Piano Fingering for Efficiency: The Long and Short of It

                                                                                                                                                                      

My student complained of difficulty with a left-hand leap. There was indeed a leap from an octave to a first-inversion triad. On examination, though, we discovered that the difficulty was not so much the leap, but rather the choice of fingering.

    Because of his smallish hand, my student opted to place the fifth finger of his left hand on F-sharp and his third finger on A, making the chord feel smaller. This in and of itself is not necessarily inefficient, though it does feel a bit cramped. In the context of a leap, though, trying to land with the longer finger (3) in between those two black

mountains can be problematic. In addition, the shorter finger (5) when played on a short key (black), pulls the hand in toward the fallboard, an extra movement. I suggested playing the chord with 4-2 instead of 5-3. This puts two longer fingers of similar lengths on one black key and one white key, a more comfortable position. The second finger on a white key will be slightly curved in order to avoid going in among the black keys.  Using 3-2-1 on the chord can feel even better in a larger hand.  These fingerings also avoid the movement in the direction of "in." (BTW This is not too large a span for his hand.)

    With this adjustment of the fingering, the leap becomes a lateral movement and not a diagonal. I feel the fifth-finger D propel me to the chord rotationally. (See discussions of rotation apropos of leaps elsewhere in these pages.)

   

Bach's English Suite in A Minor: Oh No, Three Voices

      My student brought the prelude to Bach's A 

J.S. Bach

Minor English Suite, which he played quite fluently and with excellent understanding of the style. He knows not to accept "just okay" technically, because he knows complete ease is possible. So, he asked me about measure nineteen, where the bass note is held while the tenor rambles about in the same hand. Although he could play the notes so that they sounded just fine, he felt constricted. Clever lad that he is, he asked about the rotation.

Bach A Minor English Suite, M 19 Prelude, Rotation

     Remember, forearm rotation is only an underlying tool. The concept sometimes confuses and confounds the uninitiated, especially absent an in-person demonstration. In this case, feeling the difference between single and double rotation can help to unlock the hand where it feels constricted. Admittedly, this example is a somewhat small point, but working in the rotation here can have a profound result elsewhere.
     Notice the angled arrows in the example. The angle indicates the direction from which the finger strikes the key. Since the fifth finger remains in place, the rotation can't be very exaggerated. This is fine, because we always want tiny movements for speed anyway. Where there are consecutive arrows in the same direction, the movement is called a double rotation, rotating both to and from a note. When the music changes direction with each note, the movement is called single rotation. This is what most pianists think of when forearm rotation is mentioned; it is what occurs in an Alberti bass figure or a trill. (For more on forearm rotation and other issues, see Piano Technique Demystified: Insights into Problem Solving.)
     What happens here, then, in measure nineteen, is a release of tension in the left hand, slight though it may be, by allowing the rotation its freedom. The result is an avoidance of finger isolation.

There's more to it than spinning.

      It turned out, though, that there was also a coordination issue in my student's approach. We pianists learn from day one to spin a musical line beautifully to the right. This is good. But what if we have two or more lines that crave spinning beautifully to the right. What then?
     Ah. I'm glad you asked. We have to ween ourselves from the horizontal and consider the vertical. That is, what happens at points (as in counterpoints) where the voices come together. Here, if there is a coordination issue, we have to feel the combined downs, the "verticalness" as indicate by the doubled-headed arrows in the example.

Bach A Minor English Suite, M 19 Prelude, Verticalness

          Practice stopping on each eighth and notice which two fingers are partnered. Feel the down into the keys in each hand. My teacher used to say, 
"Dear, the piano is down. We only come up in order to go down again." Say the finger numbers numbers aloud. Notice how the pairs change. I know it seems silly, but do it. It works. (For more on coordination in contrapuntal music, see Demystifying Bach at the Piano: Problem Solving in the Inventions and Sinfonias.)

A Pianist's Christmas: Myra Hess Plays Bach

     Myra Hess (1890-1965) plays her very famous arrangement of Bach's Chorale "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." Listen and watch here: Myra Hess 

Her favorite anecdote relating to "Jesu, Joy" concerned a British soldier who whistled it on a train during the war. 

    "Are you interested in Bach?," the soldier was asked by a journalist.

    "No," he answered.

    "But you are whistling a Bach composition," the newsman insisted.

    "That's no Bach," he replied indignantly. "That's Myra Hess."

    (From Marian McKenna's "Myra Hess -- A Portrait")

in 1921

I have had a life-long appreciation of Dame Myra. I first heard her name when I was a boy of ten. She was still active on the concert stage, indeed she was still playing as I approached my mid-college years. I never had the opportunity to hear her live, though my teachers often referred to her—she was a presence in the musical world.

  As an adult, I became aware of her heritage. She had been from the age of twelve a pupil in London of Tobias Matthay and it was under his supervision that she made her professional debut at the age of seventeen with Sir Thomas Beecham in the Beethoven Fourth Concerto at the Royal Albert Hall. 

