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This sort of “autocomplete” is actually fundamental to how classical composers were trained. For anyone interested, I’d highly recommend reading Robert Gjerdin

This sort of “autocomplete” is actually fundamental to how classical composers were trained. For anyone interested, I’d highly recommend reading Robert Gjerdingen’s article Gebrauchs-Formulas. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259731561_Gebrauchs-Formulas https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259731561_Gebrauchs... You can also listen to the transcript of four Russian composers, including Rachmaninoff, playing this pattern recognition and generation game at a dinner party in the late 1800’s: https://youtu.be/PlFPOWuwBHI?is=EKBK7QQkJs4MsTCU https://youtu.be/PlFPOWuwBHI?is=EKBK7QQkJs4MsTCU Composers at the time could do this just by looking at sheet music and audiating, without using a piano.

vunderba 1mo ago
To add to this: classical extemporization, post-Romantic period, also sort of fell out of favor as the composer began to pre-empt the performer and the "written note is sacrosanct" effectively became the de jure standard. There's a great story around how Beethoven, perhaps one of the strongest improvisers of his day, completely upstaged Steibelt, a contemporary musician and by all accounts a bit of a charlatan. I'll include the entire quote verbatim from "The Lives of the Great Pianists" by Harold Schonberg. This time Steibelt had prepared a brilliant fantasy for piano and strings, the theme coming from the Beethoven trio he had heard the previous week. Steibelt's admirers were in raptures. Now the issue was joined, and Beethoven had to show his strength. He walked to the piano, grasped the cello part of the Steibelt work en route, put it upside down on the piano and insultingly drummed out a theme with one finger. Then he improvised, and—angry, excited, on his mettle—how he must have improvised! Before Beethoven had finished, Steibelt stole from the room. He never again would meet Beethoven and made it a condition before going anywhere in Vienna that Beethoven not be invited.
dyzone 1mo ago
I'm a little lost. What am I listening for in that video?
- hiccuphippo 1mo ago
  Classical jamming.
- tom_vidal 1mo ago
  Check the article for the full context. It’s basically a musical version of exquisite corpse. One composer wrote the start of a phrase (on sheet music, without using a piano), then passed it on to the next composer, who continued the phrase based only on reading the sheet music. This illustrates the extraordinary degree of audiation, or the cognitive ability to imagine music in the mind in a symbol-linked, systematized way, that used to exist in classical music. Each composer could read what was just written, audiate how it would sound, audiate a continuation of the phrase, and then transcribe that aural imagination back to sheet music.
argimenes 1mo ago
Probably the last truly great classical improviser on piano was Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894). His Fantaisie in E minor, Op. 77 is probably the pinnacle of his skill in (notated) improvisation. After that, the great classical improvisers were probably organists in the 20th century, like Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) and Pierre Cochereau (1924-1984). Cochereau created vast, highly personal, symphonic forms with dazzling orchestral registration.

vunderba 1mo ago

To add to this: classical extemporization, post-Romantic period, also sort of fell out of favor as the composer began to pre-empt the performer and the "written note is sacrosanct" effectively became the de jure standard. There's a great story around how Beethoven, perhaps one of the strongest improvisers of his day, completely upstaged Steibelt, a contemporary musician and by all accounts a bit of a charlatan. I'll include the entire quote verbatim from "The Lives of the Great Pianists" by Harold Schonberg. This time Steibelt had prepared a brilliant fantasy for piano and strings, the theme coming from the Beethoven trio he had heard the previous week. Steibelt's admirers were in raptures. Now the issue was joined, and Beethoven had to show his strength. He walked to the piano, grasped the cello part of the Steibelt work en route, put it upside down on the piano and insultingly drummed out a theme with one finger. Then he improvised, and—angry, excited, on his mettle—how he must have improvised! Before Beethoven had finished, Steibelt stole from the room. He never again would meet Beethoven and made it a condition before going anywhere in Vienna that Beethoven not be invited.

dyzone 1mo ago

I'm a little lost. What am I listening for in that video?

hiccuphippo 1mo ago
Classical jamming.
tom_vidal 1mo ago
Check the article for the full context. It’s basically a musical version of exquisite corpse. One composer wrote the start of a phrase (on sheet music, without using a piano), then passed it on to the next composer, who continued the phrase based only on reading the sheet music. This illustrates the extraordinary degree of audiation, or the cognitive ability to imagine music in the mind in a symbol-linked, systematized way, that used to exist in classical music. Each composer could read what was just written, audiate how it would sound, audiate a continuation of the phrase, and then transcribe that aural imagination back to sheet music.

argimenes 1mo ago

Probably the last truly great classical improviser on piano was Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894). His Fantaisie in E minor, Op. 77 is probably the pinnacle of his skill in (notated) improvisation. After that, the great classical improvisers were probably organists in the 20th century, like Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) and Pierre Cochereau (1924-1984). Cochereau created vast, highly personal, symphonic forms with dazzling orchestral registration.