tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/chopin-51329/articlesChopin – The Conversation2021-09-29T15:14:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1687182021-09-29T15:14:04Z2021-09-29T15:14:04ZThe music of proteins is made audible through a computer program that learns from Chopin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423473/original/file-20210928-18-1783wgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C962%2C579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Training an algorithm to play proteins like Chopin can produce more melodious songs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FI_CHOPIN.jpg">Frederic Chopin/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the right computer program, proteins become pleasant music.</p>
<p>There are many surprising analogies between <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-protein-a-biologist-explains-152870">proteins</a>, the basic building blocks of life, and musical notation. These analogies can be used not only to help advance research, but also to make the complexity of proteins accessible to the public.</p>
<p>We’re <a href="https://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?user=Ic2nqDsAAAAJ&hl=en">computational</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=784B-f0AAAAJ&hl=en">biologists</a> who believe that hearing the sound of life at the molecular level could help inspire people to learn more about biology and the computational sciences. While creating music based on proteins <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2019/translating-proteins-music-0626">isn’t new</a>, different musical styles and composition algorithms had yet to be explored. So we led a team of high school students and other scholars to figure out how to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07933">create classical music from proteins</a>.</p>
<h2>The musical analogies of proteins</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/protein-structure-14122136/">Proteins</a> are structured like folded chains. These chains are composed of small units of 20 possible amino acids, each labeled by a letter of the alphabet. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of the four levels of protein structure." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Aspects of potein structure can be analogous to musical notation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Main_protein_structure_levels_en.svg">LadyofHats/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>A protein chain can be represented as a string of these alphabetic letters, very much like a string of music notes in alphabetical notation.</p>
<p>Protein chains can also fold into wavy and curved patterns with ups, downs, turns and loops. Likewise, music consists of sound waves of higher and lower pitches, with changing tempos and repeating motifs. </p>
<p>Protein-to-music algorithms can thus map the structural and physiochemical features of a string of amino acids onto the musical features of a string of notes.</p>
<h2>Enhancing the musicality of protein mapping</h2>
<p>Protein-to-music mapping can be fine-tuned by basing it on the features of a specific music style. This enhances musicality, or the melodiousness of the song, when converting amino acid properties, such as sequence patterns and variations, into analogous musical properties, like pitch, note lengths and chords.</p>
<p>For our study, we specifically selected 19th-century <a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicapp_historical/chapter/romantic-music/">Romantic period classical piano music</a>, which includes composers like Chopin and Schubert, as a guide because it typically spans a wide range of notes with more complex features such as <a href="https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/chromatic-scale/">chromaticism</a>, like playing both white and black keys on a piano in order of pitch, and chords. Music from this period also tends to have lighter and more graceful and emotive melodies. Songs are usually <a href="https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/homophonic-texture/">homophonic</a>, meaning they follow a central melody with accompaniment. These features allowed us to test out a greater range of notes in our protein-to-music mapping algorithm. In this case, we chose to analyze features of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gus4dnQuiGk">Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu”</a> to guide our development of the program. </p>
<p>To test the algorithm, we applied it to 18 proteins that play a key role in various biological functions. Each amino acid in the protein is mapped to a particular note based on how frequently they appear in the protein, and other aspects of their biochemistry correspond with other aspects of the music. A larger-sized amino acid, for instance, would have a shorter note length, and vice versa.</p>
<p>The resulting music is complex, with notable variations in pitch, loudness and rhythm. Because the algorithm was completely based on the amino acid sequence and no two proteins share the same amino acid sequence, each protein will produce a distinct song. This also means that there are variations in musicality across the different pieces, and interesting patterns can emerge. </p>
<p>For example, music generated from the receptor protein that binds to the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.2001.81.2.629">hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin</a> has some recurring motifs due to the repetition of certain small sequences of amino acids. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="215" data-image="" data-title="OXTR protein music" data-size="3436911" data-source="Zhang et al." data-source-url="https://EMBARGO.com" data-license="CC BY-NC-ND" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2282/music-oxtr.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
