Obsession With The Piano Research Paper

Gradually, I lost interest in playing piano and the time that I spent on practicing was less and less, and when I was twelve years old, I gave up. I do have musical talent, good family environment, and opportunity. Nevertheless, my attitude and laziness are the causes of my failure.

It wasn’t until that summer I walked across a bright yellow home. Through the windows, I could see an Asian woman was playing a beautiful song on her black grand piano. The sound of her music was like a stream of water running quietly through the green forest. From that moment, I became inspired to learn how to play the piano. I decided to take piano lessons with her and made it a goal to learn how to play the piano. My piano teacher, Ms. Li, was my role model because she showed me that there are unique and fascinating things people can learn to do in this world. As days turned to months and months turned into years, I continued to strive to become my inspiration. Many times, I felt like the Indians on the reservation and just wanted to give up because I felt it was too hard to make it to the top. Eight years later, I’ve completed my piano training. Today, people would always compliment my style of playing when I would play the piano. Sometimes I would come across a very young boy or girl who wanted to learn how to play the piano after they heard me play. I told them, “If you put your mind to it, you can do anything.” My piano teacher has been and will always be my inspiration and role model. Today, I have become a role model and inspiration for many people who want to learn how to play the piano. Role models and heroes are important in shaping people’s personalities and qualities because they provide people with goals to strive for.

Ever since his father began teaching him as a child to play the violin and clavier, any keyboard instrument such as the harpsichord, Ludwig van Beethoven has been amongst the most renowned and influential composers of music. Despite the harsh punishments and mistreatment Beethoven suffered through while practicing with his father, he still managed to become a “prodigy” at a rather young age, having his first public recital at around seven years old. After his first recital role music played in his continued to grow, and soon after dropping out of school to pursue music “full time” he published his first composition.

Beethoven contributed one of the most significant musical developments through his fifth and ninth symphonies. He used a musical motive as the basic of his entire piece. (Beethoven described the motive as “Fate knocks at the door”.) It was the first time in history that anyone had done such a thing for a multi-movement piece. Beethoven’s contribution has become a norm in the music world, even to this day.

I sat and listened to the beautiful yet invigorating song being played on the piano. I reminisced about the future, when I would be able to play such a complex piece of music. Six years later I sat awaiting my turn to perform this piece of music I had so long dreamed about. I felt butterflies dancing in my stomach, but at the same time I felt a sense of peace and contentment. I played this song flawlessly and from that moment on, I knew that I wanted to use my knowledge and talent of playing the piano to change the world for the better. I desired to impact young, aspiring piano students just as the song that impacted my life so long ago. I long to do so by studying music in college and continue to teach piano.

My dream was always to be a concert pianist, however, my dream shattered, after a tragic work related accident, disabled my hand. A machine malfunctioned on my hand, which compressed, cut, and burned me with fire, resulting in fourth-degree burns. Furthermore, after seven surgeries, to save my hand, I was faced, with the terrible news, of amputation of three of my fingers. This was an extremely traumatic and painful experience for me. Fortunately, by

Playing for kings and royalty, Beethoven’s talent was immediately recognized from a young age by his father and other fellow musicians. By his early 20’s, he had composed 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, and a full opera - clearly a stupendous feat by itself, but tragically, a couple years later, he had begun strenuously overworking himself to the point of becoming deaf through idiosyncratic acts like dumping cold water on his head in order to stay awake. However, this did not stop him; "Live alone in your art! Restricted though you be by your defective sense, this is still the only existence for you” (Beethoven). For the rest of his life, Beethoven sacrificed his hearing for his undeniable - and even obsessive - passion for music - ultimately leading to the creation of some of classical music’s greatest compositions of all time. Ergo, with enough dedication and that 1% of talent, anyone - from an everyday student to the legends of the past - can truly be a “genius”.

