This book is the fruit of a lifetime of ex-
perience as a teacher and it has grown out
of the advice which Mr. Merrick has been
in the habit of giving to his pupils. Al-
though no text-book can ever be a sub-
stitute for the presence of an inspiring
teacher, this particular book is distinc-
tively personal. Those who have learned
from Frank Merrick will almost hear his
voice beside them. And as far as advice
handed down orally from teacher to pupil
goes, the advice is of excellent pedigree.
For Leschetizky, Merrick's master, learnt
from Czerny, who in turn learnt from
Beethoven.
Some Press opinions of this book
"A really personal and valuable contri-
bution to the art of piano playing. No
person studying to be a concert pianist or
well-equipped teacher can afford not to
read and ponder over it, nor ignore its
advice., which stems from an alert and
well-furnished mind." Royal College of
'
A. work which e:;i r i ues profound under-
fianciirg of a traitless art.'* MonthlyMu$ :id Record
"Uith such a book as (this) to inspire us.
mechanical dradger/ :an almost be eli-
minated, and practice made as interesting
ind entertaining as a game." HAROLD
RUTLAND, Musical Times
"Written wi:h clarity and h-;n:aiv"
Ti'ims Lhsrary Supplement
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Published in t * J.&.a.
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.180 Varick Street
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1148005984182
786.3 M56pKerrick
Practising the piano
67-11865
PRACTISING THE PIANO
PRACTISINGTHE PIANO
FRANK MERRICKF.R.C.M.
LONDONBARRIE AND ROCKLIFF
FRANK 3MERRICK 1958
First published by RocklifF Publishing Corporation 1 958Revised edition published 1960
by Barrie and RocklifF (Barrie Books Ltd.)2 Clement's Inn, Strand, London WGa
3rd Impression 1965
Printed in Great Britain byFletcher <2f Son Ltd, Norwich
1O577/65
TO ALL MY PUPILS
PAST AND PRESENT
FROM WHOM I MAY WELL HAVE LEARNT
MORE THAN THEY CAN HAVE LEARNT
FROM ME
KANSAS CiTY P.) PUBLIC LIBRARY
Contents
Author's Preface ix
1 Delayed Continuity ..... i
2 Singing and Conducting .... 7
3 Chords : I Some Useful Progressions . . 10
II Ways of Practising the Chords 14
4 Pedalling: I Preparatory Exercises . . 17
II General . . . .21
5 Finger Passages . . . . 27
6 On Playing Works as a Whole . . 3 1
7 Double Thirds 35
8 Practising on the Surface of the Keys . . 43
9 The Postman's Knock .... 45
10 Practising in Solid Chords .... 47
11 Octaves 5 1
12 Simplified Versions of Difficult Passages . 55
13 Practising with One Finger ... 60
14 Fugal Study . . . . . '6315 Looseness at the Shoulder . . .681 6 Gradations of Time 72
17 Preparing of Hand Positions ... 76
1 8 Beauty of Tone 80
Practising the Piano
19 Trills and Rotary Movements of the Forearm 83
20 Sight-Reading . . . . .8821 Miscellaneous . . . . .9222 Bodily Stillness ..... 96
23 Athletic Form . . . . .9824 Dramatic Significance . . . .102
25 Memory ...... 105
26 Conclusion . . . . . .109Index . . . . . . .113
vin
Author's Preface
WHEN I started teaching in an official capacity, which wasat the Royal Manchester College of Music in 1911, I wassomewhat haunted by an idea that a teacher should try to
tell each pupil different things, since no two people are alike
and there seemed a danger of handing out to one and all an
undesirably rigid succession of statements too like the set
speeches of some cathedral vergers. As the years rolled on,
however, an increasing number of precepts seemed neces-
sary for nearly all the pupils depending on my help, and whathad to be offered to this majority has largely been incorpor-ated here.
It may have been in the 'twenties that an acute observer
said to me : "You know, there is such a lot of ritual in your
practising 1" The remark startled me, but led to a great deal
of meditation on the point and an ever-growing sense that
the assertion was true. Whether, then, the ritual could be
called a series of processes which difficult pieces or passages
may undergo, or whether these varied devices were lumpedtogether in ironical disparagement by alluding to them as a
bag of tricks, my advocacy of them became increasinglyconvinced. So as much ritual or as many processes as could
be intelligibly recommended were embodied in the appro-
priate chapters of this book.
The order of the chapters may appear obscure in purpose.One method of pianoforte study may be for you to build uptechnical efficiency for a number of years and then consider
yourself ready to superimpose the graces of interpretation ;
at the other extreme you can develop your knowledge of
interpretation and musicianship during those first years and
IX
Practising the Piano
then, realising what is wanted, start acquiring the -necessary
technique to get it. In order to avoid either of these extremes,the chapters are arranged so as to alternate as far as is con-
venient between the needs of musical enlightenment and
purely technical considerations.
Delayed Continuity
LESCHETIZKY said in one of the last lessons I had with
him : "I advise you very often to stop and listen when youare practising and then you will find out a great deal for
yourself." I have never ceased to follow this advice received
over fifty years ago. The term "stopping practice" arose
when it came to imparting the idea to others, but "delayed
continuity" seems to add an explanatory note.
Some music is very easy to play phrase1by phrase with
pauses in between (Ex. i) :
ExJ. Schubert: Moment musical, op.94,no.6
,
******* ^ m P^Tl ^ ^ n ig _ fa fa^Tr TE r I rHr * r
|
r ir ? jjJ
if r Ir T IT' EP*EIf the pauses are so long that each phrase is mentally or
actually sung a tempo (not flashed through in a second)before it is played, the player will benefit by this forethoughtand often excel previous efforts on the spot. If each phrase is
also followed by a further pause for reflection and self-
criticism the successful playings can be noted as worthy of
retention and the unsuccessful as models of what to avoid.
The threefold ritual can be abbreviated into three verbs,
"plan, play, judge", and is one-fifth of the way to a favourite
saying of Leschetizky : "Think ten times and play once." If
the general underlying idea is persistently followed day by
day, month by month and year by year, the effectual use of
1Perhaps "phrase" should often be "melodic unit" in this chapter, but it seems per-
missible in the interests of simplicity to adhere to the one word.
Practising the Piano
one's Interpretative will-power will constantly grow and
result in increasingly exacting ideals coupled with more
confidence and security in carrying them out.
Remember that the pause must always be at least as longas the phrase to come. The following shows the minimum
lenth of pauses for Ex. i (Ex, 2) :
Ex.2.ThlBk PUy
Think Play Thmk&Play
mThis leaves no extra time for criticising your efforts and if
the thinking is a really expressive mental rehearsal of what
is to come (rather than an apathetic conning over of the mere
notes) it will be preferable to add a breathing space to the
minimum pause. When time is also taken for self-criticism,
all sorts of practical questions like "Did the fingering, pedal-
ling, etc., all conduce to give me a recognisable copy of that
mental rehearsal ?" can be seriously faced.
Sometimes the desire to try the phrase over again is
irresistible, but think it through again first. Do not play
twice on one mental rehearsal if you can withstand the
violent temptation to do so which comes from an over-eager
spirit* In this emulate not a hockey player but a golfer. Whenthe latter misses the ball he repeats a very solemn and
impressive ceremony known as "addressing the ball" before
carrying out a second attempt.What about pauses that have no rests between them?
Well, to use the ritual in such places is an art that must be
acquired (Ex. 30 and b} :
Ex. 3a.Chopm : Study, op. 10, no.3Lento m* non tropfo
Delayed Continuity
This art involves thinking back (judging) and forward (plan-
ing) while sounds are being held on. That, however, will
prove less difficult than might have been supposed, and whenthere is no reason for such a long pause that the sounds die
away completely it is an advantage that the new phrase to
be played is legato from the former phrase with its pause,
delayed continuity thus becoming an acoustical fact. Indeed,when the sound has completely died away, it is often worth
while to repeat the pause notes and let the new phrase flow
out from them instead of beginning from silence.
Reviewing what has been proposed, it is seen that this
method of work gives each phrase the force of a separate
quotation. Now whereas a phrase that does not end staccato
sounds as if it had stopped by accident when the time values
of the notes are literally observed (Ex. 4) :
Ex.4. Mendelssohn: Song without words, op.!9,no.l^ Andante conmot(L_
r r
when the last notes are held (Ex. 5) :
Ex.5,
the pause sounds intentional, as though one wishes the list-
ener to ponder on the special beauty of that separate phrase.In stopping-practice, therefore, end with a staccato whenthe phrase does so anyhow (Ex. 6) :
Ex. 6. Beethoven : Sonata, op.27, no.2
Allegretto
and with a rest where there is one (Ex. i), but otherwise with
the sounds prolonged as in Ex. 3 and Ex, $. Sometimes a
Practising the Piano
phrase ends staccato in one voice and tenuto in another
(Ex.7):Ex.7. Beethoven: Sonata, op. 27, no.2
and in such cases the tenuto can be held right through the
pause (if it does not die away too soon) so that the new phrase
joins on in due course to the old in one or more voices.
We enjoy in all this the combined advantages of continuityand interruption at the same time, and although objectors
may claim that you cannot eat your cake and have it, there
are occasions on which this miracle does seem to take place.
In some pieces stopping-places are not too easy to find.
Ask yourself whether the following pauses are rightly
placed (Ex. 8) :
Ex. 8. Bach: French Suite in G,Allemande
In such a piece as this a good stopping moment in one voice
may be bad in another. But provisional experimental stopslead to a lot of clarity of mind about the phrasing some are
so unacceptable that one would never repeat them, others so
inevitably satisfying that it is difficult even to try an alterna-
tive afterwards. When there seem to be several plausible
alternatives, try to hold them in your memory for possiblefuture use. It can be delightful to change the phrasing when
passages have to be repeated and to play differently on
Delayed Continuity
different days, though it is unconvincing not to mean the
phrasing one way or the other at the actual moment of any
given performance,The more clearly the method of stopping-practice is
grasped, the easier will it be to use it for purely technical as
well as interpretative purposes. When we do so, the pausesenable us to rehearse the execution of what is coming in our
imagination, A striking expression for this, even if it does
not find universal favour on our side of the Atlantic, is
"mentalising our technique". When we dream it all seems
to be reality, and this vividness should be sought when we
practise in our minds. It is strictly true that we can physi-
cally perform any piece of technical execution which we can
really imagine at the correct pace, for anything we cannot
perform will have lacked either vividness or the necessary
pace or some other feature in the mental rehearsal, and if
we can find where the discrepancy lies our task may be
greatly simplified.
Technical stopping-practice should often be split up into
shorter fragments than phrases. Here we have pauses at
regular intervals (Ex. 9) :
Ex, 9. Brahms : Variations on a theme of Handel, op.24
and here at irregular (Ex. 10) :
Ex.10. Brahms : Variations on a theme of Handel, op.24
In order to achieve delayed continuity in the physicalexecution of these examples we can pause with our fingers
Practising the Piano
touching the keys they havejust released or the keys they will
next be required to depress. To move to the latter will be a
first step in the welding together of those links in the chain
that are now being separately forged or tested. When the
pauses are long and profitably given up to effective planningand the tempo very quick in the actual playing, we combine
the muscular development and high spirits of speed with the
safety and confidence of slow practice in a way that tends to
eliminate a great deal of profitless drudgery. Some slow prac-tice is unavoidable, but it should be often supplemented and
sometimes superseded by this "look before you leap" kind
of quick practice.
Singing and Conducting
I N the previous chapter the ritual of "plan, play, judge"was advocated. "Plan" primarily meant "think" or "sing in
your head before-hand". An essential object of this is to
form and strengthen the habit of always singing in yourhead while you are playing. Leschetizky, who loved pithy
over-statements, said : "If you can tell when someone is play-
ing that he is singing the music in his mind as he plays it,
it is a good performance, and if you cannot, it is a bad per-formance." This would hardly be an over-statement if
interpretative insight were presupposed.To sing out loud fervently and often is therefore to be
preached from the house-tops, even if one's vocal efforts are
raucous and out of tune. The singing should sometimes bewhen you are playing but oftener when you are not playing.
Singing while you play will help you to infuse more fervour
into the expression as when an eager young pupil once
asked me what she could do with her piece to "warmen it
up". But this pro has two cons. One is that your voice
drowns some of the actual tonal effects so that the result is
partly conjectural. The other is that you may incur the habit
of audibly singing when you are playing to others. I have
known several cases where this habit seemed incurable. Withmost pros and cons, however, to recognise what they are is
an important forward step in helping us to achieve the prosand evade the cons.
Practising the Piano
As regards singing before you play, it is of enormous
influence in teaching you how your melodies should be
declaimed (a word of which Beethoven was fond in this con-
text), and of further influence in focusing your will-power to
carry out what your voice has just taught you. Your voice
not only helps you to decide which notes should be loud and
soft but how loud and soft, and because this enlightenmentis from within it will be natural and sincere. Whenever youare puzzled about melodic tone gradation, let singing be
your final court of appeal. Even if you are puzzled about
the length of sounds, apply the same test. In Bach we are
often faced with the problem of which notes to join and
which to detach. Take this subject (Ex. i la and F) :
Ex .Ha. Bach: Concerto in D minor
The slurs and dots in Ex. na and b only give us two out
of many possible alternatives. You could argue at great
length and still feel uncertain, but every time you sing the
tune you will get nearer to a solution of the problem that
will bring conviction to your mind, including the tricky
question of how short any detached notes should be.
Closely allied to singing is the conducting of imagined
performance. It is slower to wax to maturity, but the morewe sing and the more reality there is in our musical thinking,the more relevance and potency will our conducting gain. It
can be applied to single phrases, or lengthened at will to
entire movements (or even works) and it can alternate with
playing like "singing before you play". If you conduct a
phrase it is easier than ever to know where and how the
climax lies and to apportion the intensity of the various
stresses.
A few hints about conducting (self-evident to the ex-
perienced) are generally needed by the inexperienced for
8
Singing and Conducting
guidance and encouragement. Firstly we should feel that the
orthodox beats themselves are of real significance and
potency. If an up-beat is seen to be like the diver's hands
rising high above his head and a down-beat like a dive itself,
the value of the two gestures will be very clear. If, in four
time, instead of "down, out, in, up", we rightly say "down,
in, out, up" (especially when beating with both arms) it will
quickly be realised that "in" was less ample and emphaticthan the more rapturous "out" for the stronger third beat.
We can learn the aptness of beating pp in inches and ff in
feet, and crescendos with increase of distance and diminu-
endos with decrease. A further step forward is taken whenour fingers participate in the gestures, we can smite the air
with clenched fists to express grim determination, or stroke
it with an extended palm to denote tenderness or persuasion,or prick it with a pointed forefinger to suggest crisp, delicate
staccato, to name a few characteristic possibilities. As our
conducting becomes more spontaneous and significant weshall find it of ever-increasing value as a supplement to the
singing.A notable benefit from conducting just before we play
short stretches is that the actions of doing so strengthen and
focus our will-power in a stimulating way while also keepingour upper arms loose at the shoulder (see chapter 15) and
getting our hands and fingers into a more or less ideal state
of poised readiness.