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<div class="audio-player-caption">
OXTR protein music.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://EMBARGO.com">Zhang et al.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a><span class="download"><span>3.28 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2282/music-oxtr.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Oxytocin receptor protein structure" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">OXTR, or the oxytocin receptor, has repeating sequences of amino acids.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/entry/P30559">AlphaFold Data/EMBL-EBI</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>On the other hand, music generated from <a href="https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/gene/tp53/">tumor antigen p53</a>, a protein that prevents cancer formation, is highly chromatic, producing particularly fascinating phrases where the music sounds almost <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/toccata">toccata-like</a>, a style that often features fast and virtuoso technique.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="139" data-image="" data-title="TP53 protein music" data-size="2223993" data-source="Zhang et al." data-source-url="https://PENDING EMBARGO.com" data-license="CC BY-NC-ND" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2281/music-tp53.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
TP53 protein music.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://PENDING%20EMBARGO.com">Zhang et al.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a><span class="download"><span>2.12 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2281/music-tp53.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tumor protein p53 protein structure" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">TP53, or tumor protein p53, produces chromatic music.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/entry/P04637">AlphaFold Data/EMBL-EBI</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>By guiding analysis of amino acid properties through specific music styles, protein music can sound much more pleasant to the ear. This can be further developed and applied to a wider variety of music styles, including pop and jazz.</p>
<p>Protein music is an example of how combining the biological and computational sciences can produce beautiful works of art. Our hope is that this work will encourage researchers to compose protein music of different styles and inspire the public to learn about the basic building blocks of life.</p>
<p><em>This study was collaboratively developed with Nicole Tay, Fanxi Liu, Chaoxin Wang and Hui Zhang.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Get our best science, health and technology stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-best">Sign up for The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many features of proteins are analogous to music. Mapping these features together creates new musical compositions that help researchers learn about proteins.Peng Zhang, Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Biology, The Rockefeller UniversityYuzong Chen, Professor of Pharmacy, National University of SingaporeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1578622021-05-10T19:50:39Z2021-05-10T19:50:39ZIf I could go anywhere: searching for music in the places where Chopin lived and died<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399383/original/file-20210507-19-1aik5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C3%2C1227%2C840&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chopin's grave, Paris. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Chopins_Grave_October_1978.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/if-i-could-go-anywhere-102157">this series</a> we pay tribute to the art we wish could visit — and hope to see once travel restrictions are lifted.</em></p>
<p>The appreciation of art is enriched through experience, and there is perhaps no greater experience than travel. But while landmark destinations, such as Carnegie Hall or Glyndebourne, are wonderful to visit, it can be paradoxical to travel for music. </p>
<p>Music is less tangible than other art-forms — like architecture or painting — and is often hard to pin down. Where exactly “is” music? Can it be embodied within one place? If one searches for it, where exactly does one end up? </p>
<p>As a classical pianist, I’ve been searching for Polish composer and piano virtuoso <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/composers/chopin/">Frédéric Chopin</a> since my early teens. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/performing-beethoven-what-it-feels-like-to-embody-a-master-on-todays-stage-129184">Performing Beethoven - what it feels like to embody a master on today's stage</a>
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<h2>Delacroix’s portrait of Chopin</h2>
<p>The journey began after inheriting a dog-eared volume of piano pieces which featured <a href="http://www.eugenedelacroix.net/frederic-chopin/">Eugène Delacroix</a>’s well-known portrait of the composer on the cover. I later learned that the painting hung on the walls of the <a href="https://www.louvre.fr/en">Musée de Louvre</a>, so when I first visited Paris I searched for it.</p>
<p>Chopin had arrived in Paris after leaving Poland in 1830. A fierce nationalist, the failure of the November Uprising against Russian occupation meant he was unable to return. Subsequently, he made Paris his home, dying there at the tragically young age of 39. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of man's face" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399392/original/file-20210507-21-1axor34.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A section of Eugène Delacroix’s 1838 portrait of Chopin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eug%C3%A8ne_Ferdinand_Victor_Delacroix_043.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/Louvre</a></span>
