March 22nd, 2022

A hypothetical magical musical power: The one-piece wonder

For some reason, I’ve pondered this hypothetical on and off for years: Suppose you were magically granted the ability to perform one piece of music beautifully, but in exchange, you are rendered incapable of playing any other piece at a level higher than beginner.

What instrument and piece should you pick so you can have the longest musical career before you’re found out?

For example, the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto is popular and impressive-sounding, and being one of the best interpreters in the world will get you regular work on the classical music circuit. But people are going to get suspicious if that’s the only thing you ever play. And when you get called back on stage by an adoring audience for an encore, people are going to be disappointed that you never oblige.

If you pick a solo piece, will people book you for a recital that consists of a single piece?

If you choose Freebird, knowing that it is still frequently played and requested, would people start wondering why you come on stage to play that one song and nothing else?

I eventually concluded that the best answer is the Turangalîla-Symphonie on the ondes Martenot. (Turangalîla-Symphonie previously.)

You will get regular work because there aren’t a lot of ondes Martenot players in the world. Wikipedia claims that “fewer than 100 people have mastered the ondes Martenot.”

You will never get found out because there are no other pieces of any consequence for the ondes Martenot!

When I posed this question to some friends, one of them replied that he would choose Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata. “The orchestra would sit and listen, which means I would get exactly one booking. But, if I was able to play that beautifully just once, I wouldn’t need to play anything else.” I like this answer despite the fact that it rejects the question. (The question isn’t to name the piece that would be most personally satisfying. It’s the one that lets you go the longest without being found out!)

Bonus chatter: Businessman Gilbert Kaplan became enamored with the works of Gustav Mahler, particularly the Second Symphony, named Resurrection. (Mahler’s Second Symphony previously.) Kaplan conducted over 100 performances of the Second Symphony, and no other work.

Author

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

6 comments

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  • Jun-Dai Bates-Kobashigawa · Edited

    The obvious (to me) answer is the Goldberg Variations. It's exactly the sort of piece a pianist would obsess over and make a career out of playing all by itself, and if you had a novel and brilliant interpretation you could definitely get paid to play it forever without people thinking it was all _that_ weird. If Glenn Gould had never played anything other than the Goldberg Variations, he would probably be more famous, not...

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    • Neil Rashbrook

      That’s easy, you’d just become a Perl programmer 😉

  • Dave Gzorple

    I would play the salpinx (a bronze trumpet with a bone mouthpiece), preferably the fifth, sixth, or seventh one. There would only ever be one performance, and yet my musical career would still last for as long as everyone’s lifetime.

  • John McPhersonMicrosoft employee

    As a non-musical person, I already have the downside, so it would be quite amazing to be able to play anything to the level of the question.

    I would think that the longest possible piece, that is also pleasing to the audience, would be best to achieve the longest career. If you could perform for two hours or more, then you wouldn't need anything else. You tour on your breathtaking, tear inducing version of...

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    • Scarlet Manuka

      The “pleasing to the audience” part is important there. There’s a performance of John Cage’s Organ²/ASLSP currently underway that is slated to last for 639 years (https://universes.art/en/specials/john-cage-organ-project-halberstadt). But I don’t think you could make a career out of it…

  • Drew Cooper

    Any Harry Partch piece on any Harry Partch-constructed instrument.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Partch

    That would be strange (and wonderful) enough that nobody would notice if there were only one tune.