Black Key Etude (Chopin/Godowsky)

THE ORIGINAL

Background. The Black Key Etude or Etude Op. 10 No. 5 is an effervescent concert piece for piano by Frederic Chopin, the fifth in his first series of Etudes published in 1833. Etude is the French word for study, and each of the Chopin Etudes focuses on developing a specific skill on the keyboard. 



Nickname. Most of the Etudes have clever nicknames, and the "Black Key" is named as such because all notes played by the right hand are on black keys except one.  Can you recall which note this is?

Slippery. This is a "slippery" piece to play as the black keys form narrow precipices on the keyboard where fingers are prone to slipping off when playing a running passage, except for pianists with superior technique. It helps a little if you are playing on a high-end grand piano where keys are "textured" for better finger grip.

Pentatonic. Throughout the entire piece, the right hand (RH) romps around happily in a marathon of zig-zag triplet semiquavers, except for a brief pit stop before the coda, whilst the left hand (LH) provides harmonic security in the form of octave or chord anchors. G-flat major is the natural choice of key for this piece as its base note and its four successive dominants are on black keys. Not surprisingly, the predominant flavour is pentatonic as all RH notes bar one are on black keys.  This is particularly evident in the descending cascade of parallel octaves a few bars before the end, which is also a signature of the Black Key Etude.

Chopin. This Etude has been performed by many professional pianists and amateur pianists alike. Here we feature a unique clip:  a young George Li - immensely talented Chinese-American pianist - playing this Etude at the age of 10 (video uploaded in 2007). This is an excellent performance by any standard, showing superb technique, sensitive interpretation and a great sense of balance. It was a promise of great things to come. George would go on to win the Silver Medal for piano at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2015, which was just two months ago.

THE TRANSCRIPTIONS

Godowsky. Around the turn of the century, nearly 70 years after the original etude was composed, Leopold Godowsky who wrote a series of 53 piano transcriptions named Studies on Chopin's Etudes. As these are studies on studies they are extremely difficult to play and not many have attempted all of them. However they are very tastefully crafted and remain faithful to the general melodic, harmonic and temporal structure of the original etudes. For each original, Godowsky wrote one or more transcriptions.

Steganography. One of the trademarks of a Godowsky transcription is the presence of embedded or hidden inner melodies, which is left for the pianist to unravel. There could be more than one "stream" of hidden inner melody, so you will hear different ones emphasized in performances by different pianists. This is very much like musical steganography. A popular form of steganography is to hide a message in a passage of text where the first letter of each word forms the secret message.

Transcriptions. Godowky wrote seven transcriptions of the Black Key Etude on a stand-alone basis (another transcription combines the Butterfly Etude). Amongst the seven there is variety along several different axes:

(1) for black keys, for white keys, and for black and white keys;
(2) for major keys and for minor key (only one);
(3) melody played by RH, and by LH;
(4) original direction and inverted;
(5) for two hands, and for only one hand.

Performances. For each version, videos of one or more of the following are included:

• Jorge Bolet (6th version) - Rare live footage of renowned Cuban-American pianist Bolet playing the 6th version with much technical agility and finesse. Bolet had studied with Godowsky amongst others.
   
  
• Marc-Andre Hamelin (1st and 2nd versions)  - Canadian virtuoso Hamelin's live performance comes with a closeup shot of the keyboard. His supreme technique allows him to bring out hidden melodies clearly and make these finger-twisters sound deceptively playable.
  
  
• Kotsya Tsatour (all versions) - Tsatour's expertly-delivered  performance is played on a sampled digital piano and shows a running score. Notice that the hidden melody lines he brings out are different from that by Hamelin.
  
  
• David Stanhope (all versions) - Before playing Stanhope gives a brief introduction with an interesting analysis of specific elements in each version. 

1. First Version (No. 7)

As a first challenge Godowsky swaps the LH and RH parts, with new LH part verbatim but with some minor tweaks in the new RH part for variety and character, since this will now be heard as the "melody".  The parallel octaves have been transformed into octaves in contrary motion, but still retaining their pentatonic heritage.

2. Second Version: Study on White Keys (No. 8)

Here the Black Key Etude is transformed to a White Key Etude after transposition to C major. Contrary to the  norm for most C major transpositions, this version is much more difficult than the original. LH again takes up the original RH melody, but this time RH imitates the LH with a similar semiquaver marathon, resulting in a simultaneous double Black Key Etude! To make it more interesting, cleverly hidden melody lines are embedded in the RH part. The effect is that of the pleasant rippling of a mountain brook which belies the technical challenges to be surmounted. The parallel octaves appear in contrary motion with LH pentatonic and RH in major seventh with an augmented second leading note.

3. Third Version: "Tarantella" (No. 9)

Two of the versions - this one and the next - have been given specific names by Godowsky to reflect the character of each transcription.   A tarantella is lively dance in 6/8 time, supposedly danced by a victim bitten by a spider of the same name (as the dance, not the victim). Most Tarantellas  seem to have been written in a minor key, in particular, A minor. The minor key provides a refreshing change in tonality to the other versions which are in major keys. LH plays the original RH melody whilst RH effectively dances the tarantella.The parallel octaves still descend in parallel but with each hand alternating between an octave and a single note with the other hand doing the opposite, not unlike a spider walking with six of its eight legs.

4. Fourth Version:  "Capriccio"  - Study on Black and White Keys (No. 10)

A Capriccio is a piece of music in free form and of lively character as described by Wikipedia. This is a most appropriate description as this version is the happiest-sounding version, with RH prancing around with summertime cheer,  while the LH ripples away almost unnoticeably with the original RH track in undercover. This version is a hybrid between a Black Key and a White Key Etude, and appropriately set in A major whose major scale runs through an almost equal number of white keys and black keys. In the new LH part, the original triplet semiquaver marathon has been grouped in pairs to coincide with the capriccio rhythm of RH. This new grouping gives rise to an interesting pattern which may not have been immediately obvious. For the parallel octaves, LH remains faithfully pentatonic and descending whilst RH runs away in the opposite direction in a pseudo-glissando half a beat later.

5. Fifth Version:  Inversion, for the Left Hand (No. 11)

This is the first version featuring an inversion of the main theme. The original RH melody has been inverted or turned upside down and played by LH. The parallel octaves transformation remain parallel octaves in both hands but in inverted direction and bypassing the supertonic (A-flat), resulting in the passage ending in the dominant (B-flat) instead of the tonic (G-flat).

6. Sixth Version: Inversion, for the Right Hand (No. 12)

Here the inverted melody is played by RH instead whilst LH glides through a series of regular semiquavers in arpeggio form. This is the only version where RH plays the original RH track, although in inverted form. The parallel octaves have metamorphosized into an ascending RH black-key glissando flourish supported by a three-octave LH arpeggio.

7. Seventh Version: For the Left Hand Alone (No. 12a)

Less is more. One of the favourite challenges in writing a transcription is to reduce a piece for two hands to a transcription for only one hand - usually the left to make it more difficult - but creating an effect as if played by two hands. The original Etude does not appear conveniently transformable into a one-hand reduction, but this version shows that it can be done, and very effectively too. The original direction of the RH melody is used except for the cascade of octaves towards the end which has been refreshingly inverted atop a dominant pedal.

Coda. Do also check out this excellent post by multi-talented Chopinandmysaucepan on the Black Key Etude and Godowsky's transcriptions of it. The scores of the seven transcriptions can be found on IMSLP here. If you enjoy playing the original Black Key Etude, perhaps you might want to challenge yourself with one of the transcriptions above!