Chords
I SOME USEFUL PROGRESSIONS
CHORD playing is an extremely important aspect of
pianism and benefits one in a number of directions, some
unsuspected and others obvious. One of the latter is a know-
ledge of the geography of the keyboard. The much-vaunted
major and minor scales in single notes are not more than a
modest introduction to the required intimacy and com-
plexity of that knowledge. A few harmonic progressions
follow with which early familiarity should be gained. First
the major scale in inverted triads, otherwise known as
I chords (Ex, 12);
fnrn i
The progression is more flowing than root-position triads
(| chords) or second inversions (| chords). The rhythmchosen has more melodic shape than if all the notes were of
equal length. Learn to play these chords in all the twelve
major keys. If some of them cause difficulty write out the
chords (the ascent only will do) on music manuscript paper,in every key, preferably in the order chosen by Bach for "The
Forty-eight" : C, QJ, [ty], D5 E|>, E, F, Fft [Gfr], G, A|>,
A, B[;, B, [Qj], using the proper key signature for each,
whereby there will be no accidentals. The three keys with
an enharmonic alternative in brackets should be written out
10
Chords: Some Useful Progressions
in both spellings. When properly written out, any scale that
was found difficult should be practised with the music. Later,when playing by heart again, ascertain whether you can at
the same time imagine the notation on paper, including both
spellings of the scales that have an alternative. Students can
often play these three scales when imagining the one spell-
ing but not when imagining the other, which is to be in anundesirable state of insecurity.A similar progression in the minor, to be played in all the
keys is this (Ex. 13) ;
Ex.13.
rhPYYiffi
I
It will be found more grateful to the ear than consistent
adherence to the harmonic or melodic form.
Next let us have some rather more massive chords, againto be played in all the keys (Ex. 14) :
Ei.14.
f*
N*
*The penultimate chord in the minor key will be equallygram-matical and satisfying with a raised or flattened leading note.
Then a chord pattern with constant key change produced
by semitone shifts which should be continued until we getback to C major (Ex. 15) :
II
Practising the Piano
Then the same with inversions following each other zig-
zag-wise, continued to the bottom of the piano (Ex. 1 6) :
Ex.10.
This series of dominant sevenths is too disturbing for
frequent use. One is hurled from key to key (Ex. 1 7) :
EX.IZ
These modulations, on the contrary (Ex. 1 8) :
Ex.18.
usher you politely from one key into the next one. It will be
seen that at the first move the top two voices descend a
semitone while at the next move it is the lower two voices that
descend. It is like a small child coming downstairs. This
notation (Ex. 19):Ex.19.
'in
implies the moment of key change and what the new key is,
and you should realise that the modulatory chord is the first
inversion of the added sixth in the new key.The regular addition of a fifth note to each chord (Ex.
20):Ex.20.
^ n
contributes to the value of the progression for practising
purposes, and anyone whose stretch is not equal to all the
demands would do better to spread the notes rather than
leave some of them out. But unless the addition had been
printed as a small notewe might have needed the explanatory
Chords: Some Useful Progressions
rigmarole: "For the second chord the top-note-and-the-bottom-two stay where they are while the top-two-but-onemove down a semitone, and for the third chord the top-note-and-the-bottom-two move down a semitone while the top-two-but-one stay where they are" 1 When the modulations
continue to descend from the first chord until we reach the
same notes an octave lower, twenty-five chords will have
been played. If inversions are added in contrary motion,thus (Ex. 21) :
Ex
mall one's ten fingers are obliged to think what they are doingat every one of nearly 180 moves before the lowest note on
the piano is reached.
Chords in whole tones have much to recommend them
(Ex. 22) :
Ex.22.
Itj*f
if ty
similesempresimile
m
One way to find each new chord in this series is first to decide
what one of its notes should be (say, the bottom one) in
each hand, and then feel for the whole-tone-scale notes that
are adjacent to that. This engraves the finger-spacing of each
chord on your memory and is clearly related to the harmonic
effect that is coming. Another equally good and desirable
way is to make the fingers do their semitone shifts one at a
time till all five are in place, say in the order i, 2, 3, 4, 5or 5, 4, 3, 2, i. This makes you specially aware of the wayin which individual voices move to the adjacent note, thus
appealing to your contrapuntal sense*
To play the various chord progressions correctly, makingeach chord full and harmonious, is undoubtedly worth while
13
Practising the Piano
in itself, whatever touch mechanism is employed, but moredetailed advice follows.
II WAYS OF PRACTISING THE CHORDS
WITH muscular development in view let us start with Ex*
2 1 and play each chord staccatissimo, ensuring the speedthereof by immediately clenching our fists as tightly as
possible. Do not play from a distance but touch all the notes
of the chord consciously before they are pressed down. If
this rhythm is adopted (Ex. 23) :
Ex.23. i
it may take an eighth of a bar to unclench and find the next
chord, whereby the clench could occupy more than three-
quarters of each ban That will be strengthening in itself and
productive of the right sort of relaxation at the moment of
unclenching. Another rhythm to adopt is this (Ex. 24) :
E..M. .
in which one difficulty is to achieve a really tight gripbetween each chord. The better you succeed, the more
tiring is the performance, and you may begin to wonder if
your fingers are going to drop off. But although we are often
warned to discontinue playing when physical discomfort is
experienced, this particular discomfort is evidence of efficient
muscular exertion rather than a danger signal and can be
continued till the chords become too weak for you to take
any pride in them. A few bouts of this special practisingtend to produce more progress in sheer muscular fitness
than long spells of drudgerywith scales, etc., and the principal
danger is perhaps unsuspected the joy of playing for the
pleasure of mere muscular sensation instead of being prim-
arily concerned with the significance of the music or, in
Chords: Ways of Practising the Chords
passages like these, the harmonic fullness and rhythmicaldecisiveness of the chords.
This danger can be considerably lessened if we vary the
progressions with a series of tone schemes as follows : i. ff ;
*#>; 3-#x/; 4- ff>~pp\ 5- #></>?; 6./>-^-<jf* The main value of the first two is to set the
extremes of loud and soft as far apart as possible. Then the
crescendos and diminuendos which follow will be on a largerscale. When we are practising, a big crescendo rather un-
evenly gradated is more stimulating than an exquisitely con-
trolled one on a smaller scale. The latter will encourageself-satisfaction without pointing the way further. Theformer encourages boldness and generous warmth, and youare not at all likely to be satisfied with the uneven gradationsbut will say : "Yes, like that but better controlled." This is
one of the few instances where quantity may be preferred to
quality.
Perhaps a digression will be pardoned at this point. If the
above six tone schemes are used in practising the repeatedhalves of pieces in binary form (like most of the movementsin eighteenth-century suites) they can be followed by a
seventh the gradations that are demanded by the music. If
a wide selection of alternatives suit it equally well, all the
better, for in actual performance the repeats gain charm andlife by varied expression the second time. Pondering on this
added use of the tone schemes may well act as an encourage-ment to practise them oftener. If you compare the sevenfold
ritual with unvaried repetitions of the same music you will
find that the latter soon get you into a sort of coma not
free from the danger of making mistakes, whereas the
varied treatment compels mental attention and develops the
habit of control by constructive and purposeful thoughtinstead of the cessation of thought and reliance on automatic
habit.
In due course, substitute for the clench a gathering
together of the fingertips as though you were trying to
squash a ripe grape with them. This movement includes that
15
Practising the Piano
of ideal finger action with some extra drawing-in of finger-
tips (the first clench has still more of the latter) so it
physically benefits one's finger work as well as one's chord-
playing. Both it and the clench should resemble the snapof a strong steel spring, the clench making for robust
strength and the gathering of the fingertips for swift
sprightliness and greater delicacy.
A third movement, already alluded to in chapter i, in
which we should emulate the speed of the first two, is to
dart the fingers of both hands on to the notes that are next
due. This movement brings us a big step nearer the needs
of actual passage-playing and will be discussed further in
the chapter on the preparing of hand positions.
Often use the pedal with staccato chords, especially as in
No. 5 of Ex. 28 in the next chapter. They will ring out
inspiringly when the sound is thus prolonged,To follow up the processes recommended look out for
passages with plenty of full chords in them, like the fourth
variation in Schumann's Etudes Symphoniques. In that par-ticular variation do your clench, or whatever it is, on the
chords only, with the semiquaver octaves immediately before
them as quickly as you can, however slow the pace of the
practising may be.
16
Pedalling
I PREPARATORY EXERCISES
THE first part of this chapter might well be skipped bythose readers whose pedalling has a reasonably solid founda-
tion. It is offered here for those who have never faced the
problems of pedalling at all or have got into difficulties with
them. Simple chord progressions are better for the exercises
than series of single notes, and provide a pleasant degreeof harmonious fullness, so let us take that of Ex. 12,
adding the left hand an octave lower and using the same
fingers for every chord and changing from one key to
another at frequent intervals. Beginning with legato pedal-
ling, the normal thing is to change the pedal when the har-
mony changes, so we shall be changing with every chord.
To change the pedal means to let it up and press it down
again, and in order to produce pedalled legato the up move-ment should be at the exact instant at which the new chord
speaks, for which sound-point is a self-explanatory term.
Remember that a hair's breadth of silence between the
BarS
^ Adagio (J = 50) jE.. "^
^PTNO1 P * P 3fc P 3fcP&
Legato 4rvrwrr ^ r w
W^BIVV j p ^ p & P 4i P <&>Mdallin*! ^^ ^^ ^^
^^^8 P* P* P * P*chords can be undesirably conspicuous. In our first three
exercises the up moments are always exactly at sound-point
Practising the Piano
while the down moments are varied. The objects of this are
conscious control and musical expression (Ex. 25).
As regards conscious control, the student sees in black
and white what is required of him and can therefore judgewhether it is being accomplished. When a mistake is made,the best course is to proceed calmly without rhythmical in-
terruption as though there had been no mistake and to do
the next bar correctly. If several bars go wrong it provesthat our intentions cannot have been clear enough. Adagio
J^50 g*ves us beats kke the steps of a dignified proces-
sion;a quicker pace is not nearly so useful, patient control
in delaying to press down the foot and plenty of time to
listen to results being all-important,
As regards musical expression, when the pedal is presseddown all the dampers are lifted off all their strings and the
consequent sympathetic vibration (audible with a single
note but much more so with our six-note chords) imparts a
glow to the tone, a sort of crescendo ofundeniable expressive
value. For this crescendo to take place at one beat of the bar
is very different from the same crescendo at another beat
(Ex, 260, b and c) :
Ei.26a. Ex.26b. x.26c.
all the more so because in (a\ and still more in(<:),
the chord
will have become weaker at the pedalled beat than it would
have been on the second beat as in (F). Consequently, whereas
the character of (^) is the most ardent and eager of the three
alternatives, that of (c) is the most tranquil. Even greater
tranquillity would be produced by this pedalling (Ex, 27) :
Ex.27.
though the mention of half-beats at this point may be rather
premature. In any case these differences of character should
18
Pedalling; Preparatory Exercises
be felt by the sole of our foot in the same way that our
fingers, in pressing lightly or the reverse in order to get
pianos and fortes, link up our physical sensations with the
emotional requirements of the music. People are often des-
cribed as musical to their fingertips, but the sole of the
pianist's right foot rarely receives the verbal recognition to
which it is entitled.
Let it be emphasised now, in preference to later on, that
the heel must never leave the ground and the foot mustnever lose physical contact with the pedaL If, as the pedalis released, the foot is lifted, even an inch, the kick whenone's shoe returns to the pedal will often be heard. It is even
worth while to find out whether the dampers on the instru-
ment you are playing effectually silence the strings before
the pedal is right up, for letting it up often produces a dull
thud which is quite audible in the concert room, and to
eliminate this noise in pp passages is worth some trouble. Tohold the pedal a quarter of an inch from the full up positionat the cost of complete efficiency by the dampers, however,would naturally be carrying our zeal for silent mechanism (if
not the movement of our foot) a quarter of an inch too far.
In the next three exerciseswe are leaving the field of legatofor that of intermittent pedalling. The same element of con-
scious control by planned variety of treatment is again to be
found, but this time it is the ascent of the pedal that varies.
(Ex.28):Ex.28.
i * * * li * * *I
*
The musical difference between these is in the duration
of the sound. It will be seen that the pedal lengthens the
short staccato chord (which might last about a semiquaverwithout the pedal) into a minim in No. 4, a dotted minim
in No. 5, and a complete instead of a shortened crotchet in
No. 6. In No. 6 the effect is sound for one-quarter and
19
Practising the Piano
silence for three-quarters of the time. Steady pulsation
during total silence or when nothing new is happening is
far from inborn with most of us, so these exercises will be
good training in that direction, quite apart from their
special purpose. If you ensure a swift staccato by clenching
your fists in playing each chord and then beat out the rests
with your hands (plain down beats), it will probably have
more rhythmical life than if you counted the beats out loud
or mentally, partly because of the prosaic associations of the
syllables. And at some point it will act as a sort of bridgebetween the mere drill element of these exercises and real
pedalling to use the six tone schemes in chapter 3, part II,
with the pedal exercises.
Although the main purpose of the exercises is achieved
by the very slow practice recommended, No. i (and No. I
only) should eventually be practised more quickly. Perhaps
"eventually" might be interpreted as "when all six exercises
can be played with ease and security in one's sleep". Even
those new to pedal exercises may hope to reach that pointafter spending some ten or fifteen minutes a day upon them
for a matter of weeks. After that it may not ever be necessaryto practise them again, though an occasional return to them
might add to your confidence or prevent your pedallingstandards from deteriorating.
A good way to speed up No. i is by altering the notation.
If> as it stands, we can call it playing in semibreves and
pedalling in minims, then playing in minims and pedallingin crotchets (Ex. 290) would be twice as quick, playing in
crotchets and pedalling in quavers (Ex. 29^) four times as
quick, and playing in quavers and pedalling in semiquavers
(Ex. 29*:) eight times as quick :
However nimble the footwork, the dampers will not respond
adequately if you attempt much quicker changing than this.
20
Pedalling: General
Those lovely modulations in Chopin's B major Nocturne,
op. 62, no. i (Ex. 30) :
Ex.30.
come out rather quicker and suggest the same changes, one
for each chord.
