6 ms·

I wonder if music experts could have identified it as a work by Chopin just by the sound? Obviously it's a bit late now, but it would have been an interesting e

I wonder if music experts could have identified it as a work by Chopin just by the sound? Obviously it's a bit late now, but it would have been an interesting experiment - to ask 100 "professors of music" to guess which composer out of [1] wrote this newly discovered piece. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:19th-century_classical_composers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:19th-century_classica...

eXpl0it3r 2y ago
Very likely. I'm nowhere near a professional nor am I giid at recognizing pieces/composers, but some people have such a deep understanding of yhe music from various composers, that they likely categorize it correctly. See for example Nahre Sol [1] who plays the same piece in the style of different composers. In order to do that, you need to have a deep understanding of each composer's "quirks". [1] https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8 https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > See for example Nahre Sol [1] Related to her, perhaps see her video "Is Chopin JAZZ?!": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcfRqsjQA-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcfRqsjQA-4 > [1] https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8?si=ZObBERSyYD29w4y4 https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8?si=ZObBERSyYD29w4y4 Meta: The "si=ZObBERSyYD29w4y4" parameter is tracking. When cutting-pasting you may wish to remove it.
perihelions 2y ago
This is topical: https://www.thepianofiles.com/the-valse-melancolique/ https://www.thepianofiles.com/the-valse-melancolique/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mayer_(composer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mayer_(composer) There was another (attributed) Chopin Waltz that was discovered about a century ago, and "professors of music" argued whether it really sounded like Chopin or not. I think they reached a consensus that it wasn't Chopin, but an unrelated contemporary called Charles Mayer. - "In an email exchange we had relating to this discovery, Stephen Hough wrote (and gave me permission to publish) the following comments:" - "It was not so much the structure which made me think from the first time I saw the piece (1936 edition) that it couldn’t be by Chopin but the compositional mistakes. Chopin was fastidious about such things and there is false note-leading, inaccurate spelling of accidentals and rough harmony (too many thirds, bad spacing). I also never thought it sounded Chopin-esque but much more Russian. I only put it on as a curiosity and insisted that the notes explain its doubtful attribution."
djtango 2y ago
Composers have very distinct styles my teacher would joke Mozart adored the triad, Beethoven the octave and Chopin the tenth. A fun game I like to play myself is "guess the composer". I think I shocked my friend the most when I watched West World with him and after seeing the intro only once I guessed correctly that it was the same composer as the Game of Thrones intro. Sometimes I second guess myself too much between late Mozart and early Beethoven but I think most the composers have their own hallmarks. Chopin in particular was quite idiosyncratic because his piano writing was fairly innovative. He came up with a lot of new ways to play the piano and his polish influences and focus on salon music is very distinct
- pubutil 2y ago
  If you haven’t already heard of it, you might enjoy the Piano Puzzler podcast[0] “Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer … [someone calls in and] listens to Bruce play his Piano Puzzler™. They then try to do two things: name the hidden tune, and name the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking.” Of course, you can play along at home as you listen. [0] https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443927/performance-today-s-piano-puzzler https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443927/performance-today-s-p...
  - sho_hn 2y ago
    I like this one: https://youtu.be/WRfsibwR5x4 https://youtu.be/WRfsibwR5x4
  - HERMANOPRIMERO 2y ago
    This reminds me of Hidden Melody from an old British quiz show that I loved as a child: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Music_(British_game_show) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Music_(British_game....
  - djtango 2y ago
    Thanks for sharing this - very fun! Reminded me that nowadays I listen to less classical music than I did so a modification of the game I enjoy playing with myself is "guess the influencing composer". For example I hear so much Prokofiev influence via harmonic language in the early Harry Potter movies and I was listening to Rachmaninoff the other day and thought "oh gosh that reminds me a lot of Kingdom Hearts" and did a quick check and lo and behold Yoko Shimomura cites Rach as a major inspiration. Similarly I often hear shimmers of Ravel in Masashi Hamauzu
jancsika 2y ago
