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Topic: Classical music in lead sheet form (Read 5023 times) previous topic - next topic

Classical music in lead sheet form

I was wondering if any Noteworthy users would be interested in notating some Classical piano sonata melody lines with the chords?

Anything by Liszt or Beethoven would be great. I love their stuff. (Bach didn't believe in chords so don't bother notating any of his stuff in lead sheet form. :-)

Take care and enjoy the music.

Shaken, not stirred.

Re: Classical music in lead sheet form

Reply #1 –
And when you're done with that, how about producing some paint-by-number versions of great Impressionist paintings? Anything by Monet or Cezanne would be great!

Re: Classical music in lead sheet form

Reply #3 –
... which only shows that the person who wrote the analysis believes in chords.

One thing I notice is that many of the chords identified are added-note chords such as major 7ths, minor 9ths and so on. In contemporary styles such as jazz, such chords are used as entities in themselves; in Bach's music it's more appropriate to describe them as the instantaneous results of voice leading.

If you examine the non-triadic chords in Bach's music, you'll see that the extra notes are usually passing tones, suspensions, anticipations, appoggiaturas and other devices of melodic construction. That is, they are dictated not by harmonic considerations but by melodic ones.

Which is not to say that chords were entirely foreign to Bach's thinking - the chorale settings, for example, can be understood as primarily chordal in construction. It is true, however, that his thinking was considerably less chordal than that of most composers in later eras. For example, compare the melodic quality of the lower voices in Bach's chorales to the much less interesting lower voice parts in, say, 19th-century hymn settings.

Re: Classical music in lead sheet form

Reply #4 –
> the person who wrote the analysis believes in chords.

Well, it varies. Consider, for example, Prelude #1 from
the first book of the Well Tempered Clavier. It's really
just a sequence of arpeggiated chords. On the other hand,
think about any of the fugues. It just doesn't make sense
to talk in terms of chords.

What we've got here is a clash in thinking about music.

Much modern (commercial) music is "vertical". It's written
as a chord progression with a (mostly single) melody
layered on top and a backing rhythm. Many people,
(particularly amateur and self taught musicians) think
"vertically" - it's well suited to playing "rhythm" piano
and guitar.

In contrast, there is "horizontal" thinking, more common in
players of monophonic instruments. This concentrates on a
melody or melodic line, somewhat ignoring the vertical
chord structure.

Either mindset in itself is incomplete. To say "Bach didn't
believe in chords" illustrates this point. The chords arise
from interactions between the polyphonic voices. The chords
are "there" (though usually far too complex to describe!).
You just cannot reproduce the music in terms of the
chord structure, it's too coarse a description.

Similarly with Beethoven, Liszt, Mozart, Brahms, etc... it's
not really possible to come up with a meaningful
chord/melody representation. Too much gets lost.

Now, I'm not criticising "vertical" thinking. Indeed, as a
largely "horizontal" thinker, I often wish I could think
more vertically as it seems to be the key to improvisation
and the ability to quickly and simply reproduce what I
hear. The point is that there is some music that is easily
broken down into chords, and there's some that's not. To
attempt an "easy play" score of a Beethoven Sonata is, as
Grant suggested, rather like a paint by numbers grand
master.

Get the "real" score and have a go. There is quite a lot of
very good music that is accessible to even the worst of
self taught pianists with atrocious technique (and I speak
from long personal experience!). All you need is the ability
to read it.

Re: Classical music in lead sheet form

Reply #5 –
John,
I would like to thank you for your post --- I have got a better understand of things. Thank you.
I would also like to play classical piano but most of the scores I've looked at are written to complicated for my playing ability.
Can you recommend some slightly simplified arrangements of classical piano music where the piece is mostly intact?
Would these arrangements be public domain and/or would I be able to obtain some for free on the internet?
Thanks again.

Re: Classical music in lead sheet form

Reply #6 –
John - regarding the 1st WTC prelude, I already mentioned the chorale settings as examples of Bach's use of chordal writing, so I was not denying it was possible. On the other hand, even this prelude, chordal as it looks, has its melodic aspects. If you examine it closely, you'll see that the chords being arpeggiated are, with very few exceptions, consistently in 5 parts -- and, in fact, these parts move very much as chorale voices would, even displaying melodic characteristics such as suspensions (bass, m. 2; soprano, m. 3; and so on). This is a far cry from the Alberti bass of the Classical period, not to mention the oom-pah accompaniment of the Romantic waltz or the chord notation of contemporary popular music.

Kid -
There is a lot of music specifically written for beginners, which you might find more interesting than simplified versions of more difficult pieces. You should look up Bach's "Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach"; sonatinas by Beethoven, Hummel and others; Beethoven's "easy sonatas", opus 49, "Für Elise", and the first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata; Schumann's "Album for the Young"; the first few books of Bartók's "Mikrokosmos", etc. You can also find graded collections of classical music, from beginner's level on up, in almost any music store. If money is a problem, you might check the local library. Some of them have sheet music in their collections.

As to finding music on the Internet, I have no personal experience with this but I'll share some information posted on the NWC newsgroup: there's a list of Internet music sources at http://www.netidea.com/~fredn/freeshee.htm

Good luck.

Re: Classical music in lead sheet form

Reply #7 –
I don't assume the problematic of harmony as simple as progressing chords or bass line etc. I think that harmony is a total method of thinking, combined of both the chordal structure and the progression of the melodic architecture.

As I've observed, Bach is the first and the most important composer-philosopher who built his harmony as a means of thinking. This can obviously be extracted from most of his works, for instance the adagio of the Violin Concerto in E BWV 1042