I was reflecting on how distant light music and classical music are.
I have come to believe that on our beloved piano, these two musical worlds share only the black and white color of the keys.
The modern piano, although free from compositional and stylistic dogmas, has the classical piano and classical music as its father.
Two worlds with only one heart, however.
Yesterday, while playing some preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier by the genius Bach, I appreciated once again how much the musical mastery of this giant of art was ahead of its time. Bold dissonances for that era, we find them today in light music, pop, and modern music, such as that of Elton John, for example.
Bach used some harmonic techniques that were lost in Romantic music, only to reappear in jazz and the music of the '1900s', and he manages to say something even when played on a Commodore 64.
If we are talking about the piano, there is a particular detail that puts it in a different situation compared to many other instruments for popular music. Nowadays, you carry an 88-key weighted digital keyboard with you because it weighs 12 kg. In the '70s, you could get by with a 120 kg electric piano divisible into two pieces, but in 1950, a piano weighed at least 250 kg, whereas an accordion or a guitar were still portable instruments.
Studying the piano was therefore something more demanding and expensive in itself; even now, I believe that for every shop that deals in acoustic pianos, there are about ten that deal in guitars and wind instruments, and therefore it tended to be a less "popular" instrument.
I'll stop here, but there is a third party involved...