> Obviously it's a bit late now, but it would have been an interesting experiment - to ask 100 "professors of music" to guess which composer out of [1] wrote this newly discovered piece. They'd have guessed correctly. But you already know ahead of time that this newly discovered piece is not, say, juvenilia written by Scriabin specifically to imitate a Chopin waltz. And in that case, 100 professors would have guessed wrong because it would not have been the obvious answer. Guessing composers based on sound/musical content alone is problematic for many reasons: 1. Common practice vs. composer's idiosyncrasies. Even separating Mozart's oeuvre from Michael Haydn's (Joseph's brother) has been non-trivial-- scholars have gotten it wrong over the centuries. Also-- IIRC there is a research paper about stylistic analyses leading to circular dependencies in the attribution of works of Josquin. E.g., A is Josquin because it sounds like Josquin's B, and B is Josquin because it sounds like Josquin's A... 2. Cross-contamination. Mozart knew Michael and his music, and was highly influenced by it. Compare the initial fugue at the beginning of Haydn's Requiem in C minor to Mozart's, plus the upward cascade of vocal entrances. Additionally, Schumann was influenced by Chopin, who was influenced by Liszt/Schumann/Mozart/Bach/etc. The problem gets worse as you go forward in history-- the next generation can take a composer's entire output and use it as their bible, which leads to... 3. Experts are also composers, and the most highly trained ones can write in the style of any composer whose works they have access to. E.g., Scriabin's set of Preludes was obviously written to be the sequel to Chopin's Op. 24 Preludes, (e.g., Chopin's no. 1 has a few fleeting quintuplets at the end, Scriabin's no. 1 is OMG all quintuplets phrased across barlines till the very end [engine_revving.wav]!). He understood Chopin's formal and textural affinities, could match his virtuosity at the keyboard, and fully immersed himself in Chopin's harmonic language. I have no doubt if Scriabin had wanted to do a prank (or, more likely, an exercise) by writing a piece to fall convincingly into Chopin's oeuvre, he could have done so at any point in his career. Plus... 4. Confirmation bias. I really want this to be a newly discovered waltz by Chopin![1] These are the reasons an article like this mentions things like paper, ink and handwriting analysis. 1: Digression-- scholars also like to omit things that they feel don't reflect well on their favorite composer. For a fun example, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology
tristramb 2y ago
Not now that AIs can generate music that sounds like any composer.
- t0bia_s 2y ago
  Not any. If you are careful listener, you can hear musically nonsense (AI hallucinations) compositions. Of course it depends on genre.
acheron 2y ago
Chopin is pretty distinctive. I think the question would be if someone could identify it as “actual lost Chopin” vs “modern composer trying to imitate Chopin”.
- Archelaos 2y ago
  The question is, if someone who is a grand master in identifying the “modern composer trying to imitate Chopin” knows so much that his own Chopin imitations become (statistically) undistinguishable from Chopin's own compositions for anyone else. (Except for experts who know every piece of Chopin and thus do not need to identify them by style, but can use “brute force”.)
- lostlogin 2y ago
  AI will help/hinder this depending on individual views.
mrbonner 2y ago
I gotta say that with Bach and Mozart, I feel like I could id their pieces consistently. They have a distinct pattern of symphony and motifs no other composers could mimic.
- jhdias 2y ago
  No famous composers would want to mimic. Plenty of unknowns can mimic.
  - powersnail 2y ago
    Fritz Kreisler faked some old composers'---e.g. Vivaldi's---work, claiming to have discovered some unpublished manuscripts, but later revealed that they were his own compositions all along. It was mostly a prank on the music industry, but nonetheless, mimicry of style was involved, and was enough to fool many people for years.
  - klodolph 2y ago
    Famous composers mimicked other composers plenty, or parodied other composers, copied them or played homages. Mimicked, yes, famous composers definitely did mimic other composers. Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 is one of the more famous. It mimics Mozart and Haydn (obvious choices!) Stravinsky’s Octet is another. There are plenty of other examples. Those are just two of the more obvious ones. Bach did it. Beethoven did it. Mozart did it.
    - gmueckl 2y ago
      I guess the subtle distinction here is that these great composers probably did it because they simply could do it as one deliberate choice among many. Lesser composers may be stuck mimicing a few styles because they lack the skill to go beyond them. But if some unpublished work mimics a certain style, I would assume that it is an exercise to gain a better understanding of that style.
  - mrbonner 2y ago
    Huh? Bach was the greatest recycler of all time. His keyboard suites were all styled after popular dances in Europe: the Allemande, the sarabande, courante and gigue. He just one upped them to a whole new level. If you listen to Haydn's sonatas, do you feel the resemblance of Mozart's? Well, because Haydn taught both Mozart and Beethoven. Nothing is new under the sun, my friend.
shadowmanifold 2y ago
You wouldn't have to be a professor of music for this. Chopin has a unique style and it is a waltz. This would have been a trivial question for any piano music lover. The only reason I might not have have guessed Chopin first is it seems too obvious and easy if I had been asked. A new Beatles song might be harder to guess than this. I think it sounds pretty good too but I would want to hear it performed by a pianist who I like the way they play Chopin to judge it better. It sounds quite good considering I don't really like the sound of the piano that is being used.
Tycho 2y ago
I think the only composer who sounds at all like Chopin is Scriabin.
- richardfontana 2y ago
  Agreed, though I'm sure there were more obscure composers who imitated Chopin. Scriabin's op. 11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Preludes%2C_Op._11_%28Scriabin%29?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Preludes%2C_Op._11_%28Scria... particularly shows Chopin's influence. I have to admit I like these Scriabin preludes more than Chopin's work.
- greenimpala 2y ago
  Tellefsen? I have been a fan for a while now, Chopin's favourite student I believe.

