The Torture of "Octaves":

The Ugly Side of Romantic Piano Music

Gioachino Rossini once claimed to be a third-rate pianist. I, for my part, rank far below even that modest standard. One of my weaknesses is the so-called “octave technique.” I have never sought to master it, nor do I carry the slightest regret. Octaves—and double octaves, which are even worse—strike me as little more than a vulgar rhetorical flourish.

Who, endowed with even a modicum of taste, could ever wish to unleash relentless bursts and machine-gun barrages of octaves on the piano, as so many nineteenth-century works demand? Fortunately, some musical genres treat octaves sparingly. For example: who has ever witnessed a jazz pianist hammering out torrents of octaves? Why not? My answer is that jazz is, after all, very serious stuff!