II GENERAL
EVEN before the above exercises, if worked at, are fully
mastered, few players would refrain from using the pedalwith moderate frequency, often to good effect. Hymns and
steady successions of chords will need pedalling similar to
Ex. 25, No. 2, and regular changes (effected rather more
speedily, however) suit long stretches of pieces like the
Chopin Nocturnes of which Nos. i, 9, 13, 14 and 15 cer-
tainly thrive for a good many bars with two changes a bar,
and Nos. 2 and 10 with four changes. When you come to
a place where the advice just given produces an undesirable
smudge, two changes instead of one is likely to be at least
an improvement. When fewer changes are preferable Chopin
usually signifies that that is his wish. But it is often difficult
to choose pedallings and also to decide which effects that do
not please are due to a bad choice, and which to a bad carry-
ing out of a good choice. The cause is far more often one
or other of these two than both at once, and sometimes a
change in the tone gradations will prove a better remedythan different pedalling*
Meanwhile the best way to develop both wisdom and
skill in pedalling is to play at the correct pace and stop for
really long pauses at suitable moments, -rather than playing
very slowly and listening to each pedal change at that unre-
presentative pace (Ex. 31) :
21
Practising the Piano
If all these pauses are long enough, we have a splendid
opportunity ofjudging firstly, whether the harmony we stopon is free from smudge, and secondly, by thinking back,whether the previous pedal changes sounded clean enoughas to their general effect. Many students require to be
urged to listen much more carefully than has been their
wont before they can judge the first point reliably. Until
they can do this they will not be ready for the second,
though when they can they are getting reasonably near, Afurther point about these pauses is that even the most
experienced players can learn volumes from them about
the effectiveness of their pedalling, both its choice andexecution. Leschetizky used to put it whimsically thus : "In
two seconds you can tell what the effect is for a member of
the audience in the fifth row, in four seconds the effect half-
way down the auditorium, in ten seconds the effect at the
back of the gallery." In these precise figures there mayhave been what W. W. Jacobs called "the exactitude of
untruth'', but Leschetizky always expected us to season his
utterances with the salt of common sense.
One anecdote that sank deep into some of our youngminds told how Leschetizky was talking to a guest on the
stairs. Sounds like this (Ex. 32) :
22
Pedalling: General
Ex.32. Beethoven.- Sonata op. 26.A-*M~t~ *'And
were audible, and the guest ventured to enquire: "Oh,Professor, do your children learn the piano ?" Leschetizky
replied ; "That is the great Essipoff practising."The minimum pause should never be shorter than the
stretch of playing which it follows, but you will do better
still if you have a prolonged and analytical listening to the
harmony of the pause and a real think about the earlier partof what has been played. It would be better for the pausesounds to die away completely than for the judgments to be
hasty. If the sounds do die away completely, moreover, it is
often wise to sound them again before the onward movementis resumed (see chapter i, p. 3).
If earlier beats are smudgy and the pause beats beautifully
clean, the effect will be better than of some beautifully clean
beats followed by a smudgy pause beat. Thus Ex. 33^ is
better than Ex. 33^:
An instructive example of the same kind is the tolerable
sound of this (Ex. 34) :
Practising the Piano
on the way from one clean chord to another (Ex.and the intolerable effect of the self-same blur at a stopping
point (Ex.
i*P
Momentary dissonances are remarkably harmless in the
right place. In both the cases which follow, it is misguided to
change on the swiftly resolved semiquavers (Ex. 36a and &) :
Ex. 36a. Chopin:Prelude in C minor Ex.36b. Schubert: Moment musicalA ft L i 2 I
*
The much-vaunted half-change often comes out very
badly when tested by the method of pauses, it is usually pre-ferable to preserve the whole of the bass note firmly with
some smudginess in the higher register, rather than to
remove only some of the smudge above in order to retain
some of the bass, or to lose still more if not all of the bass
in order to remove the smudge completely. Of course
whenever this problem arises the right course is to weigh
every alternative with the utmost care and patience.One device often proves far more successful than might
have been expected. The underlying idea is that when all
the voices cannot be legato the extreme voices can least afford
a break in continuity. Take as an example the beginning of
the second movement of Franck's Prelude, Aria and Finale.
If you change the pedal on the low bass E and while doingso hold the soprano D$ down with your finger, thus (Ex. 37),the legato of the extreme voices is ensured, and nevertheless
what is left of the D$ will be very faint (perhaps inaudible),
especially if you have taken care to play it pretty softly. An
irreproachably clean chord with a gap in the soprano voice
would have given a far less satisfactory effect. Some may
24
Pedalling; General
prefer the pedal lifted with the D$ crotchet, whereby the
low bass notes would no longer be legato ; the suggestionwith regard to the soprano would still hold, however.
Ex.37. Frank: Prelude, Aria and Finale
Three points in conclusion, of which the first has been
implied already. Many pianists would be horrified if theywere advised as a general principle to "change the pedal less
often and then change it splendidly*'. Nevertheless a veryclean change now and then is quite often preferable to
frequent less immaculate ones, not only tonally but because
of the onward rhythmical sweep that tends to result.
This brings us to a second point the influence of pedal-
ling on the rhythmical life of our pieces. A great deal of light
will dawn upon us if we make a series of experiments in
studying such a piece as one of the more lively waltzes of
Chopin, in order to compare a large number of alternatives
in intermittent pedalling. In these four bars the seven pedal-
lings can any one of them add to the swinging vitality of the
rhythm (Ex. 38):
Ex.38. Chopin Waltz, op. 34, No.l .
'^ J f f I I f f I ^ai1. P2. P3. P4. None5. P6. None
,7. P
PP#PP
PPP#*P
PP*P
When you are deeply versed in all this, the right choice
should often come on the spur of the moment and it is quite
likely that it will not be the right one when the same bars
recur. Truly, pedalling is a life study.
Practising the Piano
The third point may not meet with universal approval.Whereas many players think: "Where shall I add the
pedal ?" much can be learned by saying : "Where shall it be
subtracted ?" In other words, if you keep it down practically
the whole time the question would be where to leave it off.
Over-pedalling subsequently pruned down often leads in
actual fact to better results than a policy of undue caution*
Of course, neither approach exclusively will take you as far
as a judicious use of both.
26
Finger Passages
THESE quick passages in single notes are a very importantand universally recognised department of piano playing.
Certain processes are always useful in mastering them and
the problem is often which to adopt first and when to change
over to another instead of blindly hammering away with the
one. Try ringing the changes on some of these.
I . Practising hand staccato
Suppose it to be the left-hand part of Chopin's Study, op.
12, no. 12, that we wish to master. If we practise it with
the touch specified at about the pace of Jr^, considerable
precision and sequential melodic significance should be
fairly easy to ensure. Leschetizky said : "The object of slow
practice is to study the melodic elements in the passage
work", but these are too often forgotten during spells of
meaningless drudgery. It may be asked: "Why practise
passages with hand staccato when that is going to be the
wrong mechanism in the end?" The answer is that although
the fingers themselves will have to make the movements
when the semiquavers are played up to time, this early
treatment will both give them greater strength and agility
with which to do so at a later date, and engrave more firmly
on your memory the order in which the notes (and the fingers
which produce those notes) follow each other.
Now whereas the loudest hand staccato we can achieve
27
Practising the Piano
will add most to our reserves of muscular strength, it is also
likely to lead to insensitiveness of tone gradation in our
general style of playing, and therefore to do most of this
slow practice either delicately or with expressive tone grada-tions is preferable. Even famous public favourites, renownedfor their technique, who do a lot of ff slow practice, often
play their quick finger passages with a pianola-like sameness
of every syllable that can be regrettably inhuman in char-
acter. What should we think of an actress who accentuated
her syllables with equal force like this :
J I? J I J iJ 7 J J uThe qua-li -
ty of mer - cy is not strained
Let us build up our reserves of strength in other ways.
2. Group practice
That is, short groups, one at a time (Ex. 39^, b and c) :
Ex.39*.^
Ex.39b.
In (a) and (c) we recommence with each new group byrepeating the note upon which we ended the last one, andin () we swing on from that note, which has been held on.
With (*) the quavers should be staccatissimo as far as the
hand is concerned, although it is quite good to make themtemito by means of the pedal. It is strengthening to producethis staccatissimo by a rapid and tight fist-clench or an
equally rapid gathering of the fingertips into the minimum
space (see chapter 3, part II, for both movements). With (a)and () there would be three alternatives : the same gathering
28
Finger Passages
of the fingertips although the note is held on by the fingerthat played it ; putting as many fingers on the notes which
are to follow as can be reached from the one which is beingheld down ; or the apparently negative plan of leaving all the
fingers exactly where they are (horizontally speaking) whenthe dotted minim sounds. With the last two, it is better to
let all unoccupied fingers fall on the keys that are lying below
them than to hold them even a minute fraction of an inch
above the keys. Holding them in the air is almost certain to
result in a slight stiffness of the upper-arm at the shoulder
joint, the avoidance of which is fully discussed in chapter 15.This last matter leads to the next process.
3. See-sawing
See-sawing on every note, every other note and every fifth
note, as recommended in that same chapter.
4. Practising with one finger
This is surprisingly beneficial and helps you to know the
notes irrespective of the fingering by which you play them,
whereby the said fingering will come to be an extra securityinstead of the foundation upon which your safety is built.
Chapter 13 deals more fully with the subject.
5. Marking the beats with your other hand
This bears a superficial resemblance to practising with a
metronome, of which I am not personally in favour. There
are, be it noted, three important differences. First, that the
regularity of the beats is hand-made instead of machine-
made, allowing dogged persistence if this is required, or
alternatively a flexible and unobtrusive steadiness ; second,
that there is no tick-tack to drown some of the musical
effects and so prevent one from being critical regarding the
tone gradations ; third, that there is not only human will
controlling what is being done, but it is the player's ownwill on which dependence is being placed. The simplestmovements for our purpose will be a series of plain down
29
Practising the Piano
beats, say a couple of inches in size. To do these some-
times on one's knee and sometimes in the air is to be recom-
mended ; a clenched fist may help concentration or a gentle
forefinger may encourage delicacy in the execution. Thebeats should sometimes be robust and heavy, sometimes as
light as a feather, and so should the accents. It is very goodtraining to do heavy beats with light accents and light beats
with heavy accents.
6. Practising in this rhythm:
Although this sounds more flippant than the right rhythm,it still has the metrical and emotional stresses where Chopinwanted them. Some different rhythms alter the meaning of
the music more than is really desirable.
On Playing Works as a
Whole
THIS important aspect of performance was quaintly but
expressively implied by the oft-repeated phrase of an
American journalist whom I met at the Rubinstein Competi-tion in Petersburg (as it was then called) in 1910. If any of
us competitors achieved the kind of unified presentation he
particularly valued, the performance was described as an
"unbroken mood-line", and the same words were used if
he wanted to refer to a magnificent rendering of some great
masterpiece by his hero Artur Nikisch. Whatever words
are used, the thought may easily be neither more nor less
than an intellectual abstraction, but when it is a living
reality there are few, if any, factors that do so much to ensure
that the audience will be carried away by the music. Audi-
ences may be carried away by other things the personalloveliness or fame of the player, exciting or eccentric move-
ments, the phenomenal rapidity of the passages and other
factors which may be interpretatively irrelevant but the
assertion refers to occasions when the music itself potentlyreaches the minds and hearts of the listeners. How then are
we to maintain these unbroken mood-lines ? A few suggest-ions may prove helpful. For one thing, much can be
learned by simply playing pieces right through. Perhaps I
Practising the Piano
do this more often than I recommend it to others (practise
other than preach, you may say), though how much it influ-
ences the unity of the whole depends upon what thoughts
are borne in mind as we play. Obsession with note correct-
ness, for instance, clarity of pedalling, legato in the inner
voices, and so on, might easily reduce the special advantages
from the point of view of unity, though the mere fact of
not stopping will at least accustom one's ear to continuity.
Thinking pieces right through without any playing at all
(either with or without the music) is another good idea. So
is playing them right through on the surface of the keys (see
chapter 8), or conducting an imagined performance.
It is also useful to play nothing but the main melodic line,
equivalent to the thread of the musical discourse. Yet
another alternative is to play through to the end softly
(perhaps even on the slow side), without dramatic character-
isation in the sounds. This is like softly murmuring words
over and meditating on their meanings without any outward
tokens thereof. If you were to utter the fiery sentences of
the great curse from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound \
Fiend, I defy thee, with a sufferer's curse
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do
in a slow dreamy monotone, it would be rather similar ; but
it can be a revealing study in teaching us how far the
unaided music can tell us its own tale, how, for instance, the
very "scoring" may build up a mighty edifice without any
dynamic observances. It can certainly help us to think of
continuity for its own sake and in no way prevents us from
planning our eventual interpretation.
It may seem out of place here to concentrate for a while
on making each individual phrase complete in itself, but it is
symbolic of our present quest and a foundation upon which
larger and ever larger units can gradually be reared. If you
sing each phrase right through without taking breath just
before you play it, and then while playing it keep this vocal
3*
On Playing Works as a Whole
effort in mind, the result will be marked by a certain unmis-
takable unity. Building up on this foundation, day by day,a possible week's programme for a complete sonata wouldbe as follows :
Monday Play your work phrase by phrase, first singingaloud each phrase on one breath.
Tuesday Play lengths of about sixteen bars at a time with
suitable stopping places (each of them to be decided uponbeforehand) and substituting mental rehearsals for singing,if preferred. If you sing, taking breath will now be unavoid-
able, of course, but after playing your sixteen bars youshould ask yourself: "Did it go forward in one onward
sweep ?"
Wednesday Play about a page at a time, with the unified
imaginary performance first, and considered verdict after-
wards.
Thursday Play lengths like exposition, development,
recapitulation, coda, each complete as above.
Friday Whole movements complete as above.
Saturday Whole movements straight through without
anticipatory mental preparation, critically noticing whether
one's own feelings achieve the specially desired continuity.
Sunday The whole sonata as on Saturday.If the week's work is too closely concentrated you could
give two or three days to each of the treatments and by this
multiplication spread the whole undertaking over a longer
period.The task before us is twofold, to grasp the principle and
to realise it in actual performance. Similes can be a help. Wemight try to carry our piece through as on one tidal wave.
We might think of a short story or novel (if there is one)which we have read straight through without being able to
put the book down. The memory ofjourneys in which it has
not been necessary to change trains or get on and off boats
could intensify our appreciation of non-interruption. Manyyears ago Adrian Boult wrote some invaluable words in
his handbook on conducting for students of that craft:
33
Practising the Piano
"Remember that at rehearsal you must always think back,
and in performance you must always think forward" so
simply put that we may not realise their full value at a first
reading. Compare "think forward" with the idea of a tidal
wave or a favourite ejaculation of Tobias Matthay whowould punctuate a pupil's performance with the magic word
"towards" in a stage whisper, thrown in at intervals like the
spurrings of horsemen in bygone days. If enough has been
said, it may yet be necessary for a lot to be done about
playing our works as a whole.
34
Double Thirds
SOME piano teachers who are precise in their choice
of words (a truly estimable thing) object to the expression"double thirds" as applied to thirds played by one hand.