eXpl0it3r 2y ago

Very likely. I'm nowhere near a professional nor am I giid at recognizing pieces/composers, but some people have such a deep understanding of yhe music from various composers, that they likely categorize it correctly. See for example Nahre Sol [1] who plays the same piece in the style of different composers. In order to do that, you need to have a deep understanding of each composer's "quirks". [1] https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8 https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8

throw0101d 2y ago
> See for example Nahre Sol [1] Related to her, perhaps see her video "Is Chopin JAZZ?!": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcfRqsjQA-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcfRqsjQA-4 > [1] https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8?si=ZObBERSyYD29w4y4 https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8?si=ZObBERSyYD29w4y4 Meta: The "si=ZObBERSyYD29w4y4" parameter is tracking. When cutting-pasting you may wish to remove it.

perihelions 2y ago

This is topical: https://www.thepianofiles.com/the-valse-melancolique/ https://www.thepianofiles.com/the-valse-melancolique/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mayer_(composer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mayer_(composer) There was another (attributed) Chopin Waltz that was discovered about a century ago, and "professors of music" argued whether it really sounded like Chopin or not. I think they reached a consensus that it wasn't Chopin, but an unrelated contemporary called Charles Mayer. - "In an email exchange we had relating to this discovery, Stephen Hough wrote (and gave me permission to publish) the following comments:" - "It was not so much the structure which made me think from the first time I saw the piece (1936 edition) that it couldn’t be by Chopin but the compositional mistakes. Chopin was fastidious about such things and there is false note-leading, inaccurate spelling of accidentals and rough harmony (too many thirds, bad spacing). I also never thought it sounded Chopin-esque but much more Russian. I only put it on as a curiosity and insisted that the notes explain its doubtful attribution."

djtango 2y ago

Composers have very distinct styles my teacher would joke Mozart adored the triad, Beethoven the octave and Chopin the tenth. A fun game I like to play myself is "guess the composer". I think I shocked my friend the most when I watched West World with him and after seeing the intro only once I guessed correctly that it was the same composer as the Game of Thrones intro. Sometimes I second guess myself too much between late Mozart and early Beethoven but I think most the composers have their own hallmarks. Chopin in particular was quite idiosyncratic because his piano writing was fairly innovative. He came up with a lot of new ways to play the piano and his polish influences and focus on salon music is very distinct

pubutil 2y ago
If you haven’t already heard of it, you might enjoy the Piano Puzzler podcast[0] “Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer … [someone calls in and] listens to Bruce play his Piano Puzzler™. They then try to do two things: name the hidden tune, and name the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking.” Of course, you can play along at home as you listen. [0] https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443927/performance-today-s-piano-puzzler https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443927/performance-today-s-p...
- sho_hn 2y ago
  I like this one: https://youtu.be/WRfsibwR5x4 https://youtu.be/WRfsibwR5x4
- HERMANOPRIMERO 2y ago
  This reminds me of Hidden Melody from an old British quiz show that I loved as a child: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Music_(British_game_show) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Music_(British_game....
- djtango 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing this - very fun! Reminded me that nowadays I listen to less classical music than I did so a modification of the game I enjoy playing with myself is "guess the influencing composer". For example I hear so much Prokofiev influence via harmonic language in the early Harry Potter movies and I was listening to Rachmaninoff the other day and thought "oh gosh that reminds me a lot of Kingdom Hearts" and did a quick check and lo and behold Yoko Shimomura cites Rach as a major inspiration. Similarly I often hear shimmers of Ravel in Masashi Hamauzu