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<p>Today, it is a challenge to see Paris as he would have known it. Some of the half-dozen homes where he lived no longer exist. This is also true of the original <a href="https://www.sallepleyel.com/tag/la-salle-pleyel_t5/1">Salle Pleyel</a>, where Chopin gave rare public performances. While the grand boulevards seem quintessentially Parisian, the construction of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/31/story-cities-12-paris-baron-haussmann-france-urban-planner-napoleon">Georges-Eugène Haussmann</a>’s elegant urban design post-dates the composer’s death.</p>
<p>Yet, in Chopin’s day the Louvre was already established as a museum. When I visited, I fairly much ignored the great masterpieces by Titian, Caravaggio, Vermeer, and da Vinci. At last, I found the room in which the Delacroix portrait was hung. But I was, sadly, disappointed: it had been removed for repair. My search would continue. </p>
<h2>Winter in Majorca</h2>
<p>Delacroix’s portrait has another story to tell. It is cut from a larger, unfinished canvas, which depicted Chopin with George Sand (the pen name of Aurore Dupin), a novelist as famed for her literary works as for wearing men’s clothing and smoking cigars. For eight years Chopin and Sand were romantically linked, yet their relationship ended acrimoniously. (Perhaps fittingly, Sand’s portion of the painting now <a href="https://ordrupgaard.dk/en/portfolio_page/delacroix-george-sand-2/">hangs in Copenhagen</a>.)</p>
<p>From Sand’s autobiographical <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2411990.Winter_in_Majorca">Winter in Majorca</a>, we have a chronicle of their four-month stay on the island of Majorca in Spain, among many valuable glimpses of the composer at the beginning of their romance. The trip to warmer climes was for Chopin’s “delicate” health, yet an unseasonably cold and wet winter likely exacerbated the tuberculosis that later killed him. </p>
<p>At first, the setting was idyllic, with Chopin writing joyfully <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mdzCAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA185&ots=rkV4EGZL9s&dq=Chopin%20%20%E2%80%98palms%2C%20cedars%2C%20cacti%2C%20olives%2C%20and%20pomegranates.%E2%80%99&pg=PA185#v=onepage&q=Chopin%20%20%E2%80%98palms,%20cedars,%20cacti,%20olives,%20and%20pomegranates.%E2%80%99&f=false">in letters home</a> about the “palms, cedars, cacti, olives, and pomegranates”. Yet the unmarried couple grew frustrated with the religious conservatism of locals and, when the composer’s ill health was assumed to be contagious, they retreated to the <a href="https://www.cartoixadevalldemossa.com/en/">Carthusian Monastery at Valldemosa</a>.</p>
<p>The imposing stone building is today about 25 minutes’ drive from Palma, yet in Chopin’s time the journey north through mountainous terrain was taken perilously by carriage. He described his room there as being like a cell “in the shape of a tall coffin”. According to Sand, he also believed it was haunted. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="bust in lush garden" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399404/original/file-20210507-15-1bvjco0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chopin’s bust in the grounds of Valldemossa’s monastery, Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/valldemossa-mallorca-spain-july-2015-statue-1523678429">Shutterstock</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-original-love-island-how-george-sand-and-fryderyk-chopin-put-mallorca-on-the-romance-map-121148">The original Love Island: how George Sand and Fryderyk Chopin put Mallorca on the romance map</a>
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<p>Yet some of his most inspired pieces appear to have been created there, like the so-called “raindrop” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVau-JRGirg">prelude</a>. Sand recounted returning to the monastery late at night, finding Chopin “pale, at the piano, wild-eyed, his hair standing almost straight up”. He imagined that he had been drowned in a lake, with the repetitive notes of the piece representing “heavy and icy raindrops” falling on his chest. </p>
<p>My own journey resumed when I had the opportunity to visit Majorca in my late 20s. I enjoyed better weather, with winter sunshine bringing warmth and colour. Chopin’s room itself is now a museum, and in a corner stands the fine Pleyel piano which arrived, with cruel timing, only shortly before he left.</p>
<p>Off his room is a long terrace which overlooks a deep valley. While imagining Chopin enjoying the view, I watched as a bank of dense mist rolled incongruously up the slope. A minute later it had enclosed me, and the place was grey and silent. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-gDinVAmtA0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘He passed away with his gaze fixed on me,’ remembered Chopin’s daughter Solange.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Final resting place</h2>
