Musical Analysis and its Importance to Piano Performance

Hi Everyone,

This is a video of my recent live-streamed music analysis session last week. Therefore, today I bring excellent news!

Our new free college has now been unveiled, and I talk about one of the subjects we offer here for all Medium followers and music enthusiasts.

When we are piano students, we don’t tend to focus too much on the musical analysis or nothing for that matters. Piano tutors, in general, don’t spend time into understanding the structure of the pieces they teach, mainly due to a lack of time.

The average time of a piano lesson is one hour a week, and in fairness, is not enough to cover all the necessary topics to approach a serious and thorough study of music.

Piano lessons cover the necessary technical aspects, which are already a handful, and unfortunately that leaves no time for the study of the inner structure.

I believe that this is paramount to be a rounded musician, and this is not just about learning the theory as this covers only the basics of music, we could draw a parallel to learn how to read or write and learning the basics without getting into the grammar.

Luckily, there is a studio in London that offers articles and even free lessons in Counterpoint, Harmony, Music Analysis and Composition that publishes specialized articles and free live-streamed lessons in these subjects.

Why should analysis matter in a performance?

I get this question a lot. I consider understanding the structure of the music helps us firstly, to memorize it, which is one of the main concerns of every pianist in performance. If we can structure it, we can remember it much more comfortably. Framing the pieces is crucial for assisting our memory. This technique is paramount when playing long forms of the Romantic period, or even when you play piano concertos with an orchestra.

The second reason is that the intention with which you interpret the passages will change and the decisions you take are going to be founded on concrete ideas, not aleatory.

Do not hesitate to follow us and Subscribe to our Youtube channel and keep up with our music sessions on streaming every week. Music should be open and accessible to everyone!