The Research Of Alkan’s Piano Etudes

Charles-Valentin Alkan (Nov.30,1813-Mar.29,1888) is a French Jewish pianist and composer during the peak period of romanticism,most of his pieces of music were worked for piano. Under the specific historic effect of the romanticism period, his opus not only inherit the strict logicality from the classical music, but also brim with strong romanticism feeling from the19th century. The specific36piano etudes is not only the important opus that created by Alkan, but also the typical ones which symbolize his unique music style.This paper first explores the piano etude development context and their inheritance relationship, then deeply discourses those36piano etude on the aspects of cultural factors, creation features and technique system etc, in order to research the influence and significance of Alkan’s piano etude on the development of piano music based on systematically collating and summarizing the genre characteristics of these piano etudes.This paper will include following parts:Introduction, Four Chapters,Conclusion and so on.Introduction part explains the academic value of this research, the author’s purpose of choosing this research topic, the meaning of this research and general description of the literatures, and also describ the current exist domestic and foreign rerearch achievement and shortage of them.Chapter One is a research on the music produce progress of Alkan and developing progress of etudes, through the reorganize the compose life of Alkan for piano and the historical developing progress of etudes, will conclude the position of Alkan’s etudes in the whole history of etudes developing progress, clarified their important positions as symbolic works represent the etudes of romanticism.Chapter Two describs the cultural factors which influenced the creation of Alkan’s piano etudes, this chapter will majorly concentrate in the area of social historical background and social ideology, to discover the factors which influenced the style of the etudes, and approved that the social environ-ment certainly influenced the composers on music creation.Chapter Three will discuss about the style and performance technique of Alkan’s etudes. This chapter will start from the main body of the music pieces, focus on the systematically analysis and research to the music style and the performance technique of the etudes. These etudes reflect the unlimited creative ability and imagination of Alkan when he created these works. From view of performance technique, Alkan’s etudes could better represent the excellent playing technology.Chapter Four will describe the author’s understanding regarding to Alkan’s piano etudes and the realistic meaning. This chapter will firstly describe the art value of Alkan’s etudes on the aspects of virtuoso style and sound, and then to discuss about the historical limitation of the composer’s living period from Alkan’s character and creation style. At the same time, to emphasize that we must comment Alkan and his music creations with objective and sober attitude.Through the research of Alkan’s36etudes, the author systematically demonstrates the unique value and glamour of Alkan’s etudes, and affirmed his contribution to piano music as one of the most outstanding piano composer during the period of romanticism. This research also provides a theoretical basis for playing and teaching Alkan’s piano etude, and to some extent, to broaden people’s understanding scope of Romantic musician.