In a YouTube of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini I recently watched, they had an introduction that mention the most famous variation – the one Phil learns to play – is an inversion. That is, the Rach took the original theme, flipped it upside down around some line in the staff so low notes went high and high notes went low, and then transposed it from minor to major I think. The result sounds amazing and really nothing at all like the original. Even cooler, as I researched it further, I found an article that connected the music to the movie. Phil gets the idea to learn the piano when he hears a Mozart Sonata over a speaker somewhere, but the piece we see him learning is a theme and variations, where the theme is repeated over and over, but each time is slightly different, and the changes are punctuated by Dies irae, and old Latin hymn. The variation he focuses on, and what he plays at the ball right before he escapes the time loop, is the one that turns the theme on its head.
There’s a lot going on below the surface in that movie!
Yeah, this was mentioned in the “Things you never noticed” thread or whatever the title is. I’ve seen GD many times, and never noticed that until I read it in that thread. Now I laugh every time I see that scene.
I think the best way to understand just how long he was trapped is to consider the potential for learning to be the amazing pianist he turns into in the course of one hour a day, every day. And that’s something he doesn’t even start until he’s already been trapped for a goodly long while. :eek:
*Rita: *Believe it or not, I studied 19th-century French poetry.
*Phil: *(laughs) What a waste of time! …I mean, for someone else that would be an incredible waste of time. It’s so bold of you to choose that. It’s incredible; you must have been a very very strong person.
When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.
I think the piano lessons is one thing that gets glossed over for the sake of a funny line.
There’s no way Phil has been telling the instructor that it is his first lesson every time. At some point along the line he has to have progressed past traditional beginning lessons. I assume he can play Chopsticks and Heart and Soul after not too long. Then what does he start telling her? “I need an emergency second /third/fourth piano lesson”? “I’m an excellent amateur pianist but I need immediate advanced lessons?”
Plus at some point he’s just going to need to practice all day. He needs to learn the piece. Does “muscle memory” reside actually in the muscles, or is it just memory? Because every day he has the same spread in his fingers, the same muscles he had the day it started. Are his hands even capable of complex playing without “piano tone”?
By the end of the film, he wouldn’t need to go to the teacher, unless there isn’t a single other piano in the entire town. With saving everyone else all day, he’d have little time for extended practice.
At least it wasn’t guitar he tried to pick up. That would be unrealistic!
