Polonaise in G Minor: Artistry

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson I'm going to share ideas for playing "Polonaise in G Minor" with artistry, and we're even going to mix in a little improvisation. Let's check out the score to get started. Playing with artistry is sometimes called your interpretation of the piece. If you listen to a great performance, you might say, oh I love how they interpreted that piece, and that's just saying you love the artistic way that they chose to play it. Every piece is like a script, and you get to interpret it or turn that script into a living, interesting performance. And that's your unique interpretation. So when you interpret a piece to play it with artistry, you need to know when this piece was composed because that will affect how you interpret it. Now, anything composed by Bach or Scarletti or Handel or Vivaldi, those are all composers from the Baroque Era. The Baroque Era was approximately from the year 1600 to 1750, which happens to be the year Bach died. He was such an important figure from the Baroque Era that we basically make his the year he died the end of the Baroque Era. Now again, we don't know who composed this. I've written anonymous here for this edition, but it comes from the Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook, which remember Johann Sebastian Bach prepared for his wife to learn some pieces, and so they were all pieces from that era. So when you're learning any piece from the Baroque Era, there are certain things you should do. For example, don't use the damper pedal. They didn't have one the same way that we have one. Their pianos were less resonant and loud and so the damper pedal will just ruin the style of most Baroque pieces. So just don't even think about touching that damper pedal. I also find music from the Baroque Era very elegant and graceful, and one of the reasons for that is many of the pieces from the Baroque come from dance forms The polonaise was a traditional dance, and it was in 3/4 time signature and it originated as a peasant folk dance in Poland, but it became popular and eventually spread to France and all over Europe where it was used in royal courts for entertainment at fancy balls. So remember, this music was the cool dance music of the day. Remember when the dab was popular or flossing? Well, this was one of their popular dances back in the day. Mademoiselle, do you want to dance the polonaise? Yeah baby! When I play this polonaise, I like to think of music for when all the queen's royal guests are marching into the ballroom to be introduced. And now presenting the Duke of Grandenbury. So, when you play "Polonaise," let's make it elegant, graceful, refined. Remember, don't be in a rush. The Duke wouldn't be running in late, you know, he's going to walk in very nobly and regally. Now, with the Baroque Era remember that dynamics were usually not written in by the composer. So if you see these dynamics here, those were all added by me as suggestions. If you get other ideas for the dynamics, go for it. Also, remember that in baroque they usually didn't put in articulations like slurs or staccatos, and so you can also decide how you want to interpret. I like to play this very legato because I think that reinforces the style, but you could add some staccati on certain notes maybe on some of these 16th notes. I prefer it legato, but there's no reason you couldn't try out some staccati. Also, when you have three quarter notes in a row like here in measure eleven, again, I like to play legato, but I've heard some people interpret like this: You can put a little separation in between each note. TA TA TA That can be called a detached style. So you can detach those quarter notes from each other. You can do that in the left hand too. When the right hand like in measure nine the right hand playing this, the left hand can separate a little bit in between each quarter note. And then same thing here you can separate in both hands if you want. See, and I added some staccati on those eighth notes. So I thought that sounded nice, but again I tend to prefer this legato, but try out different things and see what you like. I want this to be your interpretation. So many possibilities. What about here in the last two measures. That would be a legato interpretation, but what about: That's possible as well. Which sound do you like best? Part of interpreting a piece is making some of those choices. Now I would prefer that you make choices that still fit in with the Baroque spirit and style which remember is elegance and grace. So one good choice wouldn't be to like, you know, play it rushed or fast or sloppily. That's just not true to the spirit of the Baroque. Try to find an interpretation that brings out the spirit and elegance of the music. Now the last thing I want to talk about today is how to have some real fun with this by adding some improvisation on the repeats. In the baroque era, they were improvisers. Sometimes we only think of improvisation as something jazz musicians do, but that's just not true. Classical musicians for hundreds of years have been improvising, and it was customary on repeats to do some improvising. So, how are we going to do that? Well, if you're not ready to just bust out some new not ...