Władziu Valentino Liberace’s presentation of classical music on The Liberace Show in the 1950s can be understood through Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s theory of remediation, the practice of representing one medium in another. Through the medium of television, Liberace creates a new, more immediate conception of piano performance, exemplified by his rendition of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata. Liberace’s Tempest makes substantial cuts to Beethoven’s score, skipping most of the exposition and thus rendering Beethoven’s distortions of sonata form in the first movement moot. Liberace also adds an orchestral accompaniment, emphasizing certain sentimental passages with instruments other than the piano. Unlike other Liberace television performances, the Tempest segment foregrounds the trappings of the concert hall tradition, perhaps acknowledging Beethoven’s position in the canon. The performance is also precisely tuned for the immediacy of television, a medium consumed in the privacy of one’s home, with frequent close-ups of Liberace and his fellow musicians. This remediation of the concert hall for the immediacy of television brings to mind the fact that the piano sonata itself is a similar technology of domestic immediacy.

Works: Władziu Valentino Liberace (arranger, performer): Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2 (41-47).

Sources: Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2 (41-47).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet