On reading Schoenberg (slowly)
6 min read
Three months with the op. 19 and what it taught me about patience, density, and the folly of practising too fast.
The Schoenberg Six Little Piano Pieces look, on first pass, like studies in restraint. They are not. They are studies in density.
Nine bars is enough room for a universe if you refuse to play a single note in a hurry.
I have been spending about ninety minutes a day on op. 19 no. 6, the one written the day Mahler died. It is nineteen notes long. I have not finished learning it.
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