<p>The relationship between Chopin and Sand dissolved after an argument over her daughter, Solange. While the couple would never again speak, Solange remained loyal until his death in 1849. Years later she recounted his <a href="https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(16)39573-3/fulltext">final moments</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We wanted to give him a drink, but death prevented us. He passed away with his gaze fixed on me […] I could see the tarnishing in his eyes in the darkness. Oh, the soul had died too!</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="cemetary" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399406/original/file-20210507-13-1ot0s27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pere Lachaise in Paris, reportedly the world’s most visited cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-december-22-2014-view-319007234">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Appropriately, my search for Chopin concludes with a visit to the cemetery of <a href="https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/71470/Cimetiere-du-Pere-Lachaise">Père Lachaise</a>, where artist Delacroix had been among the composer’s pallbearers. After looking at the graves of Rossini, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison, my companions and I looked for the final resting place of Chopin.</p>
<p>We walked in silence, but on finding the place — marked by a statue of the muse <a href="https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/MousaEuterpe.html#:%7E:text=EUTERPE%20was%20one%20of%20the,attribute%20was%20the%20double%2Dflute.">Euterpe</a> weeping over a broken lyre — I asked what they’d thought of the piano music that had played in the distance. I thought that it seemed like a composition by Chopin, but couldn’t place it. </p>
<p>Yet they hadn’t heard a thing, and to this day I can’t account for the strange occurrence. In such a place, perhaps the mind plays tricks.</p>
<p>Audiences expect performers to do more than play the notes; they expect insight and personal conviction. For me, tracing Chopin’s footsteps has contributed to that conviction and, certainly, these experiences have enriched his music to me. </p>
<p>But, as with all travel, the urge continues. And if I could go anywhere now, I’d keep on searching. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/four-indigenous-composers-and-a-piano-from-colonial-times-making-passionate-layered-honest-music-together-152080">Four Indigenous composers and a piano from colonial times — making passionate, layered, honest music together</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a concert pianist, Scott Davie has been searching for the spirit of Chopin since his teens. It’s taken him to Paris and Majorca and channeled tantalising notes through time.Scott Davie, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1211482019-08-01T13:15:06Z2019-08-01T13:15:06ZThe original Love Island: how George Sand and Fryderyk Chopin put Mallorca on the romance map<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286575/original/file-20190801-169710-njjs0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C5%2C924%2C720&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ChopinSandDelacroix</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eugène Delacroix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49157523">four million Britons watched</a> Amber Gill and Greg O'Shea being crowned the victors of Love Island 2019. Gill, a beauty therapist and model from Newcastle in the north of England, and O'Shea, a rugby player from Limerick in Ireland, proved the most popular pairing among the 24 reality TV show contestants on the Balearic island of Mallorca.</p>
<p>Their 12-day romance has ensured fame, fortune and social media influence for the two 20-somethings – and it won’t hurt Mallorca’s tourism numbers either. But perhaps few of the contestants or viewers know that tourism on Mallorca was kick-started almost two centuries ago by an earlier pair of star-crossed celebrity lovers, in a remote lodging just a few miles away from the ITV villa. So while Love Island might feel quintessentially 21st century, it was prefigured by events on the same island in 1838.</p>
<p>In that year, the “most famous woman in France”, the avant-garde, aristocratic, cross-dressing, best-selling novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Sand">Aurore Amantine Dupin Dudevant</a> – known by her male pen name of George Sand – travelled to Mallorca with the lauded Polish composer, pianist and political refugee <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/09ff1fe8-d61c-4b98-bb82-18487c74d7b7">Fryderyk Chopin</a>. She was 34, he six years her junior. </p>
<p>Sand claimed they had sailed to the Balearics seeking solitude, where she could write and Chopin compose. They were likely also fleeing from the scandal their love affair had caused in Paris. Sand was a high-society rebel, a divorced mother of two who had successfully won custody of her children. The critic Robert Graves has described her as “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3e1ag2S07fsC&pg=PA335&lpg=PA335&dq=graves+sand+the+uncrowned+queen+of+the+Romantics&source=bl&ots=YOvUdjuLvk&sig=ACfU3U0_9hYgqLdogQXYGytBbF_ddBSfBw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiwjLSVvOHjAhWB-qQKHZa6BU8Q6AEwEHoECB4QAQ#v=onepage&q=graves%20sand%20the%20uncrowned%20queen%20of%20the%20Romantics&f=false">the uncrowned queen of the Romantics</a>”, a conscious pioneer of a “modern”, liberated lifestyle. </p>
<p>At 28, Chopin was the same age as several of the Love Island hopefuls. Like one of this year’s contestants, he came to Mallorca with a recent broken engagement behind him – to fellow Polish émigré Maria Wodzińska. Yet unlike the bronzed, toned bodies of the 2019 ITV islanders, Chopin was in 1838 already ailing, with bronchitis or tuberculosis. Writing to a friend from the island, <a href="https://archive.org/stream/chopinsletters00chop/chopinsletters00chop_djvu.txt">he described his own appearance</a>. He dressed informally, Chopin explained, but his skin was still wan: “Behold me [here] without white gloves, without curled hair, but as pale as usual.” </p>