But we speak of double notes for passages of regular or
assorted thirds, fourths, sixths, and so on, in a way similar
to, if less logical than, the string players with their double
stops. The expression "double thirds" seems to follow and
has in any case become a kind of technical term. It is used
here with apologies to those who dislike it.
The aspiring student should hasten on to double thirds
long before his single notes reach a high standard, for theyare muscularly strengthening, they give the mind more
occupation per semiquaver than the single notes, and their
execution automatically keeps all five fingers closer to the
keys (a desirable thing in playing every kind of passage).With double-third scales the occasions when orthodox
fingerings should be used in an actual piece are rarer than
might be supposed, and apart from the possible require-ments of examinations it is better to be equipped with readi-
ness for all sojrts of fingering than wedded to one. Eleven
different fingerings, applied regardless of discomfort to all
the diatonic scales in double thirds, provide a wide founda-
tion of general resourcefulness, mental and physical, and
are here recommended.
The eleven fingerings fall into three classes: recurrent
groups (three of these), mixed groups (five) and "organ
35
Practising the Piano
fingerings" (three). Let us take recurrent groups first. With
recurrent pairs you reach the beginning notes of the scale
with the same fingers after two octaves (Ex. 40) :
Ex.40. a 4 4 sempre simile
Jia 4 sempre simile
The slurs are not essential, nor is the rhythm, but both helpto fix the idea of the fingering. Both voices, or either voice,
can be totally legato all the time. It will be noticed that westart again for the return journey, thereby producingdifferent fingers on the individual thirds.
With recurrent groups of three, three octaves will be
required to round off the plan and with recurrent groups of
four, four octaves (Exx. 41 and 42) :
Ex.4i. , B ^ srBJff * * * \^ sempre simile ^ sempre simile \
Double Thirds
What was said before again applies to the slurs and rhythm.On the outward journeys the soprano in the right hand andthe bass in the left hand can be legato, on the returnjourneysthe alto and tenor, respectively. Sellinger's Round by Byrdgives a delightful opportunity for recurrent pairs (Ex. 43) :
Ex.43.
RJH.
whether we elect to play the quavers in slurred pairs or
sempre staccato. In the "Waldstein" Sonata, this passageseems made for recurrent threes (Ex. 44) :
Ex.44.
and in Haydn's last sonata recurrent fours have much to
recommend them (Ex. 45) :
Ex.45.
j t j f s 1 1 nTjMixed groups are five in number, three of which combine
pairs and threes, and the other two threes and fours. All
five result in the same notes getting the same fingers in
every octave as in single-note scales. Threes and fours (Exx.
46, 47, 48, 49 and 50) give us the principle upon which
LJ LJ f
is.
37
Practising the Piano
x.48.*-H; |
4} J .
* i a !. i i 4 i
modern orthodox fingering is based, if this is less obvious
when the scale begins in the middle of a group.The rhythms in all the above examples are unessential as
before, but as in Ex. 40, they fix the idea of the fingeringin our minds.
All the fingerings submitted so far will strengthenthe fingers, particularly when practised with a bumpystaccato either with forearm or hand touch. At some time or
other it will also be advantageous to practise one voice onlywith whichever fingering is being used, for this, although
38
Double Thirds
confusing when first attempted, makes for increased securityin the end.
"Organ fingering" is a coined phrase suggested by the
frequency with which the characteristic changes of fingerson held notes is seen in organ playing. A very few legatochords on the organ or harmonium make the need for such
changes evident. Regarding the first two, it is not claimed
that a whole scale would often, or indeed ever, be thus
fingered (Exx. 51 and 52) :
Ex.5I.a aaaa a a a a & a a a21 21 21 21 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12@ 3^P
*r r p IF^ ^a a a a a a a aaaa
84 84 M 84 84 83
Ex.52. 54 a a 64 a 64 64 64 ^ a 45 aaaaT> BT 32 82 32 82 82 82 82 82 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23
m m 1ua.*
= Pa a a =1
but our practice of whole scales renders moments like this
(Ex. 53) :
legato
st
legato
easier when they occur. In slow passages this fingering
(Ex.54):
j r r ii
1 ' '
p< '
"j p
Lii
_i^
L '
aL *
2 5i I ii f 57* * "} aM 4 5J 4 W 4 U 4 |S*
|| J g -I g
* "^
is often the best way to get a really tranquil legato.
39
Practising the Piano
In these rapid changes, the quicker they are made, the
greater the danger of a note speaking twice ; when that is
avoided, the sensitiveness of control and swiftness of action
by the fingers involved may well be unapparent to a listener,
who could easily suppose the practiser to be almost going to
sleep. Ex. 52 is highly recommended for the weak fingers ;
hefty passages, sounding considerably more vigorous, often
fail to produce so much technical progress.
It should be a habit from the first to make the change of
fingers include the preparation of the next notes (see chapter
1 7). For instance, in Ex. 51 get | on the surface of the keys
indicated by the diamond-shaped silent notes, thus (Ex. 55) :
Ex.55.fi**
In Ex. 54, not only get f prepared at the moment of change
but 5 as well (Ex. 56) :
Note that while the finger-changes in Ex. 55 can be in one
flash, those in Ex. 56 must occupy two flashes of time
(although every effort should be made to make them seem
like one) because the fifth finger must wait till the third is
down on G, and the third cannot leave E till the thumb has
got secure hold thereof; these are actions that cannot be
simultaneous. Even if the organ fingerings were never goingto be used in scale passages later on, the practice of them
would nevertheless be of immense value in training one's
fingers for many of the requirements of legato part-playing.
One of my most talented pupils at the Royal College of
Music once said to a fellow-student : "If I did all the things
Mr. Merrick tells me to do I should go out of my mind."
Fortunately this witticism was passed on by the lively girl
to whom it was addressed. This chapter tends to bring it
to mind, and where so many alternatives lie before us it is a
good thing to work at one set for a fortnight or so and then
40
Double Thirds
go on to another set, and thus gradually gain some experi-ence of all. Along the route organised variety should be
sought major and minor, loud and soft, legato and staccato,
selected keys, and so on. Rarely do too much of the same
thing on end, but remember what has been done so that
little or nothing is left out eventually.You may ask how to make a final choice from among
such a bewildering array of alternatives. When their char-
acter is familiar, however, this will often be fairly easy.Should there be any doubt, factors that help a decision are
easiness to read and remember, easiness in combining the
two hands, the avoidance of gaps or bumps or both, the
chances of minimising or covering up gaps by the use of
the pedal (which may spoil a passage when used to conceal
one gap while beautifully suiting the same passage when
concealing another), whether an unavoidable gap should bein the upper or lower voice, and of course the position of the
black keys. Notice critically the effect, both musical and
physical, when the thumb is placed on black keys ; only if
the movements are really too clumsy or the musical effect
is unavoidably bad is it unwise to adopt unorthodox finger-
ings of this forbidden sort. This advice does not proceedfrom perversity or inconoclasm, and is prompted partly bythe fact that when the thumb is placed on a black key it
gives the arm a slight forward swing, with a corresponding
raising of the wrist a position from which benefit is often
reaped.If all the double-third scale practice results in less tech-
nical progress than we had hoped for, the exercises which
follow, however lamentably dry, will prove a useful supple-ment (Ex. 57) :
Ex.57
This is to be continued up the major scale till the
Practising the Piano
sixteenth bar, which will be the second bar an octave higher.The grace notes should be as light and quick as possible. If
the crotchets are firm and decisive it is of secondary import-ance whether the grace notes are well or badly executed !
They will stand to improve in any case. The accentuation of
the crotchets will be musically and rhythmically helped if
the moment they sound we clench our fists as swiftly as we
can, not relaxing this iron grip until, say, the fourth beat of
the bar.
The next step is this (Ex. 58) :
pand what was said before about the grace notes will now
apply to the semiquavers.The exercises should be transposed into all the other
major keys, in some of which they may be found more
tricky to play. The many differences of position in relation
to the black keys will be of muscular benefit, there will betwelves times as much ground to cover, and both the neigh-bours' and the practiser's own ears will experience decidedrelief from the changes of sound. Later on, the whole-toneclusters of Ex. 22 can provide a welcome variety of musical
effect while spreading the fingers slightly wider apart.
42
8
Practising on the Surface
ofthe Keys
I HAVE advocated this very persistently for many years,and was most pleased and interested in reading Victor
Booth's We Piano Teachers to find that he, too, was extremelyconvinced of its importance. It is valuable at every stage ; I
generally recommend it to new pupils in their first lesson,
and I myself often play complete works or even recital
programmes through in this way.The more accustomed you are to playing on the surface
of the keys the more do you mentally live the music youwould be hearing if you had pressed the keys down and the
more sensitively aware do your fingers become whether theyare on the right keys or not. It is better to do this work with-
out looking at the keys, but even if you do look at them
(either because you must or because you wish to) much bene-
fit will still be derived. You will become ever-increasinglyused in actual playing to touching keys consciously before
you press them down, reducing thereby smudginess of exe-
cution, faulty gauging of the pressure to be exerted (which
produces tonal effects of all kinds which you do not intend),
playing this and that not quite at the ideal moment, and so
on. Benefit from the point ofview of memory is considerable
and will be further emphasised in chapter 24.
43
Practising the Piano
An advantage that you might never dream of theoretically
is that the poise of your arms during the silent practice is
likely to be an ideal one. The ideal poise between special
efforts, and one which should be recovered at as frequentintervals as possible, is that in which the upper arm is quiteloose at the shoulder, ready to be sent swinging forward in the
see-sawing movement of chapter 1 5 at a moment's notice. If
you call this condition a state of easeful vigilance, its motive
and value stand out with especial clarity. Another advantageis the frequency with which a wrong note which one had not
heard when playing aloud (in some rapid passage, perhaps)can be detected. When this happens you may feel humilia-
tion first, but certainly gratitude after. "Mentalising one's
technique" is a phrase that has been quoted before ;our sur-
face practice is a great help in doing that, and you could
call each bout of it a semi-mental rehearsal.
Silent practice of all kinds spares your ears and those of
your neighbours ;it can providentially save the situation if a
sudden engagement makes it imperative to work far into the
night when neither household inmates nor neighbours could
tolerate audible work. Practice on the surface ofthe keys is also
a grand remedy when pieces have become stale and you dare
not give them a rest because they will be needed on a givendate in the near future. Playing a work through in that wayonce a day for a week or a fortnight, and otherwise not
working at it at all, will often remove all traces of staleness
without the risk of giving it the total rest it appears to need ;
for staleness is really a sense that the sounds are unwelcomeas you press the keys down, and touching the keys without
pressing them gradually creates a tantalised longing to hear
again the very sounds from which you had begun to shrink.
Did not one of Shaw's doctors say ; "Cure guaranteed"?
44
9
The Postman's Knock
IF we can produce a sharp staccato without withdrawing our
hand from the keyboard, a lot of time and energy will be
saved, but this knack is not often acquired without careful
cultivation. Theoretically it is self-evident that two efforts
of will and action to press-the-key-down-first and lift-the-
hand-away-second should take longer than press-the-key-
down-but-don't~continue-doing-so. The slip 'twixt cup and
lip, however, is that in the second case one's cessation of
effort (or relaxation of the pressure) will probably be slug-
gish. Is it too much to call the following a sovereign remedy?The postman's knock rhythm gives accentuation like the
word "defy" : >-{ . Compare this with the word "hurry" :
FH I . It is humiliatingwhen a desperate effort to produce
one of these results in the other. But with due perseverancewe shall learn to get our postman's knock, and whenever we
do, the physical speed that rendered the minim louder than
the acciaccatura must have followed the acciaccatura so that
the musical desire to produce a postman's knock has cajoled
out of us an unusually rapid key descent.
Now for > I . The rebound of an indiarubber ball corres-
ponds in rapidity to the speed with which the ball has
reached wall or floor. Relaxation of an effort will be like this.
45
Practising the Piano
But how can we know whether what we do is relaxation or
a lift? The answer can be delivered with the scornful
triumph of a child : "Easy !" If the finger remains on the
surface of the key instead of in the air even a millionth of an
inch away, the staccato cannot have contained any element
of a lift. So when you hear (i) that the accentuation has been
>J and (2) that the staccato has been sharp Jand feel (3)
that your finger has not left the key, you have achieved an
ideally executed staccato beyond possibility of dispute.
Often practise staccato passages with the double rap of
postman's knocks (Ex. 59) :
Ex.59. Mendelssohn: Scherzo
f as intie composition
as well as passages with some tenutos in them (Ex. 60) :
Ex.60. BralimB: Ballade inG minor
Vri 3E ii
pausing at each double rap to make sure you have been suc-
cessful in all three respects perhaps at the pace of ^40*When you later test the value of such work by trying the
passage up to time with the acciaccaturas left out, a benefi-
cial result can be safely predicted.
10
Practising in Solid Chords
THIS usually gives us what was at the back of the com-
poser's mind when he composed the passages that can be so
treated. You cannot write the figures of a clock face on paperunless you first trace a circle on which to put them, or
imagine a circle sufficiently vividly to be able to dispensewith the visible line.
The solid chords give us not only the harmony but the
chord positions on the keyboard, thus producing extra tech-
nical safety by systematised economy of thought and
movement. Here for instance (Ex, 61) :
Ex.61.caniabile
we have four anxieties per bar instead of sixteen. We can
also listen to the melody with all its harmonies unprejudicedin our own favour by the magical glamour of the softly
murmuring accompaniment.The next two examples (Exx. 6a and 63) :
Sx. 62. Brahms: Rhapsody in Ominor
47
Practising the Piano
are chosen out of hundreds of equally suitable ones. Thetreatment in Ex. 63 can be carried right through the pieceuntil the final four chords. My usual advice is to play the
Ex.63. Chopin: Prelude in Ft
simplified chordal version three or four times as often as the
passage itself.
Chopin's Study, op. 25, no. 12, can be very happily"solidified". It will be seen that the last chord position in
bars like the first one contains the top two notes only instead
of the three previously demanded by the passage (Ex. 64) :
Ex.64. Chopin: Study, op. 25, no. 12.
s*zyiH r uw* *
In the fifteenth bar the semiquavers rise an octave higherthan they have been doing and this (Ex. 65) ;
Ex. 65.
gives us the best rhythm in which to play our solid chords
at that point. In bar sixteen (Ex. 66a and ) :
x.66a. Ex.66b.
as nearly solid as possible will be better than this (Ex. 67) :
Ex. 67.
Practising in Solid Chords
whichever of the two exemplifies the fingering you intend to
adopt. When solid chords suggest a new fingering it will
generally prove to be an improvement, but when that cannot
be, to take note and mark well any lack of correspondencewill reduce the danger of later incertitude. Even mutteringsuch words as "unrepresentative of the passage work" is
better than unawareness of that danger. In bar forty-two, the
right hand should treat the third beat like this (Ex. 68) :
Ex.68.