    Matthay is credited with the observation that the forearm is of primary importance in efficient piano technique. Watch her hands on the keys. One can't always see what's going on underneath the technique, but in her case notice how "closed" her hands are and hear the well-focused sound she produces. Dorothy Taubman was the next to take up Matthay's ideas on forearm rotation and run with them, and it's Taubman's research that informs my own playing, teaching and writing.

Lunchtime Concert

   

     In addition to her artistry, Hess is remembered for her bravery and public service during WWII. Because of the nighttime blackouts, she organized nearly 2000 daily 
lunchtime concerts that took place during the German blitz. These took place at the national Gallery in Trafalgar Square. During bombing, the concerts moved to a smaller, safer room. The concerts served as an opportunity for emerging artists to perform alongside established artists, including Hess, who took no fees for herself. Nearly one million people attended these events during the six-and-a-half years of the war. She personally appeared in 150 performances.

    Her students, the Contiguglia brothers, report the following in an interview: "I want to just say a few more words about turning pages for her because it was really an extraordinary experience. One experience was turning when she did the Mozart E-Flat Concerto K. 271 with the New Haven Symphony, and I remember it was a memorable performance, simply beautiful. It stirred my emotions and made it very difficult to turn, but at the end of the finale she turned to the audience, because they wouldn’t let her leave, and she said ‘you know, the slow movement of this concerto was one of the most beautiful things that Mozart ever wrote, I would like to repeat it’, and so she went and played the slow movement again with the orchestra, and then she turned to me and said ‘that time it worked’.

    "She was so human and she seemed to value the  impression that her page-turner had from her concert. Of course, I was so moved that I wondered whether I was ever going to be able to turn pages, but I managed. I like to think of Myra Hess as being a sort of platonic ideal. You know, she represented an artistry that all the rest of us aspired to. Of course we never can achieve what she was, but it is an ideal, a platonic ideal, for me; this is the way perfection is.

Official Portrait, National Gallery

     "I remember that the last Carnegie Hall recital that we heard her perform, she did the last three Beethoven sonatas; Opus 109, Opus 110 – one sonata was just more magisterial than the next. When she finished Opus 111, there was total silence in that sold-out house, not one single clap, nobody said anything and nobody made a sound, and finally after an inordinately long time the entire audience rose to its feet, still silently, and then burst out into tumultuous applause. And that’s the effect a Myra Hess recital had, at least on an American audience."

If you have time, here's a live radio broadcast from 1946:

Dame Myra Hess & Arturo Toscanini: Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3 (pitch-corrected)

If you have still more time:

Brahms 2nd Concerto, live, Carnegie Hall, 1952, with Bruno Walter 

If you would like to hear more, select the "Listen" tab above and scroll down to the Brahms D Minor Concerto with Dimitri Metropolis.

Piano Pedagogy: What's Up With Method Books?

   

    Some months ago, a pedagogy student asked if I could name three method books. Well, it's been decades since I taught piano pedagogy, but I pointed out that to the best of my knowledge there is really no such thing as a methodbook. These days they tend to be in series and include tangential materials such as theory, contest pieces and general repertoire.                    

        

All of this I related while racking my brain for some titles. The most recent I knew of at that time was by a professor at the University of Utah written by Reid Nibley, a competent pianist but inept teacher. I know this from personal experience. Another title that popped into my mind was by Leila Fletcher. And if you know that name, you probably should be retired by now, though I see some of her volumes are available as relics. Her approach relied heavily on middle C and was criticized for that. Naturally, that was the one I chose to use when I took the required pedagogy course as an undergraduate—this 

despite the teacher's disdain. (I was a minor rebel at that time.) Then, there was the method assigned to me when I began my own piano studies. It was called "The Adult at the Piano," by Bernice Frost, published in 1949.  (I know.) Naturally, as a ten-year-old I was flattered by the title. 

    Ms Frost was a well-know writer and pedagogue from New York who had come to Los Angeles to teach a summer class at USC. The class was designed to demonstrate to university piano majors methods of teaching piano in groups. It was in my view at the time—and in hindsight—enormously effective. I thrived. Even my older brother relished the easy diminished seventh chords he could splash up and down the piano, that is until he discovered football. And of course, my mother was thrilled because the class was free.

The Adult at the Piano by Bernice Frost, Book 1, First Piece
Screen Grab

    I was able to locate on Ebay volume one of Frost's method. It is being offered for sale at $39, an antique to be sure. (For the new copy, I probably paid $.75 at most.) It is missing its pale green cover (I remember!), but the still-familiar font drew me instantly back to that WWII barracks on the USC campus where we dozen or so students began our piano study. We sat two to an upright and I, for one, reveled in the roar we could create.

    Notice that the method begins already with one sharp. The grand staff with its mysterious clefs challenged us right from the beginning. Introduced without fanfare are slurs, a single left-hand note in each phrase and even pedal. There are half and whole-note rests, a time signature and a tempo indication. And notice, too, the absence of stories, cute pictures or bold colors. Of course, we adults required no such handicaps.

