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Description
Prepared piano is a performance technique and repertoire in which an acoustic piano is altered by placing objects ("preparations") such as screws, bolts, erasers, rubber, paper, wood, or coins on or between the strings, hammers, or dampers. These additions transform the instrument’s timbre, producing sounds that resemble drums, gongs, bells, muted plucks, rattles, or metallic chimes.
While the piano remains the sound source, the result is a compact percussion orchestra with a pitched framework. Composers notate detailed preparation charts specifying the materials and their exact string locations, and performers balance conventional keyboard playing with inside-the-piano gestures and pedaling control. The music ranges from meditative and bell-like to motoric and intensely percussive, and it occupies a pivotal place in 20th- and 21st-century experimental and contemporary classical practice.
History
Prepared piano crystallized in the United States in the 1940s, most iconically through John Cage, who sought a practical way to obtain a percussion ensemble’s coloristic range using a single instrument for stage and dance works. Cage’s solution—altering a piano with specific objects—was preceded in spirit by Henry Cowell’s earlier "string piano" techniques (plucking, strumming, and muting) in the 1920s–30s. Cage formalized a method: detailed preparation charts, exact string placements, and repeatable timbral results. His cycle "Sonatas and Interludes" (1946–48) became a landmark, showing the approach’s subtlety and structural rigor.
After Cage, American experimentalists and West Coast composers (including Lou Harrison) explored prepared timbres, integrating non-Western percussive sensibilities and tuning ideas. In Europe and the Americas, the technique was absorbed into the broader avant-garde, where extended techniques on all instruments became a common language. Meanwhile, contemporary classical pianists developed performance practices—cataloging reliable preparations, standardizing materials, and refining notational conventions.
Improvisers and jazz-adjacent musicians adopted preparation as a flexible color source, bringing tactile, percussive sonorities to small ensembles and solo settings. Recording technology encouraged close-miking and amplification, revealing granular articulations and micro-resonances that were difficult to hear in large halls. Composers also began hybridizing with electronics, live processing, and alternative tunings.
Prepared piano remains vital in concert music, experimental jazz, and indie classical spheres. Composers integrate preparations alongside inside-piano techniques (fingertip dampings, harmonic nodes, bows, and eBows), and performers document setups with high-resolution photos and precise measurements for reproducibility. The technique’s influence has spread to film, installation, and cross-genre collaborations, where its distinctive palette serves both rhythmic drive and contemplative atmosphere.