At the end of bar fifty-seven, the two hands should play thus
(Ex. 69) :
Ex.69.
and the best plan for the left hand at the very end is probablythis (Ex. 70) :
Ex. 70.
Nearly the whole of Chopin's op. 10, no. 7, can be
practised thus (Ex. 71) :
Ex. 71. Chopin: Study, op. 10, no. 7
\ 4
the same device of playing the thumb and second finger
simultaneously still acting in the final ascent, though across
the beat instead of within it.
In op. 25, no. i, we see how after six bars of simple
treatment (Ex. 72) :
49
Practising the Piano
Ex, 72.
a little humouring enables the chords played to go on
exemplifying the fingering (Ex, 73) :
Ex.73.
When a figure contains an unessential note it can often be
very musically fitted into a chordal version of the passageif you play it as an acciaccatura (Ex. 74*2 and &) ;
Ex.74a* Ch : Fantasy Impromptu Ex. 74b,
The musical effect of passages solidified as in the examplesof this chapter is often lovelier than the passages themselves
as we have been playing them. When we begin to wish theyhad been written that way the magical charm is doing its
beneficent work. The harvest may be considered to be fully
reaped when we can confidently manage two things : (i) to
imagine the composer's figuration while we are playing thesolid chords, and (2) to imagine the chords when we are
playing the composer's figuration.
II
Octaves
OCTAVE scales and arpeggios in all the keys, major and
minor, make good preliminary practising material and help
one to know one's way about the keyboard from a standpoint
markedly different from that familiarised by ordinarily fin-
gered scales in single notes. To continue each scale or
arpeggio for a distance of two octaves is a good idea when
both hands are playing together, this rhythm for ascent and
descent (Ex. 75) :
Ex.75.
being convenient for the scales, and this (Eec. 76) :
Ex.76. _ _.-j ^ ^
~iF
for the arpeggios. When both hands are playing together it
is sometimes a welcome change to have them a third, sixth
or tenth apart instead of an octave's distance. Perhaps it mayalso be well to use the tone-schemes recommended in
chapter 3, part II, if these activities are pursued for more
Practising the Piano
than a day or two. Leaving scales behind, we could proceedin due course to the prettier Czerny Studies and their like,and add octaves to them (Exx. 77 and 78) :
Ex.77. Czerny: Left Hand Study
Ex.78. Czerny: Studyf op.740,no.3
then after further progress to the Two-part Inventions ofBach (see chapter 13). Staccato octaves will be the main con-
cern^ofthis chapter, and for these a practical mechanism is
one in which the octave gauge is firmly maintained betweenthe thumb and fifth
finger, the movement coming fromthe wrist, elbow or shoulder. If the gauge is not held
firmly enough at the moment of playing any octave it
will be like trying to move something with a stick thatbends.
preparatory steps in which the firmness of the hand, com-bined with
flexibility at the wrist or elsewhere, is ensured andbecomes familiar in sensation are (i) to clench the fists andplay only the thumb notes, and (2) to gather the fingertipsclosely together and play only the fifth finger notes (with the
tip of the fifth finger, of course). Being able to measurethe intervals with each concerned finger separately makes it
safer and easier^to
measure them afterwards with both atonce. In preserving the aforesaid octave gauge later, it willreduce the muscular effort involved for the thumb and fifth
finger if the second, third and fourth are held firmly pressedtogether (or either adjacent pair of these musically unoccu-pied fingers).
Octaves
For wrist work it is good to play passages of staccato
octaves slowly, drawing your hand lightly and swiftly rightoff the keyboard to produce each staccato as though youwere brushing a grain of sand off the edge. This is a follow-
through of the ideal wrist action required to play an octave,
a chord, or even a single note, in which the movement should
have ceased the moment the keys are down. Your follow-
through should be carried as far as possible, giving a sensa-
tion at the wrist like the final turn of a watch-key when youcannot move it any further. At the moment it may feel a
slight strain but there is no danger in it. It strengthens the
muscles for wrist action and loosens the wrist joint at the
same moment. Ifyou cease the effort the moment the finger-
tips are as far as possible from the edge of the keys, the
hand will fly back an inch or more in the direction from
which it has just come, a most helpful instance of the
springiness that produces staccato without a second effort of
lifting away. Later on use the same action with its follow-
through on beats only instead of every octave, l:ke the
"group practice" in chapter 5.
For heavy whole-arm work a useful sort of follow-through
(though this one contains no element of return spring or
movement) is to pull the hands away from the keyboarduntil the elbows are as far behind your back as you can getthem (see "rowing" in chapter 15). Later you will find that
less than an inch of this same movement (with the keys still
held down in fact) helps you to ensure a certain mellowness
instead of thumpiness in ff (mostly on account of causes you
might hardly suspect), and also to cultivate looseness at the
shoulder (chapter 15 again) allied to a springy condition of
the upper arm.
Legato octaves are a very different matter. Their execu-
tion is mostly achieved by independent finger action, backed
up (perhaps especially in/) by forward and backward swing-
ing of the arm ("see-sawing", in fact chapter 15 yet again)
for alternate octaves. Here again the thumb notes only and
then the other notes of the octaves only, will be excellent
53
Practising the Piano
preparatory practice. Now although I once had a girl pupilwho could play legato octaves with this fingering (Ex. 79) :
Ex.79.
i
such a stretch is phenomenal in man or woman and we can
say that it is normally impossible to play octaves finger-
legato in both voices. In view of this it is generally muchbetter for one voice to be very legato and the other quite
detached, than for both to be nearly legato. And as a rule
the artful assistance of the pedal is indispensable in addition
to any finger legato we can achieve. Even when the effect is
acoustically legato, that on the listener's mind will often fail
to satisfy because subtle matters of accentuation are so far-
reaching. A slight bump on a half-beat, for instance, will
very often sound as if there must have been a break in the
continuity of tone, even when there certainly was none.
12
Simplified Versions ofDifficult Passages%/ o
SOME publications, like the Hall6 Classics with which I
was familiar as a small child, preface the pieces with pre-
liminary exercises or special advice as to how to overcome
the difficulties. The exercises are all too often mere variants
of the figures presenting technical difficulty and rarely
develop the student's preception of the musical meaningsof the piece. It would be better if the latter consideration
were always kept to the fore as it can and should be with
the examples that follow. The ideal thing is that the various
processes should be made as beautiful as possible with the
gist of the music so clearly presented that an audience
could enjoy listening to each process in turn.
Let us take Chopin's A flat Study, op. 25, no. I, first. It
was recommended in chapter 10 that you should practise it
thus (Ex. 80) :
Ex.80. t
IThis might be followed by playing the right hand as it is
written and the left hand as above and then vice versa.
55
Practising the Piano
Another pair of complementary processes is for one hand to
play what is written and the other hand the first note of
every beat, making a slight change when the right hand is
playing the single notes by giving it this (Ex. 8 1) :
Ex.81.
rrni,gin bars fifteen and sixteen. A third pair of complementary
processes is to stop in the middle of every beat and omit
the notes that complete it (Ex. 82) :
and to leave the first half of every beat similarly incomplete
(Ex. 83) :
Ex. 83.
In the first forty-three whole bars, the first process consists
in playing the converging notes of the figure, and the
second, the diverging notes. The second will be found
rather less easy and rather less lovely than the first because
the note on which you have to stop may be more difficult to
reach, and often does not belong to the old harmony so that
it sounds a bit gaunt until the rest of the beat fills up the
empty space. From bar forty-four onwards it will in the first
case be the descending notes that are omitted, and in the
second, the ascending. So the first process is all convergingsand then ascents while the second is all divergings and then
descents. With every process it will be preferable to play
right to the end of this piece, always omitting the trill and
Simplified Versions of Difficult Passages
turn in the left hand, thus preserving throughout the essen-
tial element of simplification.For the G flat Study from op. 25 certain processes imme-
diately present themselves. First this (Ex. 84) :
in which the alternative physical actions recommended in
chapter 3, part II, will all be of service. In bars ten, twelve
and fourteen, the second break will be a quaver later :
Next, left hand as written, right hand playing nothing but
the melody right through (Ex. 85) :
etc.
Then right hand as written, left hand two quavers a bar only,
giving us the essential bass voice. Three notes instead of two
will be necessary in the eighth bar (Ex. 86) :
Ex.86.
In the coda reasonable simplifications on similar lines would
be these (Ex. 87a and F) :
Ex.87b.
J I J h *J i J I
Ex.87a.
ending in either case with this (Ex. Bye) :
Ex.87o. _
These two complementary processes can be played first with
fingering that suits the simplified version and later with the
57
Practising the Piano
fingers that will have to be used when the omitted notes
are restored.
The left-hand part, though not the official difficulty of
this study, is difficult enough. It will be worthwhile to
practise it by itself with fist clenches, and so on (four to the
bar at first), and also with another quaint device taking all
the single notes with the wrong finger. Try the thumb first,
then second, third, fourth and only then the correct fifth
finger.1 These apparently perverse alternatives will greatly
improve your skill in tackling leaps, and when you begin to
enjoy the fruits of all this labour you can further improve
your skill by playing all those single notes, with the different
fingers, an octave lower than they are written !
For the C minor Study, op. 10, no. 12, let us consider at
least two processes. First, playing all the melody in single
notes (the top note of each chord or octave) while the left-
hand part is unaltered. Second, playing the right-hand part
unaltered while the left-hand part is simplified to the utter-
most. This latter will work out as follows :
In the introduction only play this (Ex. 88) :
Ex.88.
When the big tune comes in (bar ten), play nothing but the
low 'cello Cs for five bars, holding them on as semibreves andminims. Then this (Ex. 89) :
Ex.89.
u . u.i L.J i ir * - m
the essential bass voice in fact. Continue with the essential
bass voice, and at points which you can easily recognise a
chord instead of one note will twice be preferable (Ex. 90) :
Ex90. a
1 When octaves occur instead of single notes, take the high road or the low road as
preferred*
Simplified Versions of Difficult Passages
and on the last page this (Ex. 9 1) :
Ex.91.
Although the difficult left-hand part is the principal element
from the study point of view, the right-hand part gives us
the essential melodic thread of the musical discourse. The
danger of the left-hand passage work becoming the player'smain preoccupation and the right hand merely synchron-
ising with the accompaniment in a servile manner is there-
fore considerable and the right hand must learn to be the
soloist and dominate the performance while the left hand,
intensely dramatic though its contribution should be, must
act as a loyal and wary accompanist.It should be apparent that although the suggestions in
this chapter all refer to the practising of entire pieces there
will be innumerable cases where similar treatment will be of
equal use for much shorter passages. Once the idea of sim-
plified versions has been accepted, there is practically no
end to the occasions on which it will come to our rescue.
'3
Practising with One Finger
THIS may seem when first suggested foolish to the point
of futility,but its beneficial effects can be far-reaching. Par-
ticularly valuable is the habit in studying such independent
counterpoint as that of a Two-part Invention by Bach, in
which the eventual effect should be that of an equally
matched duet. Try playing any one of those Inventions with
your thumbs only for the whole piece (omitting ornaments
if any), then with the second finger only, and the third,
fourth and fifth only in turn, and finally with sensible finger-
ing. Your familiarity with the music and its contrapuntal
intricacies in the actual playing, when it comes to this
sixth effort, will probably be much greater than if you had
played the music six times with the proper fingering, for
the one finger insistently draws your attention to the
ceaseless changes from similar to oblique and contrary
motion.
It is no longer one finger if we play the whole piece in
octaves, but it fulfils many of the same purposes including
knowing where the notes are to be found on the keyboard.It may comfort us to reflect that this will bear some resem-
blance to the effect of using an octave coupler on the harpsi-
chord, although the right hand will have to play the octave
above and the left hand the octave below to prevent the
hands from getting in each other's way. In itself it will be
better for our general mastery of octave playing than using
60
Practising with One Finger
studies of the dry type. Meanwhile the five fingers, the
octaves and the sensible fingering give us a sevenfold ritual
and this, apart from the occult blessings of that particular
number, is arithmetically one better than six.
Many years ago a famous singer was asked by an eager
young student why the class was told to practise a givenexercise and the reply was : "Oh ! you leave that to me, and
do the exercise !" Surely one should always welcome
enquiries even if they seem hostile or over-sceptical ; it givesone a chance to rake up a further list of benefits. Here is one
more important benefit : if you sing intervals, the wide ones
occasion a special vocal effort. This (Ex. 92) :
Ex.92.i
is a slight effort, and this (Ex. 93) ;
a much greater one. To play these notes with one finger (as
printed below the notes) instead ofwith natural legato finger-
ing (as printed above the notes) helps us to mean the chosen
intervals vocally as well as correlating the vocal meaningwith the keyboard distances. The benefits described in the
last sentence are considerable and although they may seem
remote or purely theoretical as you read the words, they are
a great deal more as you play the notes. When the idea of
vocalised intention is well rooted in your playing, the perils
of such skips as these (Ex. 94) :
Ex.94. Chopim Ballade in G minorL.H
Practising the Piano
will be very perceptibly lessened by singing the bass voice
of the passage, thus (Ex. 95) :
Bx.95.
M J * Mf * * J * Hf M j M IJ
in your mind as you play, however useful and necessary anyfurther expedients may be.
62
Fugal Study
WITH many of the problems of playing I am temptedto cut out some of the ritual advocated in these chapters, andwhen I do so, hoping to save the time and patience of someof the brighter pupils, I generally regret it afterwards. Witha four-part fugue it nearly always pays to insist on over
twenty separate processes, and if these are carried out the
comfort and relaxation of many more mere playings throughcan be allowed without the risks that often attend heedless
enjoyment.As a preliminary to the first ten processes, divide your
fugue into sections like fare stages on a 'bus route. The first
fugue in "The Forty-eight" is easily divisible by means of
cadences in different keys (G, A minor, D and then two in
C) into five sections. Then, a section at a time, play through,as expressively as possible, each of the four voices separately,
beginning with the bass and working upwards to the
soprano. In some fugues, where voices cross or leave off, it
is quite puzzling to know which notes belong to which
voice and it is better to write out all such doubtful passagesin score on as many staves as there are voices, than to be
uncertain at any point. The separate voices should be fol-
lowed immediately by playing the sections through with two
voices at a time, the lower with the left hand and the upperwith the right hand. In doing this, if a unison occurs, playit scrupulously with both hands, although that is usually
63
Practising the Piano
unwise in ordinary playing. The best order for these six
processes is as follows : (i) tenor with the right hand, bass
with the left; (2) alto right hand, bass left
; (3) soprano
right hand, bass left ; (4) alto right hand, tenor left;
soprano right hand, tenor left; (6) soprano right hand, alto
left. You will soon realise that if you had done your ten
processes for more than a section you would have forgottenthe melodic outline of the single voices when you came to
combine them in pairs.