<p>Mallorca in the 1830s was heavily agricultural. In her travel memoir <a href="https://www.literarytraveler.com/articles/george-sand-her-majorcan-winter-of-discontent/">A Winter in Mallorca</a>, Sand estimated that almonds and pigs were the main exports, and she described too the orange groves, figs and olive trees. To the two Parisians the island seemed fertile yet strangely impoverished. “No peasant in the world is so dreary or poor,” Sand concluded. The island’s infrastructure for foreign visitors was extremely limited in the early 19th century. </p>
<p>Sand and Chopin sailed from Barcelona on a cargo ship, its hold full of hogs. Arriving in the capital of Palma, to their shock the couple could not find a functioning hotel. They stayed in expensive rented rooms in a bad neighbourhood – and Chopin’s piano was impounded by customs officers. They ended up renting a cell in an abandoned Carthusian monastery in the mountain village of Valldemossa. </p>
<p>The lovers’ Mallorcan tryst was bittersweet. Chopin’s letters praised the natural beauty, calm and “poetic feeling” of the island. He took pleasure in the “African sun”, the blue sea and the eagles he watched gliding overhead. Sand, however, grew disillusioned. She was angry in particular at the locals who disapproved of the unmarried lovers, and later vented her feelings in her notoriously acerbic memoir. </p>
<p>Yet however unflattering her account, Sand’s book put Mallorca on the literary map. She joked that she had “discovered” the island and predicted that once international travel connections improved “Mallorca would soon prove a formidable rival to the Alps”, a new destination for the North European traveller. That prophecy was realised with the opening of an international airport at Palma in 1960, and the advent of mass tourism.</p>
<p>Then – as with Love Island now – the couple’s Mallorcan love spectacle inspired much hand-wringing, moralising and outright disdain in the newspapers of the day. A journalist writing in the Polish monthly Przegląd Poznański, for example, <a href="http://www.ejournals.eu/sj/index.php/SLit/article/view/1189">lamented Chopin’s extra-marital love affair</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our respect for this person should not blind us, or cause us to pass over in silence things which are so severely condemned by society. It is a source of bitter sorrow that such a beautiful life has not been without deep stain. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today, contestants hope that a successful stint on Love Island will generate income from advertising, guest appearances and endorsements. For Sand and Chopin, the Mallorcan interlude was also productive for their own careers. Sand wrote <a href="https://booksien.com/2018/01/15/about-spiridion-by-george-sand/">her novel Spiridion</a> in the monastery, and Chopin composed a number of pieces at Valldemossa. But the romantic happy-ever-after which the most gossiped-about couple of 19th-century Europe had sought in the Balearic sun proved, ultimately, far more elusive.</p>
<h2>Unhappy ever after</h2>
<p>Like many Love Island contestants, Chopin and Sand found that an extended stay in a Mallorcan hideaway was no guarantee of successful long-term romance. The trip had an ambiguous effect on their relationship. Chopin was already seriously unwell, and his love affair with Sand would break down in terrible, <a href="https://crosseyedpianist.com/2013/04/10/divine-fire-fryderyk-chopin-and-george-sand/">very public recriminations </a> a few years later.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fine romance? Love Island winners Amber Gill and Greg O'Shea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Polish pianist died in Paris in 1849 and Sand did not attend his funeral. Graves <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/george-sand">has speculated</a> that the hostile reception which the lovers received from socially conservative, Catholic Mallorcans heightened the existing tensions in their relationship, fuelling Chopin’s own internal misgivings.</p>
<p>We do not yet know if the Love Island villa – rented by ITV from its millionaire German owner – will become a tourist attraction. But at Valldemossa, the Chopin-Sand connection is still <a href="https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2017/08/05/as-mallorca-enjoys-the-frederic-chopin-festival-we-remember-his-island-sojourn-with-george-sand/">a major visitor draw</a>, 180 years on. The town boasts a museum, and offers visits to the monastic cell where the couple lived, as well as regular recitals of Chopin’s music. </p>
<p>Relics associated with the famous visitors are displayed – including Chopin’s piano, finally rescued from customs officials.</p>
<p>So Gill and O'Shea, flying back to the UK, might spare a moment to peer down from their aeroplane window onto the cool northern hills, where those first, pioneering “islanders” put controversial, public-private Mallorcan love affairs on the map.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalia Nowakowska receives funding from the British Academy and the European Research Council. </span></em></p>180 years before Love Island, Chopin and Sands travelled to Mallorca to pursue their romance.Natalia Nowakowska, Associate Professor of Early Modern History, University of Oxford, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/952382018-04-18T15:10:36Z2018-04-18T15:10:36ZWestworld’s player piano is the great character that keeps getting overlooked<p>Westworld returns for its hotly anticipated second season on April 22/23, simulcast in both the US and UK. The first season was a huge success – the closing episode was HBO’s <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/westworld-season-1-concludes-as-hbo-record-breaker-a7458186.html">highest-rated</a> debut of all time. </p>
