Screws, bolts, coins and even pieces of cutlery are place between the delicate strings of ‘The Prepared Piano’. Music today is heavily dependent on electronic sounds; even live instruments are so often electronically manipulated. In such a scenario, the prepared piano comes across as a fresh instrument that creates sounds that seem to be electronically altered using acoustic manipulation.
Kelly Moran, a New York based composer and pianist, carefully places screws and bolts of various sizes in between the delicate strings. She composes for a technique known as the prepared piano, in which household items are used to alter the sound of certain notes on the piano (these objects muffle the timbre of the sound produced when a key on the keyboard is pressed). While screws and bolts are Moran’s objects of choice, other composers wh use a prepared piano use things such as paper clips, coins, straws and pencil erasers.
“The instrument that I had been playing my entire life suddenly sounded completely different and fresh, and it was something that really interested me/ That’s when I got interested in working the piano and generating sound in unconventional ways,” says Moran who was first exposed to prepared piano while studying composition and music technology at the University of Michigan.
The history of prepared piano as it is understood today begins with the American composer John Cage. The experimental composer used to change the tuning of his piano by placing coins, screws, bolts, nuts, rubber and plastic between the strings. His choice of preparations adds a strikingly percussive nature to the lower register of the piano, while the prepared notes in the upper register have a darkened, ethereal timbre. Cage gave very specific instructions as to how the instrument should be prepared, detailing exactly what sort of object should be used on each string and how far along the string each object should be placed.
“I think preparing the piano is a decision for sound as well as an abstraction of the instrument itself. In essence, you can add layers that create the sound of an orchestra,” says German composer Volker Bertelmann, known more commonly as Hauschka, who works with a wide variety of preparations, including ping pong balls, rolls of tape, bottle caps, clothespins, Tic Tacs, tambourines, metal balls and magnets.
“At first, I was a little intimidated by the idea that if I were to write something for prepared piano, there would immediately be comparisons drawn between me and John Cage. At a certain point, I felt that I had developed my voice as a composer and felt more comfortable expressing myself and coming at it from my own perspective,” says Moran.
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