Unplayable Piece Used to Test Player Pianos - Neatorama

(Video Link)

It's called "Circus Galop" or "Death Waltz", and it's used to test the performance of player pianos. No single person has ever played it...so far. But if we can put a man on the moon, surely we can genetically engineer a superhuman species that can perform it.

-via Boing Boing

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Composed by Canadian pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, who can just about do the same with his bare hands.

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"The song has too many notes."

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Why would anyone WANT to play it? Impressively fast with a broad range, but aesthetically unpleasing. Fine for testing machines.

Ah, there's a new passive-aggressive term for faint praise. "Fine for testing machines."

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There is no way for the average human hand to span that many keys at one time. In one spot in the video 6 keys are being pressed and the span for one hand would be 13 keys. I have very long fingers and can't span that far apart. Did this composer write this specifically for this purpose?

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My friend's player piano had a test roll that would take it through the wringer in the same way, but not the same song.

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