🏁 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.
7 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.
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Interesting questions! For my own playing, I call a piece I'm working on 'good enough' or 'done for now' when I achieve a satisfactory technical and musical level. That's the point when I'm willing to 'perform' and share the piece with others. However, rarely have I called a piece FINISHED 😀.
For me, the last 10 percent depends on how the end product sounds like, how interesting the interpretation is and how musical it is. Sometimes, I'd not be convinced with things like phrasing, dynamics variation and tone colour, the fluidity of the melodies. I guess the 10 percent is also the place where it becomes a little difficult for me to judge what it is that's missing and then I run out of ideas. So, in a nutshell, all the pieces I have are works in progress.
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For me, a piece is finished when it exits my performance repertoire list. As long as a piece inspires a creative spark in me, it’s not finished. I’ve known musicians who plan every aspect of their performance, every interpretative nuance. That works for them and that’s great. But if a piece gets to that point for me, where every performance is the same, that’s when the piece is finished and goes away.
If your question is “when is the piece ready for performance?” That’s more quantifiable. I use the term internalized. When the piece is “under my fingers”, meaning technically mastered, when the piece is “in my head” or memorized, and when a piece is “in my heart”, when I’ve made an emotional connection with the music so that I can use that music to make an emotional connection with the listener – then the piece is ready. It’s internalized.
As I’ve, ahem, matured, the last 10%, the sticking point, is almost always memory. My process for memorization has had to change over time. But we live, we change, we evolve. The beauty of the journey.
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Once you call a piece finished, it's all over. What's the point if it's 'finished'? Isn't a better question 'When is a piece READY (to share with others)?'
The music should grow with you forever. Dainelle said below 'no such thing'. that's it!
I have played pieces for decades and every time I come back, something changes. Tempos, phrasing, technical ability, and FINGERINGS, FINGERINGS, FINGERINGS! I have changed fingerings sometimes on the day of a concert (rare, but it's happened).
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Nope, never did. I have noticed that playing a piece 100% at my age (45) is impossible. But who knows... it is worth trying.