Piano technique has been continuing to evolve thanks to the never-ending exploration for new timbres and sound effects for several centuries. American composer George Crumb (1929), contributed broadly to this development with his innovative and imaginative perspective of music, since the second half of the 20th century when he has been being most prolific. He expanded the piano playing by creating techniques that are performed on the strings such as scraping, plugging or making a glissando with fingernails, hitting or muting with palms, using different materials to create different sounds and catching the tone’s harmonics by touching a string from a specific point. Furthermore, he combined various techniques like hitting the soundboard or metal crossbeams with knuckles, whistling or speaking with the ones mentioned above.

Modern pianistic effects have been introduced with four series of Makrokosmos by Crumb, of which were widely acknowledged by musicians and musicologists as new in terms of timbre, effect and technique. These original compositions soon became a milestone in the history of pianistics. In the context of researching new tendencies in music performances, George Crumb’s Celestial Mechanics of which is the fourth and last Makrokosmos composed in 1979, will be studied. Aim of this research is to introduce the new pianistic techniques and performance methods, orchestral and spatial timbres occurred from those techniques, and to view the changes in piano performance.