These first ten processes are fascinating, the two voices at
a time revealing a good many beauties that could very easily
have escaped notice. At the same time, since they constitute
a somewhat microscopic examination of the texture of the
fugue, they need to be supplemented by a bird's-eye view
of the whole when we have completed our task with the
sections. For this, let us play the extreme voices only of the
whole fugue straight through. At every actual point we have
done this already, but playing the extreme voices mighthave coincided at a given point with process five, six, seven,
eight, nine or ten, and in this fugue does coincide with five
out of those six alternatives. We must pass from one to the
other, therefore, as the music dictates. Remorselessly doingthis will sometimes produce an unpleasing fault (as the
geologists would call it) and such overlapping as this in bar
twenty (Ex. 96) :
should be welcomed whenever it saves one from some effect
of musical illiteracy like the consecutive octaves which wereavoided here.
To the fugally experienced our eleven processes may seem
easy, but for the average student it is quite usual after a
week's work at them still to get entangled here and there.VB/ ^X
As soon as all eleven are mastered they will have done much
Fugal Study
to show us what the playing of the fugue contrapuntally
needs, however little they have done to achieve it. We are
therefore just ready for processes twelve and thirteen. In
both we play the complete fugue straight through with
every note staccato, except the last one. You may well ask
why. And you might argue that it is as monstrous as the
conductor of a village band who told his players to read a
difficult new thing just arrived from London "without the
accidentals". But no 1 We see that a great deal of the diffi-
culty of fugue playing is in holding one note on in one voice
while another note in another voice is let go, often to moveon somewhere else. If this difficulty is temporarily elimin-
ated by staccato playing in every voice, and if the notes and
rhythm themselves are both correct, it is something of a
revelation to experience how much of the gist of the music
can still be divined. In the meantime, granting that one has
not yet mastered the fugue (for in such a case further pro-cesses might be superfluous) this staccato treatment will give
you a reasonable chance of doing the task that has been set
with a hundred per cent, accuracy and knowing whether youhave done so. It may surprise the reader to be advised to playall the tied notes again in these staccato versions. One reason
for this is that it involves the registering of every printednote in the mind by the fingers, but a more important one
is the way that it emphasises the dissonance of many sus-
pensions and the beauty as each of them gets resolved.
But it is time to explain why there should be a pair of
staccato processes. Twelve is to be without pedal and thir-
teen with pedaL Twelve will be very disconnected, there-
fore, and it may humorously comfort you to pretend that
you are a string quartet, that all four bows were stolen bya rival quartet leader, and that as rehearsal is imperative it
has to be sempre pizzicato. Thirteen will naturally sound
more connected than twelve but will need care if it is not to
be too smudgy. If the pedal is changed about four times a
bar in our C major fugue, the occasional smudges will pro-
bably give a less confused effect than legato organ playing
65
Practising the Piano
in an echoey church. Neat changes will involve a less sharpstaccato at the moments of change than elsewhere, but this
is all to the good in training our fingers to cling on a little
longer when occasion demands. If they fail to do so in these
cases it is like handing someone a scalding cup of tea and
letting go of the saucer before you can feel that the recipient
has got hold of it. At points where our crotchet pedalling is
unpleasantly smudgy, it should be modified to suit the pro-
gressions ;we gradually gain increased skill in divining what
is desirable and carrying it out nicely when it has been
decided upon. It may be emphasised here that all this
pedalling with the staccato playing is a very good appren-
ticeship for later pedalling during legato performance. Well-
pedalled Bach is very often preferable to unpedalled, just as
sunlight adds radiance to a landscape.Fourteen and fifteen are severely practical and are exam-
ples of delayed continuity as advocated in chapter I, thoughthe units are necessarily very short. In fourteen the pausesfor reflection are at regular intervals, say twice a bar (Ex. 97):
Bx.07.
your main duty being not to play the next bit until you have
successfully done so in your head. In fifteen the pauses are
at irregular intervals as in this (Ex. 98) :
Ex.93.
and in fulfilling your duty, two points are of special import-ance. One is deciding where the next pause shall be before
"pushing off", and if a difficult moment has been reached
a quarter of a bar fully mastered will be better than half a
bar or more with a defect. The other is to be sure to stopwhere you decided you would, instead of drifting on heed-
lessly in your joy because Scylla or Charibdis has been
safely passed.Sixteen to twenty-seven are the cream of all the processes.
66
Fugal Study
With talented pupils it is sometimes possible to scrap the
first fifteen, though often enough it may prove worthwhile
to have recourse to them afterwards if this or that weakness
makes its appearance. In sixteen to nineteen you play the
whole fugue straight through, in sixteen singing the bass
voice as well, in seventeen, eighteen and nineteen the tenor,
alto and soprano respectively. With a woman's voice someof this singing will have to be an octave or more too high,with a man's voice an octave or more too low unless he has
a falsetto to fall back upon or prefers to whistle (an octave or
more too high). Unexpected difficult moments will some-
times give us considerable trouble and by the time we can
really sing the right notes in one voice a mistake may occur
in the playing of another. We must rely on getting this
straightened out when we come to sing the voice in whichthis mistake occurred.
Now whereas we have been focusing special attention
upon one voice while playing all four, and actually makingthe one louder by adding vocal tone to it in sixteen to nine-
teen, in twenty to twenty-three we again focus special atten-
tion on the one voice (bass, tenor, alto, soprano, in that
order), but by playing it louder* Sixteen to nineteen helps%
you to achieve twenty to twenty-three and vice versa.
Twenty-four to twenty-seven consist in listening attentively
to the four voices in turn and in a lesser degree will producean effect similar to twenty to twenty-three because the voice
to which you are listening will come out rather louder than
the others, although less so than when you are trying to
bring it out. If you play a few bars and ask a friend to tell
you to which voice you have been listening and he cannot
say, you will probably find that you were not really succeed-
ing in your attempt to listen to it !
A moderate amount of each of the above processes maybe expected to produce better results than a great deal of a
few of them, and it may be as well to follow them up bysome conducting as recommended in chapter 2, and some
further thought upon the message of chapter 6.
6?
15
Looseness at the Shoulder
ALTHOUGH I believe that looseness at the shoulder is one
of the foundation-stones of efficient technique, physically
speaking, I often refrain from saying so until pupils have
progressed a long way on their road. A moment is then
reached when it is of special value to trot the theory out*
First let us be quite sure what is desired. In the 1890$
young girlslike my sister (of about my own age) were
instructed that it was vulgar to swing their arms as they
walked. Such was the tradition of late Victorian deportment.
These self-same vulgar movements, carried back and for-
ward parallel with the line of your footsteps, exactly producethe looseness advocated in this chapter. If you sit at the
piano, place your hands on the keys, and then carry them
backwards and forwards together instead of alternately,
continuing the movement from the keyboard as far back as
your elbows can be drawn, it will look rather like rowing,
though the elbows should not move outwards. Then if
you keep your fingertips on the keyboard without letting
them slide between the edge and the wood of the lid while
the upper arms swing backwards and forwards as far as the
tethered fingertips allow, there will be a kind of see-saw
element in the movement. With both these movements
"rowing" and "see-sawing" the arm will be loose at the
shoulder. If you get someone else to move your arm as in
rowing or see-sawing, when you offer resistance you
68
Looseness at the Shoulder
will have stiffened at the shoulder, and when there is noresistance you are preserving the easy poise which the move-ments are designed to produce. And when you performeither of these movements yourself it will loosen you if youare tight, and prove to you that you are loose already if youcannot be sure without the test. Now aff chord, a difficult trill
or mordent, the attempt to achieve a pp any difficulty in
fact, even anxiety in itself, can very easily stiffen you at the
shoulder, and the thing to do is to cultivate recovering that
looseness when it has been lost. When you or others are
hampered by stiffness, try to ascertain where the stiffness is
and it will often prove to be at the shoulder. If this is
eliminated the relief may well resemble that of Christian
when the load of sin fell from his back.
In stopping-practice you can row or see-saw in time
to the mental rehearsal that precedes the next phrase, but
as audiences cannot wait for you to perform such antics, the
next thing to learn is to see-saw while you are playing
(Ex. 99):Ex.99.
If you make these accents by means of the arm movements,
you could say, watching your wrist to understand the choice
of syllables (Ex. 100) :
BUOO.
a J J J '^ "f r=t
Down up, down up, down up, down up, down up, down up, down up, down up,
being careful, however, that the wrist does not continue to
sink when the elbow stops moving, for this would defeat
your main object and prevent your upper arm from swingingforward again until the wrist had returned to the position
from which it had sunk. There is a natural pace for these
crotchets, somewhere about J S7J2 (though it varies with
the individual), and ifyou play perceptibly slower or quicker
69
Practising the Piano
than your own natural pace it will probably get you con-
fused as to whether you ought to be doing an "up" or a
"down" at a given moment.
Now see-saw with the "down" on every other note
(Ex. 101):
Ex.101.
_j etc,
Down tip, down up
The "up" movement here puts something of a brake on the
speed, so this will at best be quasi Vistesso tempo in fact,
perceptibly slower, perhaps even as slow as J-.se- But if
you have a "down" on every fifth note (Ex. 102) :
Ex.102. ^^ ~ -
etc.
this tempo will probably be pretty close to that of the
quavers.We should see-saw therefore with crotchets, quavers
and semiquavers, and the movement should sometimes be as
exaggerated as possible and sometimes so slight that an
onlooker (unaware of what you were supposed to be doing)
might not see it. Sometimes the accents should be very con-
spicuous to the listener and sometimes hardly detectable. So
we have these four combinations : (i) lots of movement with
a big accent ; (2) lots of movement with little or no accent ;
(3) little movement with a big accent ; and (4) little move-ment with little or no accent.
As soon as all this is mastered a very little movement can
give one an impressive accent when the finger has not the
necessary strength for it, and this same little movement can
unstiffen one's upper arm at the shoulder even when accen-
tuation of any kind is undesirable. In the syllabic differen-
tiation so essential to expressive cantabile playing, the use
of these see-sawings and the sense of treading producedby the "down" movements bring the greatest comfort to the
70
Looseness at the Shoulder
users, largely on the ground that when what you do feels
physically like the effect you want to hear, natural ease in the
effort and its result are married in a truly blissful union.
The fundamental value of looseness at the shoulder will
therefore become increasingly apparent.
i6
Gradations of Time
A GOOD deal of textbook doctrine on this subject is at best
unsound, and discussion about it can easily become acrim-
onious. One or two assertions on the practical plane,how-
ever, may be more acceptable than denunciations of those
who go further or along a different path.
Two distinct kinds of flexibilityare that of the beat and
that within the beat. Let us first consider the former. If you
count three or four in a succession of bars with march-like or
even metronomic precision,the rhythmical sequence of the
beats will certainly be unbroken. If you then try dawdling
on individual beats (one, two, thre , . . e, f , our, for instance)
it is fairly easy to know whether the sequence has been main-
tained. And as you experiment with accellerandos and
rallentandos of increasing magnitude, your ability to say
positivelywhether the pulse has been lost will grow from
day to day. Conducting is even better than counting, so if
you find you can conduct such and such dawdles and hasten-
ings the result can be pronounced a legitimate rubato in
itself, whereas the loss of sequential continuity in the beats
would have been a case of senza tempo. Whether the
example of rhythmical freedom is appropriate in a given
passage is a question of interpretation.
Of flexibility within the beat each of these two ex-
amples is an exaggeration for the sake of clarity (Exx, 103
and 104) :
72
Gradations of Time
Ex.103. Beethoven: Kreutzer Sonata
-ttc.
Ex.104. Polonaise accompaniments
J- J5
Ex. 103 Is dangerously easy to overdo* Such liberties are
called falsifications and the problem is often how much to
falsify and how often. National music makes many demandsof this kind. A very helpful analogy for much flexibility
within the beat is the phrase "declamatory freedom". Youwould sing these two syllables (Ex. 105) :
Ex.105.
ishatter
more swiftly than these (Ex. 106) :
Ex.106.
fiercely
even if the composer had not attempted to specify any differ-
ence in the notation. Indeed it would probably be better for
him not to make any such attempt.
Chopin's F minor Ballade often suffers from this kind of
treatment (Ex. 107) :
eight times in the sixteen bars of this melody, which converts
what might be a good effect Into a regrettable and stilted
mannerism. We may sometimes be tempted to remind some
"miserable sinner" that the object of rubato is usually to
render the music more beautiful rather than less, thoughit might not sound quite so embittered if we suggestedconstructive improvements.A so-called definition of rubato is "left hand in time, right
hand free", a phenomenon which is often called for by the
notation itself (Exx. 108, 109 and 1 10) :
73
Practising the Piano
Ex.108. Chopin: Nocturne In F$
Ex. 109. Hummel: Sonata, in D,Op.l06Larghetto a caprtcci*
(Thc last of fourteensimilar bars)
Ex.110. Chopin: Nocturne in Dfe
Ztnfo sosttnxto"
The beauty with which Chopin treated such passages maybe part of the reason why "left hand strict, right hand free"
has been so often advocated as a solution of the rubato
problem. The result of accepting this doctrine is usuallysimilar to that produced by an insensitive accompanist whocannot keep together with the soloist.
Changing the tempo is quite another affair. Nowadays it
is more severely frowned on than in my childhood. Lesche-
tizky was sometimes at pains to advocate subtle vacillations,
perhaps in a graded series, that enabled one to achieve
desired changes unperceived. I can for once masquerade as
74
Gradations of Time
a moderate man if I submit that about the period of 1 900there were too many tempo changes and in the 19508 there
are perhaps too few. Certainly if there is anyone whoadvocates an inflexible metronomic constancy of pace
regardless of other considerations, he may be regarded as
an extremist.
Preparing ofHand
Positions
"FIND press_let go" is a pithy analysis of all we have
to do in piano playing as far as the keyboard is concerned;
it was presented to me in almost casual conversation over
thirty years ago. The first of the three actions was always
called "preparing" in the Leschetizky fold and it is difficult
to exaggerate its importance. Take the skips of a typical
waltz accompaniment. An early ritual of practising should
be to play very slowly, very staccato, and whenever there is a
skip to dash like lightning to the next position. If in our
first example you seem to reach the silent diamond-headed
notes at the very moment when the crotchet you have just
played is heard, it will appear to be the sort of conjuring
trick required (Ex. 1 11) :
-*
It may be tantalising at first to reach your diamond-headed
note and not play it, but to play it tends to lessen the value
of the skip itself to remove from your mind, in fact, the
very thing you had most wished to impress upon it. The
slower you play, the quicker can the skips be made and the
76
Preparing of Hand Positions
deeper will the impression of this rapidity sink into the
memory of your hands and fingers for future use. Moreover,the quicker the skips the more accurate are they likely to
be you have no time to forget en route where you camefrom or how far you have to go.