<p>Set in 2052, Westworld is a futuristic theme park populated by robotic hosts. Based on the 1973 movie by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000341/">Michael Crichton</a>, human customers pay to live out their most murderous and depraved fantasies, <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jafp/2017/00000010/00000002/art00006?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf">blurring the boundaries</a> between performer and audience. The theme park imitates the American Old West of the second half of the 19th century – the age of steam and mechanisation that contained the seeds of modern robotics. </p>
<p>Much <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a19840303/best-westworld-season-2-theories/">has been written</a> about what will happen to Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) and the other robotic hosts now that they appear to be overcoming the control of the programmers. I want to pay tribute to a hugely important character that has received far less attention – the player piano. </p>
<p>Westworld’s opening credits initially show what looks like an ordinary piano being played by robot hands. But then the hands move away and the piano plays itself, revealing this invention of the late 19th century that made music accessible at home in the days before the phonograph. </p>
<p>The piano features in Westworld’s <a href="http://westworld.wikia.com/wiki/Mariposa_Saloon">Mariposa Saloon</a>, run as a bar and brothel by Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton). We know pianos were used in Old West saloons, so this is certainly plausible. We later learn that there is also one in the office of robot creator Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins). </p>
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<p>The player piano was essentially an early computer operating on a binary system. Westworld’s credits show the spool punched with holes that these pianos read, each of which indicated a note and its duration. Powered by the performer’s feet – and latterly by electricity – one could play famous, complex works without any musical competence. </p>
<p>This sense of vicarious performance fits neatly with the idea of rich thrillseekers shooting their way around a fake Wild West. Then there is the fact that player pianos always sounded mechanical, since they lacked the human interpretation and variation we expect in a live performance. </p>
<p>This symbol for humanity’s relationship to machinery is then expanded through Westworld’s soundtrack. Composed and arranged by Game of Thrones’ Ramin Djawadi, it includes various famous piano works that would have featured on player pianos around the turn of the century, such as Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Chopin’s Nocturne No. 14 in C Minor and Scott Joplin’s Weeping Willow Rag. </p>
<p>While fans have <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/westworld/comments/5ahtll/ford_and_debussy/">speculated heavily</a> on the links between Debussy, the plot and the Robert Ford character, the soundtrack also contains more recent tracks such as The Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black and Radiohead’s No Surprises. These <a href="https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/westworld-music-piano-radiohead-soundgarden-songs-interview">were transcribed</a> onto old binary spools especially for the show, both reinforcing the sense of mechanisation and representing the authenticity portrayed by the theme park’s set and characters to the paying clientele. </p>
<h2>Play it again</h2>
<p>Besides Westworld, the player piano has occupied a relatively prominent role in American fiction. Of particular relevance to the show is <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9597.Player_Piano">Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano</a> (1952), which described a post-war dystopian world where machines had replaced workers in factories. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215408/original/file-20180418-164001-1yf66p9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215408/original/file-20180418-164001-1yf66p9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215408/original/file-20180418-164001-1yf66p9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215408/original/file-20180418-164001-1yf66p9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215408/original/file-20180418-164001-1yf66p9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215408/original/file-20180418-164001-1yf66p9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215408/original/file-20180418-164001-1yf66p9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215408/original/file-20180418-164001-1yf66p9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Vonnegut’s debut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one key scene, a character named Ed Finnerty is depicted playing the player piano – effectively overriding its function and seizing back control from the mechanised world. Westworld co-producer Jonathan Nolan <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2016/10/westworld-player-piano-music.html">has credited</a> Vonnegut with inspiring the show’s player piano, referring to it as a touchstone image of the show’s first season. </p>
<p>Another writer, Richard Powers, refers to the player piano as a predecessor to the computer in several novels. Most notable is <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23012.The_Gold_Bug_Variations">The Gold Bug Variations</a> (1992), since the piano itself is a descendent of the harpsichord for which <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15ezpwCHtJs">Bach’s Goldberg Variations</a> were written. References to both instruments create a sense of legacy, touching on a parallel theme of two intertwined love affairs a generation apart.</p>
<p>The works of William Gaddis similarly revisit the player piano – in his case, owing to a personal obsession, he gathered thousands of notes on the subject, <a href="http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/mlc50/item/10173">intending</a> to publish a history of the instrument. When his proposals were rejected it crept into his novels instead – before his frustrations boiled over in his posthumous swan song, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28441.Agap_Agape">Agapē Agape</a> (2002). </p>
