Has anyone played In Again Out Again...

The Mad Hatter

...by Philip Glass.

It's a piece for two pianos. The score is handwritten and very difficult to read. Moreover, the barlines for the two pianos don't sync up...

Has anyone on here played it before, and can they give me any advice on how to do so?

Doshea3

I've never played the piece (not a Glass fan), but I hope I can help regardless. When you say they bar lines don't sync up, do you mean the rhythm is polymetric? That must be a pain to play on a piece for two pianos. Only advice I can give you for playing anything polymetric is to concentrate totally on what you're playing and ignore the other pianist when practising (though this is perhaps a self-destructive attitude in chamber music). If you become familiar enough with your part (and have a nodding acquaintance with the other part) you could always glance now and then to make sure you're keeping together. You could also try practising with two metronomes at the speed for each part and try keeping together that way.

Though perhaps I'm mistaken and you just mean the bar lines are badly drawn.

Bah! Why do people like Glass have to make things so complicated?!

Hope that was of some help.

The Mad Hatter

It's not really polymetric, it's sort of difficult to explain...there's no time signature, and it's mostly written in quavers, but the quavers are different sizes, so don't line up (looks like a first year harmony exercise to a degree...). When I say the bar lines don't match up, yeah, there are a different number of beats in each part, but there's no suggestion of even notes coinciding.

What's more, the first piano part has parenthesised notes in several bars on the first page, and the second piano part has the same on the second page.

And the bar numbers are also split between the two pianos, like this:

Pno I  1               4          6
Pno II 2      3            5

Yeah, honestly I think Glass was being pretentious, but all the same I want to play the piece.

Thanks for your help, btw. We did actually try that practising without referencing each other...it worked fine except for the parenthesised notes (see above).

Doshea3

Wow, it does sound remarkably complicated. I remember opening the score of one of Glass's operas in the Central Library out of pure curiosity, and the handwritten repeated note patters honestly looked to me like the stuff of my nightmares! No, I think I'll leave Glass to the Glassians.

Sorry I couldn't be of much help, but I'm glad I was some use at least.

Good luck with it!

funky penguin

Does a time sig come into the piece at any point at all? Whats the speed? This sounds interesting......

cornbb

Does it involve phasing by any chance?

I'm not familiar with that Glass piece but a lot of minimalist stuff involves phasing, i.e. the tempo played by one musician/instrument is slightly faster than the other so everything goes in and out of synch very slowly. Here's an example: http://www.last.fm/music/Steve+Reich/_/Piano+Phase

The Mad Hatter

Ehm...no time signature in either part, the tempo written is minim=100.

cornbb, it doesn't involve phasing, though we're playing piano phase as well. If you like it, you should check this out: http://www.archive.org/details/top.09

It's a pianist called Peter Aidu, playing it on two pianos at the same time. He phases with himself. Incredible.

cornbb

The Mad Hatter wrote:

http://www.archive.org/details/top.09

Very cool. I can't get my head around how someone could get their head around playing that

The Mad Hatter

Ah! We have hit a breakthrough.

Turns out that the way he wrote it was about the only way to write it: each piano has the other's part backwards, and as the bars are all of different lengths, numbering each piano separately was about the only way to do it. It also explains why the brackets are in the first piano on the first page, and on the second piano on the second page.

It's more-or-less sorted now, though thanks for the replies.

funky penguin

Explains the name of the piece anyway.

Good luck with it.

Doshea3

Ah! It could have been a movement from "Art of Fugue"...

Good luck with it.

funky penguin

Fugues, cannons, two part inventions... I love them.

Well I love playing them to be more precise.

Doshea3

Excellent, I'm also a counterpoint-lover.

Art of Fugue, Well-Tempered Clavier, Inventions, and all other Bachian counterpoint > all. Well, practically.