He did not have much interest in mingling with fellow classmates, everyday he would study music; he was fascinated by music. Even though his father was a cruel teacher, young Beethoven never gave up because he knew that he had passion for it. At the age of 7, Beethoven plays at his first recital. The same age as Mozart when he first performed publicly.

The Piano is a film about passion, the most basic and primal element of human nature. Passion ultimately cannot be denied. This is something that the characters in this movie learn in different and sometimes unpleasant ways.

During the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, Beethoven was innovating the world of music through various compositions. In particular, Beethoven's works for piano revolutionized and innovated the piano and its performance practices. His compositional works have always been considered to be some of the best works published, but not everyone realizes just how pivotal his work was in this point in music history.

The early piano sonatas of Beethoven deserve special mention. Although his first published examples of concertos and trios and the first two symphonies are beneath the masterpieces of Mozart and Haydn, the piano sonatas bear an unmistakably Beethovian stamp: grandiose in scope and length, and innovative in their range of expression. The sonatas were able to move expression from terrible rage to peals of laughter to deep depression so suddenly. Capturing this unpredictable style in his music, a new freedom of expression which broke the bounds of Classical ideals, was to position Beethoven as a disturbed man in the minds of some of his contemporaries. Furthermore, he was to be seen as the father of Romanticism and the single most important innovator of music in the minds of those after him. (Bookspan 27).

My life has always been tied to the piano in some shape or form. I can remember the first notes I ever produced. They came from a large Cable upright piano that had sat unused and out of tune for decades. From my early childhood and on my relationship with the piano consisted of nothing more than fleeting encounters. Some days I would sit down and simply play notes I thought sounded nice, but mostly the piano acted as a decoration in my home. It wasn 't until moving to Oklahoma to be with my mother 's family that anything serious developed concerning the piano. I had always been far away from my family, so when I met up with my grandmother we took the time to catch up. She mentioned that my mother used to play the piano quite well. Up until that point I had never given the piano much thought, but I began to think about my mother and all the old piano books she had accumulated from her adolescence. That set in motion my desire to learn how to play and an eventual reappraisal of the way I looked at music and the world around me.

For days I returned to that red chair and spent hours staring at my cello, until one day I could fight the urge no longer. I slowly strolled over to where the instrument rested on its stand and gingerly wrapped my hand around the smooth lacquered neck. Seated on the piano bench, I began to play the first song that came to my mind. Soon I was playing The Music of the Night with more passion than I had played any piece before. My fingers flew up and down the fingerboard, and my bow ebbed and flowed with varying degrees of pressure. As I played, my soul became captive to the music. The love I had once felt for music came rushing back to me and I was lost in a world of pure

He is unable to play because he will give himself away so we instead watch his fingers move across the air above the piano’s keys as whilst the sound plays in his head and too the viewer. Throughout the film we also see Szpilman pretending to play the piano as he taps his finger across his legs. It is moments such as these that help to maintain Szpilman’s willingness to survive by keeping silent, but also how piano gives fills him with the hope that is instrumental in his survival. In other scenes such as when a German officer asks Szpilman to play piano for him, and allows him to live because of his immense talent we begin to realise that Szpilman’s hope – music, does not only help him to survive mentally, but also physically as he can share the gift that he has to others. It is also important to note that Polanski only music by the Polish composer, Chopin is used throughout ‘The Pianist’. His sad and evocative music brings upon a sad mood, yet one with a hint of hope and with this, the director can more vividly express his ideas a way that dialogue or action cannot.

The piano is a beautiful instrument, from the contrast of the black and white keys to the deep sounds off the bass clef and high sounds of the treble clef. The complexity of the instrument attracts any musician, or anyone who values music or talent. It is impossible to completely master the piano. No person, even mozart or Franz Liszt has mastered the piano. Everybody can always get better, no matter how good you already are. While some may say you can completely master any task my assertion is that you can always work harder and become better. In order to grow as a person one must try to do something beyond what they have already mastered, in other words to become a better person one must continue to learn. This is good for many reasons,