<p>The frail male narrator-protagonist repeatedly discusses player pianos, while the relentless style of the book is symbolic of the instrument – it starts and suddenly ends without space for breath, mimicking the way player pianos close a tune with no wind down, the spool still spinning blank paper. </p>
<p>Gaddis <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Rush_for_Second_Place.html?id=mYUljtX5yFAC&redir_esc=y">saw the</a> player piano as symbolic of the mechanisation of the arts, and the gradual unravelling of society:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I see [it] as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not only do Westworld’s player pianos sit comfortably within this tradition – especially given the original film’s 1970’s roots – Gaddis’ opinion is eerily familiar with their use in the first season. They simultaneously hark back to a bygone era and nod to the digital world in which they reside. </p>
<p>Gaddis repeatedly likened player piano rolls to “phantom hands” reproducing the sounds of long-lost performers. Like the robotic hosts of Westworld – who it transpires have occupied the world for decades – a player piano’s mechanisation is almost timeless. Both repeat their scripts ad infinitum, continually preserving and recreating the past. </p>
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</figure>
<p>The player piano is therefore more than just a metaphor for Westworld’s robots. It represents the repetition of play in which the audience interacts, straddling the divide between past and present. </p>
<p>As the robotic hosts become more sentient in season two, it will be interesting to see how the instrument is used. In the trailer, Dolores Abernathy says that a “reckoning is here”, as a mechanised piano rendition of Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box plays in the background. It speaks to all of today’s worries about where artificial intelligence is taking us, and what happens if the day comes when the robots learn to be free.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Durkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is time we talked about one of the most unsung motifs in American fiction.Rachael Durkin, Lecturer in Music, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/932372018-03-28T14:19:31Z2018-03-28T14:19:31ZReflections on the historic recordings of an iconic South African composer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211156/original/file-20180320-31596-1qom7gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African born pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanus Muller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the outside, it looks like a barn. But on entering, you step into a spacious hall with a <a href="http://www.steinway.com/pianos/steinway/grand/model-d">Model D Steinway piano</a> and small recording studio. <a href="http://www.pottonhallltd.co.uk">Potton Hall</a> on the UK’s Suffolk coast is located in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/49ae5227-605a-47a8-9b8e-cd89bf01a97c">Benjamin Britten</a> country. To the north, it’s half an hour from Lowestoft where the composer was born in 1913; to the south, 20 minutes from Aldeburgh where he died in 1976. </p>
<p>It was here, on 15 and 16 February, where <a href="http://danielbenpienaar.com">Daniel-Ben Pienaar</a> sat down to record, for the first time ever, the complete solo piano music of pioneering South African composer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25434572?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Arnold van Wyk</a>. Pienaar’s work has been critically acclaimed in <a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/">Gramophone Magazine</a> (Editor’s Choice), <a href="http://www.classical-music.com/">BBC Music Magazine </a>(Instrumental Recording of the Month), Britain’s <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/">Sunday Times</a> (Top 5 Recordings of 2011), <a href="https://www.diapasonmag.fr/">Diapason</a> and <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/">Der Spiegel</a>. Van Wyk was part of the beginnings of Western composition in South Africa in the early decades of the twentieth century. He contributed major works to the local classical music canon. </p>
<p>Van Wyk was Britten’s contemporary. He was born in 1916 in the small South African town of Calvinia and died in 1983 in Bellville, near Cape Town. Although he displays influences of Britten in some of his works, he was never part of Britten’s circle. Studying at the <a href="https://www.ram.ac.uk/">Royal Academy of Music</a>, Van Wyk encountered other important British composers and musicians. Most significant of these to Van Wyk was composer and editor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/nov/03/guardianobituaries1">Howard Ferguson</a>, who became a life-long friend who supported Van Wyk emotionally and financially. Ferguson also edited and published some of Van Wyk’s work after his death.</p>
<p>Pienaar, who was born in South Africa, has been a <a href="https://www.ram.ac.uk/about-us/staff/daniel-ben-pienaar">member</a> of the Royal Academy of Music’s teaching faculty since 2005. As he explains on his <a href="http://danielbenpienaar.com">website</a>, he views the canonic classical repertoire as,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>radically ‘late’ – both with respect to the works themselves, and to the performance traditions and great recorded performances that surround them – demanding an active intervention from the performer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This approach, of which <a href="http://www.glenngould.com/biography/">Glenn Gould</a> is perhaps the most famous historical pianistic reference point, situates Pienaar outside conventional notions of “interpretation” that depend on the normative authority of the composer and score. Instead, Pienaar embraces performances, and especially recordings, as radical acts of text creation.</p>
