🏁 When is a piece actually "finished"?
What does it actually mean to finish a piece? Six weeks of Unfinished Business just wrapped, and that question is worth sitting with.
Some players call it done when they can play it through cleanly once. Others keep a piece for years, and it quietly keeps changing. And plenty of us have a stack of pieces that are 90 percent there and somehow never cross the line.
💬 So where do you land?
- What is the moment you know a piece is finished, and is it the same kind of moment every time?
- Is there a piece you have decided is done, and one you suspect you will never call finished?
- For the ones stuck at 90 percent, what is the last 10 percent usually made of?
The hardest distance in music might be the last few bars between almost and done. Let's compare notes on how we actually get across it.
2 replies
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Great question. I don't think a piece is ever "finished." As long as we keep living with it, it can evolve. This is assuming we have conquered the technical difficulties in which case things like expression, different ways to phrase, fingerings, and articulation can evolve. That's why a recording or a performance is just a snapshot in time because hopefully we are continuing to grow as musicians. On the other hand, there are those pieces that continually present technical challenges that we may not have yet mastered. That pile of pieces may sit in the 90 percent pile for some time until our technique catches up with our ambition. And so we continue on this beautiful journey that never ends.
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Finished? No such thing. Part of repertoire, sure, but never finished.