Afterwards do your special preparings once a bar only,
playing up to time but with really long pauses. If the pausesare three bars long the regular four-bar lengths into whichthe delayed continuity would fit will, by its ordered design,have a comforting and invigorating effect upon our spirit
(Ex. 1 1 la and)
:
ExJ12a.^z^ro
^\> I 1 I
^ ,*
f^ 3=^=3 etc.
Ex.ll2b.
tic.
In this (Ex. 113):
Ex. 113. Beetltevtitt Sonata,Op.27,No.l
(with which some of my readers are sure to have had their
struggles), the wide skips occur at irregular intervals. Whenthe rests come, fling your hands on to the next chord as if
they had been hurled out of a catapult and ask yourself two
questions : whether your aim achieved a bull's-eye, and
whether the speed of the journey was as quick as it would
need to have been if you had been playing straight on. The
77
Practising the Piano
answer is naturally more likely to be "yes" in both cases if
the journey is as the crow flies.
Perhaps it will not be inopportune, even though some-
what premature, to mention here that extreme zeal regardingthese skips may sometimes make you so over-eager that youwill play the chord preceding the skip too sketchily
(smudged or not fully audible, for instance). It is a tantalis-
ing but very useful discipline to stop just short of the skip,
with your fingers on the surface of the keys that have that
moment been released. For one thing, the release, if achieved
by total relaxation of downward pressure and not attended
by a lifting away from the keys, even as much as a tenth of
an inch, allows the subsequent journey to be made more
swiftly and easily than if it had been the journey that pro-duced the staccato. Meanwhile, as you learn to make the
step mentally, though not physically, the tantalising element
is gradually eliminated. Perhaps it will soothe our outraged
feelings to exclaim with the King in Hamlet : "My words fly
up to Heaven, my thoughts remain below' ', which is,
perversely enough, the opposite of what we are doing.
Preparing must not be confined to chords and skips, but
carefully cultivated in finger passages as well. If you playthe scale of C major for four octaves in semiquavers and
pause whenever a crotchet group has reached the followingnote (which might be called the destination of the group), the
diamond-headed notes show you how many notes you should
prepare at the respective stopping-places (Ex. 114):
Preparing of Hand Positions
Sometimes practise the above with a "full-dress" mental
rehearsal before each little rush. The sixth of the right-hand
groups has what would be a grotesque fingering were those
five notes to occur by themselves, but it is useful to realise
that it is the right orthodox fingering if you are playing
your complete four octaves. The left hand gets the same
fingering in the sixth group descending.
79
i8
Beauty of Tone
THIS is a subject which has aroused considerable contro-
versy. Scientists have declared that you cannot make one
isolated note beautiful or ugly on the piano, you can only
make it louder or softer. Musicians often declare that their
experience totally disproves the scientists' assertion. Even if
the musicians were right, there are so many factors produc-
ing beauty or ugliness in tonal effect that the importance of
single-note beauty would at best be comparatively slight.
Factors which produce unquestionable differentiation of
tone quality are the pedal and the harmonies. Notes that are
pedalled glisten with a lovely radiance that is like the beautyof a wet pebble on the sea-shore : dry the pebble and the
magic is lost, dip it in water again and the magic is restored.
Compare the first part of Ex. 115 unharmonised with the
same notes harmonised two bars later, and in Beethoven's
Largo from op. 7 (Ex. n$a,b andc)
:
Ex.U5a.Ex.1151). Ei.ll5c.
J J-3J
Think what the accompaniment^)/^ pedal adds to the unac-
companied E|j melody note with which another Chopin
Study begins (Ex. 1 16) :
80
Beauty of Tone
Ex.116.
Apart from the magic of the liquid flowing semiquavers in
the accompaniment, the way the harmony thereof supportsthe melody (with perpetual scope for subtle variations in the
degree of that support) gives almost unlimited possibilities
for beautifying the actual singing tone quality of that series
of repeated E[>s.
Then there are the various factors which seem to influence
beauty of tone quality and therefore do affect beauty of tonal
effect. We might consider them from the negative point of
view. When a note is too loud or comes too soon it maywell seem harsh by reason of the shock it produces. For it
to be too soft or too late will be feeble, lacking vitality,
warmth or some other essential attribute. For the bass voice
or other notes in the accompaniment to give insufficient sup-
port to the melody will make an accented melody note
sound hard when it would otherwise have been completely
acceptable, a question therefore of harmonic proportion.
The dissonance of wrong notes also creates a harshness of
its own. Start Beethoven's Sonata, op. 10, no. i, with a Btj
added to the first chord by the right hand, and compare it
with an equally fierce clean/chord.
Mercifully, whatever our beliefs about tone and touch,
the same practical expedients make for good results. Three
ways which might have been advocated for increasing beauty
of tone quality in itself are in any case of great usefulness in
increasing our power of avoiding the numerous and com-
plicated dangers set forth in the preceding paragraph, and
therefore productive of much positive benefit. The first is
mental, the other two physical. The mental one is always to
be striving for the maximum tonal beauty. To long for and
dream of loveliness makes us more likely to achieve a
81
Practising the Piano
beautiful effect, whatever the means employed, more alive to
the result, whether it be encouraging or disheartening, and
more aware of what the effort to achieve it felt like, whether
with a view to preserving what was good, or avoiding what-
ever was not approved. The first physical observance is
always to touch the keys before pressing them down,because hitting them from a distance (even a slight one)reduces precision with regard to the sound coming at the
right moment, with the right volume (not only total volume,but also that of the melody note and balance with those
that harmoniseit),
and without a smudge. The second
physical observance is the habit of instantaneous relaxation
of any superfluous pressure that may have been momentarily
necessary for ff chords, and so forth. This last immenselyincreases the likelihood of good timing and general control
in jf, as well as conserving greatly needed energy,It is wise to reflect on the varying fate of beautiful voices
(singing or speaking) and beautiful timbre in musical instru-
ments like wind and strings where quality does vary so con-
spicuously on single notes. A lovely timbre soon loses its
magic if the phrases lack the variety and appeal of human
expressiveness, and conversely an unpleasing timbre is often
forgotten when musicians and actors possess that same
appeal. Has even one of my readers failed to experiencethese truths ?
1 9
Trills and Rotary Move-
ments of the Forearm
SOME of our trills should sound like a bird or a flute,
liquid and musical. Slower ones are liable to sound lumber-
ing and angular^ quicker ones like an electric bell or an infur-
iated wasp arriving on the window-pane. There is a place for
each of these types, according to the passage. Still slower
than any of these is the kind some favour in Bach and other
composers, though many will find it unacceptable ;in these
trills each note sounds like a separate syllable.If a trill causes you difficulty, try first to estimate the
rhythmical groups of which it should be composed, writingthem out if there is any lack of clear intention. We mustdecide whether the groups should be twos, threes, fours,
sixes, or what. If fours are too slow and eights too quick, weshall have to choose a triplet grouping and the further ques-tion may arise whether six notes shall be made up of two
triplets or three pairs of notes. Incidentally the former, byvirtue of the groups' starting alternately on the principalnote and the upper note, makes very good practice even if
not adopted subsequently.In the practising itself over-accentuation leads to greater
ease and control later, especially when achieved by rotaryexertions of the forearm. The latter will be considered in
some detail later in this chapter. "Group practice", beating
83
Practising the Piano
with the other hand (for both see chapter 5) and very
important singing the groups of the trill when they have
been decided upon, are all three very valuable. If the final
pace of the trill is going to be quicker than the maximum
possible with your vocal technique, to sing a note and roll
an "r" on it is a suggestive and very helpful kind of semi-
mental rehearsal.
A good way of working at a long trill is to come to a stop at
regular intervals, resuming the trill at a later moment corre-
sponding to the beats that have elapsed : I ^^t^r^Ti> can
be practised thus: fffjfffjJ^JJJH /3514Jand then: J^JJB JH3 1 J J773 /T73IJ both
of them with and without the ties.
These examples assumed commencement on the principal
note, but opinions vary as to whether a trill should do so. If
you decide that a given trill shall, let the first note sing and
play the next few much more lightly. If you begin with the
upper note, prevent it from singing, and what follows from
sounding as if the whole thing was an inverted trill on that
upper note. Whichever line you take, the beauty with which
you carry out your preference is more important than the
preference itself.
It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that every trill should
end on the principal note, and this may also involve careful
rhythmical planning. Where a trill needs a turn at the end,
although the penultimate note will be below the principalnote the rhythmical plan will most probably be unaffected.
The shortest real trill beginning on the principal note andwithout a turn will contain five notes as only three give us
an upper mordent ; the shortest with a turn at the end will
contain seven notes. These seven notes are the most shapelyin one of these two groupings (Ex. 117* and V} :
Ex. 117b.
84
Trills and Rotary Movements of the Forearm
from which we should choose whichever suits the occasion
better. In Ex. 117^ the two halves of the trill are found to
be an upper mordent followed by a turn commencing on the
note above, which seems to leave us with no actual trill !
Few listeners, however, will be bothered by this curious
fact unless the fourth of the seven notes is grotesquely over-
accentuated.
A long trill nearly always gains life (whether by its beauty,its excitement, or whatever its particular quality) by tone
gradations swellings, fadings, etc., like a long held note ona voice or violin. Nearly all trills are much better pedalled,and when a gradual diminuendo is the required effect, a
sudden drop of tone in the playing will produce the gradual
drop in the sound, because unless the pedal is changed those
more softly played notes will have the sounds already ringingadded to their volume.
Trills benefit greatly by clearness of thought and physical
precision in regard to rotary action and freedom of the fore-
arm. In the early days of this century people often spoke as
if Debussy had invented the whole-tone scale and Matthay"forearm rotation". What Debussy did was to unlock for us
a rich treasure of beauty and imagination by his lovely use
of the whole-tone scale, added to exquisite judgment in
escaping from it when the moment came to do so, while
Matthay did great service in explaining principles about
these forearm rotary mysteries concerning which there had
previously been very widespread misunderstandings. Someworthies even used to advocate the placing of a coin where
your hand joins the forearm to prevent the tiniest rotarymovement of the forbidden and dreaded kind. I once heard
an examiner say to a candidate with scornful irony : "Andwhen you have ceased to rotate . . . ?"
The rotary movements can be either a cause or a result.
When they supply the energy with which notes are playedthe touch can be called rotary action, of which the fingers are
just agents. When finger action is the touch employed and
the rotary movements occur, they do so by virture of rotary
85
Practising the Piano
freedom of the forearm. This is twice blest, for the fingerscan move more easily when the forearm is thus free, and also
need to move shorter distances to do their work, the saving
corresponding to the amount of movement by the arm.
Now the two touches have a markedly different musical
effect. When you play the notes by rotary action they are
perceptibly martellato in character. In^it might be like the
clattering of hooves on cobble stones or "the chaotic laughterof a shunting train". In pp it might be like the tinkling of
imagined harebells, but in either case there is a "ting-a-ling-
a-ling" element in the notes. When you play them with
finger action accompanied by rotary freedom of the forearm,
you get more of a murmur as of zephyrs or bees. So it is
necessary to decide what you want in given instances. Youwill probably vote for the murmuring effect in Chopin's Fminor Study, op. 25, no. 2, and for the clattering effect in
the "Black Key" Study.
Mercifully, if you first determinedly practise a passagewith energetic rotary action, and then cease the conscious
efforts, rotary freedom is left behind, a priceless deposit as
one might say. There is no better way of cultivating the first
of these touches than the following :
Take any passage of broken intervals, whether they be
octaves, sixths, thirds, mixed or whatever you like, play themfirst as solid intervals (Ex. 1 1 8) :
Ex.llS.Beethoveat Sonata, op.26
Then do the rotary movements corresponding to those in
the passage rhythmically in the air (Ex. 119):
Ex.110.
Qttt in out IB
out in out in
oat in opt in oat la oat in
oat in oat in oat in out in
oat in oat in oat in oat in
oat ia oat in oat in oat in
oat
oat oat
86
Trills and Rotary Movements of the Forearm
and thirdly play the passage as it was written, endeavouringto combine the two previous processes simultaneouslyinstead of doing one after the other, an endeavour in which
you will most often succeed. Of course if a friend enters the
room when your hands are "doing their magics" in the air
he may be constrained to ejaculate : "Alas ! are you often
taken like this ?"
In so far as the use of rotary action of the forearm necessi-
tates a conscious effort of the will, to make this conscious
effort and then, discontinuing it, rejoice in its "priceless
deposit" is a simpler affair than acquiring many of the
physical knacks which go to build up a reliable pianoforte
technique.
2O
Sight-Reading
THE surest foundation for the best kind of sight-reading is
to cultivate the power of hearing music in your mind by
looking at the page. Whether you are already skilled or a
timid and rather unsuccessful beginner in this direction, a
good ritual for practical use is to take short stretches of vary-
ing length according to the demands of the music selected,
and with each stretch to read it mentally first, then to play
it on the surface of the keys and finally out loud, when what
you hear should be eagerly compared with what you had
expected to hear. If either of the first two processes could
be swiftly improved, you could persevere with it for a little
while before proceeding to the next. The proposed ritual is
particularly valuable in helping you to avert inaccuracies
before they actually occur. We are taught that the recording
angel expects us to be tempted to play shabby tricks;
it is
only considered blameworthy if we carry them out. Once wehave made a mistake in playing out loud, it is more likely to
occur again than if the danger had been feared at an earlier
stage and avoided in the nick of time. Indeed the advantagesof "correct first time" tend to pile up at the rate of com-
pound interest. The possibilities of greater musical insightat first hearing are also of considerable importance.
It is a very good thing to read unfamiliar pieces two or
three times, perhaps with a few days in between, and if this,
like the ritual of the preceding paragraph, amounts to partly
prepared sight-reading, that well done will have more
Sight-Reading
influence on your progress than actual sight-reading of
poorer quality ; it is an example of what you should aspire
to, as well as making you more thoroughly acquainted with
a great deal of music as time goes on.
The habit of keeping your eye on the page while playingis of maximum usefulness in sight-reading* Although we
may have seen valiant deeds in this field performed by
players whose eyes darted up and down from page to key-
board, anyone who can do that well would become a superbinstead of a good reader if the darting could be eliminated.
It is often preached that one's eyes should be several bars
ahead of one's fingers in sight-reading, and the value of this
idea might be said to lie in the grasping of chord progres-sions and whole phrases rather than spelling out the music
a note at a time, however quickly. But essential though it
may be for one's eyes to glance forward on the page, it is
exceedingly valuable for them to glance back again and
indeed as often as possible to look the written notes straight
in the face while playing them. If this is accompanied by
grateful affection for musical notation it can often intensify
one's sense of the emotional poignancy of the music. To look
at these superb chords from Chopin's B minor Scherzo
during the very act of playing them (Ex. 120) :
Ex.120.
will surely help many of us to appreciate their shattering
forcefulness still more than ever.
