Sunday, November 13, 2005

Charles Rosen on "dislocation" in piano playing

Link to article

Charles Rosen, in Section 1 of his review of Robert Philip's Performing Music in the Age of Recording in the NY Review of Books, talks about the purpose and history of "dislocation" in piano playing. For those not familiar with the term, dislocation is the practice of sounding the right hand slightly after the left hand for expressive purposes, popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but currently out of favor (I concur). In the piano field, it is also referred to pejoratively as "da-dum" playing.

Rosen talks about the historical basis for this style of playing, its advantages and disadvantages. To pinpoint the section of the article, skip to the third subsection of section 1 starting "A similar ambiguity..."

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