Études, Book 1
A labyrinthine book of solo piano études.
Études can be a mixed bag. Some, like Czerny’s, are truly just exercises for beginners, and they bored me almost to the point of quitting piano when I was a child. Others, like Chopin’s or Debussy’s, are only exercises in the sense that they’re wickedly difficult to play, and they represent undisputed masterworks of the solo piano repertoire.
These études are in-between. Some—like Étude No. 2 or Étude No. 8—probably aren’t masterworks or anything, but they’re much more at home on a concert stage than a practice room. By contrast, Étude No. 1, Étude No. 6, and to a lesser extent, Étude No. 3—are exercises for practice rooms, and practice rooms alone. Étude No. 4, Étude No. 5, and Étude No. 7 require various degrees of improvisation, and fall somewhere between practice room and concert stage depending on the performer’s confidence and amount of preplanning.
Each étude features a preamble that describes what skill(s) it’s meant to highlight, as well as other ways the étude may potentially be approached. Generally speaking, these études highlight three musical themes: 1) non-octavian scales based on fourths and fifths, 2) (02)-based cluster patterns, and 3) algorithmic approaches to polypulses. Warmup No. 1 and Warmup No. 2 are included before the études proper and address the first two of these themes directly; the algorithmic approaches to polypulses are addressed in Étude No. 1 and Étude No. 6.
So how to use this book? It’s a weird one: part practice manual, part concert piece collection, part music theory text (replete with citations). I guess, contra the cartoon above, just use this book however you’d like. Play it start-to-finish or jump around, read the lengthy étude preambles or discard them entirely, perform the études as written or rewrite them to suit your personal aesthetic. I hope they tickle your brain, challenge your fingers, and provide you with moments of inspiration and joy.