  Today, there are many imaginative methods for younger beginners, who are of course attracted to cuteness and bold colors. The list is endless: Alfred, Bastien, Faber & Faber are very popular and probably effective. They are decorated with images that, to my eye, seem cluttered and distracting. But then I'm probably too old. (I have to find a young person to show me how to use my iPhone.) Interestingly, Suzuki, also very popular, has few or none of the distractions. (I've noticed that students who come up through the Suzuki method often possess significant skill and a strong work ethic, but often have difficulty reading music.) I like the no-nonsense approach, though, "notes and rhythms r'us." So much single-line rote playing is problematic.

       I once took a studio class in oil painting. It was supposed to be for beginners, but more experienced artists were also admitted. The first assignment was to paint something. Presumably then the teacher would come around and critique. What!? That's a bit like telling the beginning piano student at his first lesson to play something. I'm here to suggest, ever so gently, that we teachers focus on the how to as well as the what. It almost doesn't matter what materials the teacher chooses. It could be published books, colorful or not, or materials of the teacher's own creation. I propose, even with young children, that an introduction to how the body works at the piano should be included, no matter how minimal, along with the score. (This was not possible in a group setting.) Children, of course, usually respond better with gesture than they do with cascades of words. This approach will direct the teacher to each student's particular technical needs right from the beginning. The technique will be attached to the notes and the music. Naming method books is really not all that important.

    But I have another reason to look back fondly to my piano beginnings. I learned to see what's on the

page, to read. There was nothing but the music to attract my attention. This may be something to consider when choosing a method book. Sometimes I'm asked how I learned to sight-read tolerably well. By sight-read I refer to the ability to make music at first sight, accurately and in tempo including whatever is on the page. There is not really a definitive answer, of course. I can speculate, though, that having such a start contributed. It is likely, too, that I am among those who are oriented visually, and during my developmental years I was called upon to produce results in the moment, working with other musicians in church and in school.

    I encourage us all to consider the needs of the student. Does she respond best to cartooned pages or is he an adult at the piano? Should we turn to the shelf to grab what is easy, or do we devise our own materials? Are we astute enough to spot potential physical problems and should we intervene gently by touch, or is it best to let it ride for awhile? Teaching is a joyous challenge at all levels, and if we resist the urge to take the easy way out by making arbitrary choices of method, it can even be more rewarding.

    For more reading, have a look here:

Piano Technique Demystified

The "Valkyrie"of the Piano"

 

    A show of hands, please. Who can name the great virtuoso pianist, singer, conductor and composer from Venezuela, born in 1853, who enjoyed an international career and hobnobbed with the likes of Rossini, Gounod and Liszt, among many others? Who also played at the White House for Abraham Lincoln? Who performed under conductors Gustav Mahler, Hans von Bülow and Edvard Grieg? Who counted among her (oops) four husbands Eugen d'Albert?

    When I think of great female pianists who conquered the largely male world of concert pianists, I usually think of Clara Schumann, who was indeed the first, but not the only. Teresa Carreño was a truly remarkable woman. I highly recommend taking a look at this video presented by KUSC: Open Ears

    There exists a Welte Mignon piano roll from 1905, which purports to be an accurate representation of her playing Chopin's first Ballade. You can listen to it here: G Minor Ballade. The brilliant passages seem artificially fast to me. You be the judge.

Playing Softly on the Piano: Does Banging Out the Notes Help?

 

    A pianist writes:  "My piano has a heavy action  and tone production is a challenge - either too loud

  Hans von Bülow

 or no sound. I found this comment from Hans von Bülow (writing on Chopin's etude Op. 25 No. 2): 'That an ideal pianissimo, an accentless equality, can only be the result of loud and strongly accentuated practice, needs no explanation.' I find this works like magic - I don't even have to do it for very long. My question is: Is there any other solution to this problem?"

     

    My answer:  Yes, there is another solution. Let me say first, though, that if you've found something that works, I don't want to be the one who takes that away from you. However, what you describe sounds as if you are practicing X in order to achieve Y. This is the long way around the barn. 

     Hans von Bülow was a very distinguished pianist and conductor of the nineteenth century. A student of Franz Liszt, he was the first to perform Liszt's B Minor sonata. I find myself wondering how Mr. von Bülow came to the conclusion he reached. He was a child prodigy and likely had many natural gifts, perhaps only later attempting to figure out what it was he did. My correspondent finds that over-playing works for him. This leads me to think that it is more the working-in, the learning of the notes that is involved here. Playing with extra weight does not teach the playing apparatus what it feels like to play with the correct weight.

    When pianists have trouble controlling dynamics at the lower end, it is usually because they resort to fingers only, cutting off the forearm, which is the limb that controls downward weight.  Arm weight, by the way, is the result of a forearm rotation into the key; it is not an up and down movement. (For a demonstration of forearm rotation, see under the iDemos tab.) Even in soft playing, we still have to depress the key to just beyond the point of sound, where the finger is at rest. (I can hear my teacher now, "Dear, the piano is down.") The softer dynamic is controlled by applying less forearm weight, not by withholding it, resorting to fingers only. This is like walking on eggshells. Again, we don't change the way we depress the key when changing the dynamic.

    The action of a piano should not feel "heavy." Legend has it that when choosing a concert piano, Martha Argerich blows on the keys to test its response. If your piano is not well-regulated, your attempts to control lower dynamic levels may be thwarted because each key has a different point of sound.