Etude
Characteristics
French for “study” (German: Etüde, Studie)
An instrumental piece intended to develop one or more aspects of a player’s technical ability (e.g. octaves, scales, arpeggios, trills, wide leaps) or to display the virtuosity and techniques of the performer to an audience
Pedagogical etudes: a composition designed to improve the technique of an instrumental performer by isolating specific difficulties and concentrating his or her efforts on their mastery (each etude usually focuses on one technical problem)
• (keyboard) Muzio Clementi, Johann Baptist Cramer, Carl Czerny
• (violin) Rodolphe Kreutzer, Pierre Rode, Charles-Auguste de Bériot
Concert etudes (emerged in the early 19th century): a showpiece to demonstrate the virtuosity of the perform to the public concert
• Liszt: Twelve Transcendental Etudes, La Campanella, Waldesrauschen (Woodland murmurs) and Gnomenreigen (Round dance of the gnomes)
• Chopin: Twelve Études Op. 10 (1829-32), Twelve Études Op. 25 (1832-6), and three ‘Nouvelles Etudes’ (1839)
slow, lyrical, and intimate in character
Listening
Paganini, 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1, No. 24 in A minor
0:16 Theme – A balanced and symmetrical theme in the form of a sentence
0:33 Variation 1 – Spiccato arpeggiation (bouncing the bow lightly on the string).
0:50 Variation 2 – Bariolage, the rapid and repeated alternation between two adjacent strings, one open, the other fingered.
1:07 Variation 3 – Octaves. Because the violin does not feature fixed pitches, like a piano, octaves require absolutely perfect placement of two fingers in relation to each other.
1:38 Variation 4 – High chromatic passages. The higher the hand moves on the fingerboard, the smaller the physical space between the finger placements of the individual notes.
1:51 Variation 5 – String crossing. This variation requires the player to move quite rapidly across strings.
2:07 Variation 6 – Thirds and octaves. Again, both pitches must be perfectly fingered.
2:30 Variation 7 – Bowing. The player must pick up and replace the bow in a downstroke rapidly in succession while playing a triplet figure that moves through all registers of the instrument.
2:49 Variation 8 – Triple stopping. The performer rolls a series of chords on three different notes, each played on a different string.
3:07 Variation 9 – Left-hand pizzicato. The player must alternate rapidly between notes played with the bow and notes plucked with the left hand (not the right hand, as in normal pizzicato).
3:25 Variation 10 – High position. The performer must execute rapid runs in a very high register.
3:53 Variation 11 – Successive double stops.
4:15 Finale – Long runs and successive double stops
Listening
Chopin, Étude in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12 “Revolutionary” (1831)
0:00 Introduction – fast-running passage in semiquavers by the left hand; the right hand plays accented chords in the high register
0:14 A section – Passionate melody played by the right hand (in chords); consistent running figurations in the left hand
0:47 B section – modulations to multiple keys
• 1:09 Dominant pedal, retransition back to the A section
1:35 A section – More agitated than the before
• 1:41 the second part of the A section is alterted; dynamics drops gradually to piano
2:14 Codetta – An sudden outburst in at the very last moment in fortissimo (ff) and fortississimo (fff)