Divertimento

Divertimento for Pianist (1978)

In this work for prepared piano, Grech continues his search for a full understanding of the true nature of art as manifested in music by probing the most emblematical instrument in its tradition, namely the piano or pianoforte. The very fact that the mechanical means of such a subtle and spiritual phenomenon as music has become the focus of artistic attention forebodes the doom of this instrument. Following the splendour in which the piano shone through the piano music of such great exponents of the instrument as Clementi, Chopin, Liszt and Debussy, a fine and ethereal splendour which dissembled its interior mechanical structure, later composers like Bartók, Prokofiev and Stockhausen explored the percussive and other facets of the piano’s timbre thereby starting to expose the crude machinery hidden inside. This process is completed in this work for pianists, in which the inner visceral sounds of the piano mechanism are heard on top of the faintly reminiscent sound of notes slowly fading into an oblivious un reverberating metallicity. The piano, a standing symbol of the grandeur of an age whose spirit is now lost is cynically swept aside by the inevitable tide of change, with nobody and nothing to remark on its demise except for the idiotic hooting of a horn.

© Nicholas Vella Laurenti

Parts included in the pdf: Prepared Piano