalimba. After writing my first toy piano piece in 2005 called Kalimba, I became more and more interested in scrutinizing the possibilities of this instrument. A few months later I composed WebernSpielWerk as a tombeau for Anton Webern. Here, the toy piano was utilized as a carillon – a very tiny one -, and in fact the piece was modeled after the generative sound installation WebernUhrWerk which was played at the 60th anniversary of Webern’s death from a loudspeaker hidden inside a roof at the market place of Mittersill where the composer was shot in 1945. But that was not enough: In 2008, when I started my Sequitur project for various solo instruments with live-electronics, of course a piece for toy piano was on my agenda. But then, after having written already several toy piano pieces, I met Phyllis Chen in New York. It was a hot and humid summer day in 2009 as we sat together in a tiny park in Midtown, exchanging our experiences with this strange and fascinating instrument. That’s when Phyllis suggested to write another piece, for her. And I immediately said Yes! In my previous toy piano composition, my aim was always to find a new perspective to this instrument. In order to break up the restricted sound world, I was hiding a tiny loudspeaker inside the toy piano for Kalimba which played back pre-produced sounds. WebernUhrWerk, however, is only played on the keys, and Sequitur V uses live-electronics which create a sonic house-of-mirrors solely from the live input of the instrument. This time I concentrated on the “ugly” parts of the instrument which are commonly not regarded as musical: the guts apart from the keys – the body of the instrument. So I was approaching the toy piano like an innocent child who looks into the belly of the instrument and starts scratching and knocking here and there. In fact, due to the acoustic properties of the sound boards, this produces very rich and fascinating sounds. Then I mounted a contact microphone on the downside of the the sound board which was connected to a special computer program that I had conceived for this composition: a kind of sonic “particle accelerator” (like the ill-fated CERN in Geneva) which creates a maelstrom of sounds, swirling around the audience. But there is yet another story which I have to mention in the end: When experimenting with the entrails of the toy piano, I realized that its sound board acts as a splendid amplifier for tiny sounds and noises. When putting a small music box inside, its lanky sound becomes strong and mighty, mixing nicely with the key sounds of the toy piano. That happens at the very end of the piece. And in fact everything that is heard before – rhythmical cells, melodic motives, even the harmonic structure – has derived from this little music box melody which arose from the great movie “The Man Who Knew Too Much” by Alfred Hitchcock. And the refrain of the song reads: “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.”
Click here to watch a video of the piece.