<h2>Against pianism</h2>
<p>Pienaar has recorded extensively, including the complete Beethoven 32 Piano Sonatas, the Bach Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2 and the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas. He is the first South African to have done this. </p>
<p>Visiting the Royal Academy of Music in 2014 I was struck by how, during a public lecture, he traversed an expansive piano repertoire without any reference to “style” or “tradition”. Instead, he was concerned with “light” notes and “heavy” notes, and the effect the performer’s choices in this regard had on the logic and creative possibilities of the music. </p>
<p>In a series of lectures in 2017 in Stellenbosch he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213191062032812&set=a.10203655390326979.1073741841.1283378338&type=3&theater">expounded</a> on these ideas. They represented, to my mind, a fundamental challenge to the 19th century construct of concert <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pianism">“pianism”</a>, a practice born from the crucible of virtuosity, composer geniuses and the development of a concert hall tradition.</p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/200782845" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Aryan Kaganof’s shortfilm ‘Daniel-Ben Pienaar: Removing the Room’</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The Potton Hall recordings</h2>
<p>Van Wyk’s mature solo piano music comprises five works: Pastorale e Capriccio (1948, revised 1955), Night Music (1945-1958), Four Piano Pieces (1965), Tristia (1968-1978) and Ricordanza (1973-1979). Of these, Night Music is the major work. Pienaar’s recording of the solo piano music became the first project of the Arnold van Wyk Centenary Fund which was established in 2016 by the Africa Open Institute. </p>
<p>Pienaar explained to me that he wanted to approach the Van Wyk piano music “on the wilder side of control”, much like Van Wyk himself played the piano. Agreeing with recording engineer Philip Hobbs that they would emulate the sound of the Chopin recording they had produced the previous year in the same hall with the same instrument, Pienaar started the recording session with the Four Piano Pieces. </p>
<p>The Potton Hall Steinway is not an instrument with a transparent, projecting brilliance. It requires hard work to achieve the effortless floating of cantabile (songlike) lines. That makes it difficult to discard some of the weight of attack required for the the fast music.</p>
<p>And it was Van Wyk’s fast music that saw the most perceptible reinvention of Van Wyk in Pienaar’s readings. His tempi were furiously fast, exceeding any of the extant recordings of these pieces by a wide margin. </p>
<p>It was the choice of these tempi that allowed Pienaar to test pianistic control against the energy and rhythmic definition imparted by speed. Whereas Van Wyk’s own technically limited pianism often sacrificed “correct” playing for characterful sculpting of sound, Pienaar’s much superior technique could only approach this pervading sense of musical fragility by exceeding the speed limit, as it were. </p>
<p>In the slower music Pienaar took care to differentiate various characters of slowness: the ruminative <a href="https://www.thefreedictionary.com/parlando">parlando</a> (“music to be performed as though speaking”) of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8191679/My_country_my_dry_forsaken_country_On_exile_in_Arnold_van_Wyks_NP_van_Wyk_Louws_and_Ovids_Tristia">Tristia</a>, for example, versus the nostalgic lines of <a href="http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/50602">Ricordanza</a> or the ethereally distant qualities of the coda of Night Music. </p>
<h2>Repository of “lateness”</h2>
<p>In a correspondence preceding the historical recording of Van Wyk’s solo piano music, Pienaar wrote to me that he felt a similarity of approach to performing Van Wyk as he did to performing Beethoven or Bach. Even though the solo piano music had never been recorded as a whole, he felt that, as a performer, he was coming “late” to Van Wyk. He was engaging the music at a contemporary point in time as if it had proliferated in meanings and interpretive possibilities. In imagining the realization of these possibilities in Van Wyk’s music (with single exceptions in lieu of a powerful recorded tradition), he rejected certain fictional readings and embraced others. Ricordanza could therefore become a study in musical line (rather than sonority), and the ‘Scherzino’ from Four Piano Pieces an ironic rather than pedagogic study.</p>
<p>It’s an approach that might serve, when the recordings are released and become known, to draw Van Wyk closer to Britten than to the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1q31scq">English pastoralism</a> with which he has been associated. It is also an illustration that goes beyond the naïve and gauche notions of “interpretation” or “entertainment” associated with pianism. It’s therefore set to give full expression to the performer as creative artist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Africa Open Institute receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Nussbaum Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation. The recording of the Van Wyk piano music was made possible by a grant from the Rupert Music Foundation.</span></em></p>A new recording of South African composer Arnold van Wyk’s complete solo piano music explores new perspectives.Stephanus Muller, Musicology, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.