jancsika 2y ago

> Obviously it's a bit late now, but it would have been an interesting experiment - to ask 100 "professors of music" to guess which composer out of [1] wrote this newly discovered piece. They'd have guessed correctly. But you already know ahead of time that this newly discovered piece is not, say, juvenilia written by Scriabin specifically to imitate a Chopin waltz. And in that case, 100 professors would have guessed wrong because it would not have been the obvious answer. Guessing composers based on sound/musical content alone is problematic for many reasons: 1. Common practice vs. composer's idiosyncrasies. Even separating Mozart's oeuvre from Michael Haydn's (Joseph's brother) has been non-trivial-- scholars have gotten it wrong over the centuries. Also-- IIRC there is a research paper about stylistic analyses leading to circular dependencies in the attribution of works of Josquin. E.g., A is Josquin because it sounds like Josquin's B, and B is Josquin because it sounds like Josquin's A... 2. Cross-contamination. Mozart knew Michael and his music, and was highly influenced by it. Compare the initial fugue at the beginning of Haydn's Requiem in C minor to Mozart's, plus the upward cascade of vocal entrances. Additionally, Schumann was influenced by Chopin, who was influenced by Liszt/Schumann/Mozart/Bach/etc. The problem gets worse as you go forward in history-- the next generation can take a composer's entire output and use it as their bible, which leads to... 3. Experts are also composers, and the most highly trained ones can write in the style of any composer whose works they have access to. E.g., Scriabin's set of Preludes was obviously written to be the sequel to Chopin's Op. 24 Preludes, (e.g., Chopin's no. 1 has a few fleeting quintuplets at the end, Scriabin's no. 1 is OMG all quintuplets phrased across barlines till the very end [engine_revving.wav]!). He understood Chopin's formal and textural affinities, could match his virtuosity at the keyboard, and fully immersed himself in Chopin's harmonic language. I have no doubt if Scriabin had wanted to do a prank (or, more likely, an exercise) by writing a piece to fall convincingly into Chopin's oeuvre, he could have done so at any point in his career. Plus... 4. Confirmation bias. I really want this to be a newly discovered waltz by Chopin![1] These are the reasons an article like this mentions things like paper, ink and handwriting analysis. 1: Digression-- scholars also like to omit things that they feel don't reflect well on their favorite composer. For a fun example, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology

tristramb 2y ago

Not now that AIs can generate music that sounds like any composer.

t0bia_s 2y ago
Not any. If you are careful listener, you can hear musically nonsense (AI hallucinations) compositions. Of course it depends on genre.

acheron 2y ago

Chopin is pretty distinctive. I think the question would be if someone could identify it as “actual lost Chopin” vs “modern composer trying to imitate Chopin”.

Archelaos 2y ago
The question is, if someone who is a grand master in identifying the “modern composer trying to imitate Chopin” knows so much that his own Chopin imitations become (statistically) undistinguishable from Chopin's own compositions for anyone else. (Except for experts who know every piece of Chopin and thus do not need to identify them by style, but can use “brute force”.)
lostlogin 2y ago
AI will help/hinder this depending on individual views.

mrbonner 2y ago

I gotta say that with Bach and Mozart, I feel like I could id their pieces consistently. They have a distinct pattern of symphony and motifs no other composers could mimic.

jhdias 2y ago
No famous composers would want to mimic. Plenty of unknowns can mimic.
- powersnail 2y ago
  Fritz Kreisler faked some old composers'---e.g. Vivaldi's---work, claiming to have discovered some unpublished manuscripts, but later revealed that they were his own compositions all along. It was mostly a prank on the music industry, but nonetheless, mimicry of style was involved, and was enough to fool many people for years.
- klodolph 2y ago
  Famous composers mimicked other composers plenty, or parodied other composers, copied them or played homages. Mimicked, yes, famous composers definitely did mimic other composers. Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 is one of the more famous. It mimics Mozart and Haydn (obvious choices!) Stravinsky’s Octet is another. There are plenty of other examples. Those are just two of the more obvious ones. Bach did it. Beethoven did it. Mozart did it.
  - gmueckl 2y ago
    I guess the subtle distinction here is that these great composers probably did it because they simply could do it as one deliberate choice among many. Lesser composers may be stuck mimicing a few styles because they lack the skill to go beyond them. But if some unpublished work mimics a certain style, I would assume that it is an exercise to gain a better understanding of that style.
- mrbonner 2y ago
  Huh? Bach was the greatest recycler of all time. His keyboard suites were all styled after popular dances in Europe: the Allemande, the sarabande, courante and gigue. He just one upped them to a whole new level. If you listen to Haydn's sonatas, do you feel the resemblance of Mozart's? Well, because Haydn taught both Mozart and Beethoven. Nothing is new under the sun, my friend.

shadowmanifold 2y ago

You wouldn't have to be a professor of music for this. Chopin has a unique style and it is a waltz. This would have been a trivial question for any piano music lover. The only reason I might not have have guessed Chopin first is it seems too obvious and easy if I had been asked. A new Beatles song might be harder to guess than this. I think it sounds pretty good too but I would want to hear it performed by a pianist who I like the way they play Chopin to judge it better. It sounds quite good considering I don't really like the sound of the piano that is being used.

Tycho 2y ago

I think the only composer who sounds at all like Chopin is Scriabin.

richardfontana 2y ago
Agreed, though I'm sure there were more obscure composers who imitated Chopin. Scriabin's op. 11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Preludes%2C_Op._11_%28Scriabin%29?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Preludes%2C_Op._11_%28Scria... particularly shows Chopin's influence. I have to admit I like these Scriabin preludes more than Chopin's work.
greenimpala 2y ago
Tellefsen? I have been a fan for a while now, Chopin's favourite student I believe.