If we analyse typical kinds of difficulty in correct reading
we shall not fail to notice the following widely differing
sources of confusion :
i Passage work of contrapuntal freedom of a very diatonic
character, such as is found in abundance in Elizabethan
composers and in Bach.
Practising the Piano
2 Passages that are riddled with accidentals, even if simple
rhythmically and otherwise.
3 The melodic floridity of the "Vienna period", involvingas it does so much rhythmical complexity.
4 Technical difficulties (Exx. 121, 122 and 123) :
Ex.12}. Beethoven* Sonata,op.2, no. 3
Mlegrocon trio.
Ex.122. Griegi Piano Concerto
5 Chords other than the standard ones in ordinary
harmony books.
6 Modern incomprehensibilities.
Many players are good at some of the above and bothered
by others. Comparatively few passages have more than twoof these difficulties at once. In any case, to realise which of
them gives us particular trouble will show us in whatdirections to seek for the most improvement.
Divining the character of what we read is in a different
sphere altogether, so important that it could occupy a whole
chapter or even volume. Perhaps the reader could bereferred at this point to the chapter on dramatic significance,but in any case no effort should be spared in developing our
90
, Sight-Reading
musical insight while sight-reading as well as in the work
which follows it.
Even if our sight-reading is of mediocre quality, there
are some ways in which we should respect it* If you play a
phrase straight away after you have first seen it such a one,
for instance as this (Ex. 124) :
Ex.124. B*chi Eng-lish Suite in E minor
F
it may result in love at first sight and there will very likely
be a beauty and a freshness in the sound that once lost mightnever be regained. Do everything you can to preserve that
lovely bloom : "thinking ten times and playing once" will
certainly help.
21
Miscellaneous
THE DIFFICULT PACEIF you play finger passages slowly, say in crotchets at about
J = ioo> ft *s eas7 to do so steadily> and if you have the
agilityto play the same passages in semiquavers, also at
J:ioo, the notes will probably sound equally or at any
rate agreeably steady. But try a middle pace, say quavers at
about J : |2o> anc* y u ma7 be reminded of church bells
that behave like this (Ex. 125) :
Ex.125.
This pace can be nicknamed "the difficult pace", and each
player tends to have his own difficult pace for given passages
just as each person has a natural pace for walking when
there is no special reason for haste or dalliance.
What is here recommended is that in long, swift succes-
sions of single notes, such as in many Bach movements or
Czerny Studies, we should find out the pace at which the
notes are the most tottery and then assiduously play long
stretches through at that exact pace. In a few days the
difficulty and staggerings will gradually melt out of existence,
so for the passages in question there will cease to be a diffi-
cult pace. It is not often that playing something badly with
conscious realisation of the fact proves positively beneficial.
92
Miscellaneous
Why it does so in this case seems to be that each little
stagger produces a sense of annoyance and that the next
time you pass the spot where you felt this annoyance a specialeffort will instinctively be made to avoid a repetition of the
previous defect. In some cases the defect may have beendue to failure in controlling the rotary movements of the
forearm, in others to vagueness about accentuation, and in
some you may be unable to trace the cause even when
improvement has been achieved. In any case the exploitationof "the difficult pace" can often prove to be the supple-
mentary treatment which moderately successful passagesstill need.
TRANSPOSITIONEx.120. Beethoven* Sonata, op. 81A
The above, like the twin passage later in the same move-
ment, is one of the sort that we practise for weeks and appearto have conquered, and then on the night of the concert we
go and fumble it. Many of the audience were on the look-
out, wondering whether we should get past this corner with
credit. So we must try and surround the passage with an
extra wide margin of safety. For this it will be good to slave
away in a variety of ways and two rather unhackneyed sug-
gestions are offered here. One is to play those three bars
beginning in all the twelve keys while adhering to the finger-
ing of the original passage. They begin in(7 though a series
of modulations starts almost immediately. If you begin a
semitone higher at each repetition, the thirteenth effort will
be the original one an octave higher. If you dread the
number thirteen you can retrace your steps a semitone at a
time and you will reach the original passage again at the
twenty-fifth effort ; you will certainly know it better then
93
Practising the Piano
than if you had played it twenty-five times as it is, and the
enormous number of little new movements suddenly
demanded of your hands and fingers will have greatly
increased your physical and mental agility. Of course, few
of my readers will be able at first to manage all these trans-
positions, but it would certainly pay to write out all those
that give too much trouble (using the new key signature each
time) after which you can play those transpositions from the
MS. Do not flinch, even if you have to write out the three
bars quite a number of times, for copying is valuable in
itself. If you are still obliged to grope about in some of the
transpositions even then, doing so will be worthwhile and
lead in time to greatly increased fluency.
DUPLICATIONAnother way of drudging at the above passage is to play
tiny units of two quavers twice each in unbroken sequence.
This is a device which allows you to do all the physical
movements in the passage at full speed but with twice as
long to think out what is coming next, a neat and most
helpful combination of the benefits of slow and quick prac-
tice at the same time. Our particular passage when dupli-
cated can be advantageously phrased in both the following
ways as far as practising is concerned (Ex. 127) :
Ex 127
The alternative printed over the notes, if carrying out the
proposed plan with less relentless logic, conforms better to
the grammatical sense of the music.
PRACTISING WITH THE WRONG HANDThis may strike many readers as a gratuitous and even
perverse waste of time, but it can be unexpectedly helpful. It
94
Miscellaneous
is a good way of getting to "know notes irrespective of the
fingering by which they are played". Moreover, as the righthand gets more opportunities of development than the
left hand, our eccentric procedure will often involve the left
hand in tasks that would not otherwise fall to its lot, thus at
least reducing the inequalities of opportunity as between the
hands. In one kind of passage, it may be noted, most left
hands have learned to excel the right to a marked degree.
Try sliding the stool about a foot to the left and playing the
left-hand part of your favourite Chopin Waltz with your
right hand, an experiment which brings surprise to many.
22
Bodily Stillness
SOME bodily movements as you sit at "the piano help youto play given passages, as when you need to reach the top or
bottom of the keyboard with both hands. Others may help
your imagination in the task of getting into the right mood
to interpret the piece or passage. Some may, and in fact do,
impress the public in various ways, though what might be
called the "higher showmanship" may lead us to abjure
them. From the technical point of view the elimination of
superfluous bodily movements can vastly reduce the physical
complexities and sum total of exertion in the difficult pas-
sages. If you think of drawing a circle with a compass and
allowing the pin to slip away from the centre before the
circle is complete, the danger to your circle suggests the
devastating effect of shuffling on the piano stool and other
unnecessary movements.
To bother about the question when you are on the plat-
form may be unwise, but do so sometimes during practice.
Perhaps the best time to play passages with your body as
still as a statue is when you are trying to listen with more
than usually critical attention. If you think this (Ex. 128) :
Ex.128. Beethovem Sonata in C minor for Piano and Violin
Atltgr*
96
Bodily Stillness
was as exciting as it ought to have been when no visible
movement followed the staccato C, you were probably justi-fied in the belief. If you had flung your arms into the air
with a dramatic gesture you would have been far more likelyto be self-deceived.
Of course, ifyou hold yourselfstill by stiffening, the energysaved in one direction may be lost in another. The poise of
a racer ready to dart away, or of a cat before a spring, is what
is wanted. Some good devices for cultivating the knack are :
1 Take a passage like Variation No. 4 in Schumann's
Symphonic Studies. First play the right-hand part while the
left hand lies on the keyboard an inch or two lower than the
lowest right-hand note. Then play the left-hand part while
the right hand lies an inch or two above the highest left-hand
note. The benefits of this treatment will soon be apparent.2 Play difficult passages staring fixedly at the music on
the page as you do so. The line of vision between your eyeand the page will be like a magical silken thread, and will
eliminate a great many bodily movements while drawing
your attention to those that still occur.
3 Pretend that you are literally glued to the piano stool,
4 Get someone to hold two fingers below your chin in
gentle contact while you are playing some animated passagesand every time there is a tremor in your frame you will be
most potently informed.
Let it be reiterated that these devices are of extra use and
comfort when adopted with the special purpose of listening
more critically to the actual musical effect. It will also be
found that playing on the surface of the keys, and playing
fp regardless of the eventual need for tonal variety, both
allow one to bear bodily stillness in mind with less appre-hension or sense of constraint than in a normal performance.And when you have reached the stage of knowing that given
difficult passages are under better control because you are
keeping still, it ceases to handicap you to bear such benefits
firmly in mind even on the concert platfoms.
97
23
Athletic Form
THE first day of the tennis season or of a walking tour
in hilly country often produces aching and stiffness, due to
energetic and persistent use of muscles that have not been
in vigorous action lately,if indeed ever before. The discom-
fort is appropriately described as healthy tiredness and the
remedy is further persistence in the days that follow. By
inducing this healthy tiredness in our hands and arms, we
can build up varied muscular efficiency, which will greatly
increase the speed, nimbleness and endurance that so manytechnical difficulties in piano playing demand. The problem,which has already been touched upon in chapter 3, part II,
is to recognise the difference between healthy tiredness and
strain.
A pianist who has had physical trouble like neuritis, local
strains and so forth, may need expert advice before venturingto act upon the suggestions that follow ; they may only be
adopted with safety by those who have had no earlier set-
backs. For the latter, these two tests will be found helpfulin determining whether their efforts are on sound lines.
i Leschetizky used to assert that with any continued
action producing tiredness in the forearm, even to the extent
of a burning sensation, it was all right if the discomfort was
above (that is, the part of the forearm you can see when youare playing). In that case you could go on till you were
Athletic Form
"black in the face". But if the discomfort was felt below,
you were to leave off at once. To find pieces or passages in
which the same sort of difficulty is unremitting is better
than plodding away with dull, unmusical exercises, or, if
you can, to extemporise tunes with modulatory designs andharmonic variety is an admirable way of combining duty and
pleasure. If you want to exercise both hands at once,
Chopin's Studies op. 25, nos. 3 and 12, are suitable, while
if you play the same composer's op. 10, nos. 8 and 12 in
alternation, one hand can get respite while the other is
purposely tiring itself. We were advised to repeat such
alternations so that each hand after resting could tire itself
again.
2 Taking similar examples (Chopin Studies, etc.), when
you cannot play them right through without the wrong pain
coming on or the loss ofpower to sound the notes adequately,notice at what point the pain or inadequacy occurs. If it is
nearer to the end of the piece on Tuesday than it was on
Monday, healthy tiredness may be diagnosed, especially if
you get still nearer to the end on Wednesday. If the pain or
inadequacy occurs sooner on a later day it may be regardedas a danger signal.
Many other Chopin Studies tax one's endurance in the
ideal way for our present purpose, and sets of variations
often provide very suitable material. So may passages out
of the pieces you are learning. If any reader is studyingBrahms' B[j Piano Concerto, he could not do much better
than use the coda of the second movement. It will be found
that the beneficial healthy tiredness in given pieces or pas-
sages may fail to be produced after a while, for one's powersof endurance grow and cease to be over-taxed. When that
happens, you must either search out different material or
decide that the bout of exercising shall be considered at an
end for the time being. It seems that occasional spasmodicbouts of this sort of work are more useful and, surprisingly
enough, of more permanent value than the hour or half-hour
99
Practising the Piano
of technical exercising which is usually so piously advocated
for daily fare, year in, year out. And the time that is saved
for learning more music is of immeasurable value.
In chapter 3, part II, practising long successions of
staccato chords with a swift, tight fist-clench after everychord was recommended. Variation No. 4 of the Handel-
Brahms set, with the fist-clench on every semiquaver, keepsthe right hand clenching with hardly any respite, the left
hand more intermittently. Let the left hand stay tightlyclenched whenever it has nothing to play (Ex. 10, ignoringthe pauses) :
Ex. 10. Brahms : Variations on a theme of Handel, op.24
Variation No. 25 of the same set with four clenches a bar
in each hand, i.e. whenever rests are printed (Ex. 9, ignoringthe pauses) :
Ex. 9. Brahms Variations on a theme of Handel, op.24
is highly pleasurable. Here one hand stays clenched while
the other hand is playing and one's movements recall those
of a cat that is pleased. It was specially in this context of
athletic muscular development that Leschetizky used to addhis solemn warning: "And don't forget that the more
technique you get the worse you'll play !" I have probablyquoted this remark to most of the pupils I have had in mylong teaching life. The truth that lies within the palpableover-statement is that when muscular sensation engagestoo much of our mind as we play, human expression and
IOC
Athletic Form
significance (or call it interpretative life) is cold-shouldered.
From the purely muscular point ofview it also seems that the
greatest benefit is enjoyed when one's athletic form, havingreached a kind of high-watermark, has been allowed a few
days for a partial recession of the tide.
101
Dramatic Significance
PERHAPS the subject of this chapter is really the funda-
mental essence of musical interpretation itself, although
oddly enough two well-known books on interpretation seem
to be principally occupied with questions like time flexibility
in the one case and the style of presentation proper for
different periods of music in the other. Perhaps the claims
of musical nationality might have filled a third book, but
although all three subjects are admittedly important aspects
of interpretation they are surely not right at the heart of the
matter.
Whatever our views on these points, the dramatic signifi-
cance in musical works is of profound importance both in
itself and as an element of performance. It might be hastily
assumed that what is dramatic will be of a fevered and
excited character, but though that would be appropriate
enough in some cases it would clearly be out of place in
others. Lullabies should be slumbrous, laments grief-
stricken, sarabands stately, and so on. Berlioz made a pointof some psychological subtlety in the observation that whenshe was singing "A King in Thule" nothing should be
further from Margaret's thoughts than the King in Thule.
Our subject seems interwoven with the twin questions of
music set to words and programme music. Meditating on
these branches of the art is a great interpretative education.
For instance, Bach's arias and choruses, Mozart's operatic
102
Dramatic Significance
numbers and Schubert's Lieder cast floods of light on the
way we should play the works of those masters on the piano.
Similarly, symphonic poems, overtures and innumerable
passages from operas contribute to the wealth of imagina-tive suggestion that music so richly provides, even thoughthe literature of descriptive pieces for piano is comparativelysmall. Notable contributors in that direction have been
Schumann, Grieg and Debussy. The first named was quitea pioneer in the use of titles (which can be said with no lack
ofrecognition of earlier pioneers likeJohn Munday, Kuhnau,and others), though if some of Schumann's are apt indeed,others are of no perceptible relevance. The titles of Griegand Debussy are usually so happily wedded to the music that
title and music both add to the total beauty and significance.Some folk decry the whole idea of programme music,
though that seems to be woefully unmindful of a lovely
province in the musical territory. Tovey put the whole prob-lem of programme music in a very reasonable light when he
said that Beethoven's "Lebewohl" Sonata tells you a lot
more about the title than the title tells you about the music,and if one's first impression is "a smart epigram", it soon
becomes evident that the utterance is one of profound dis-
cernment. A warning note is struck in an amusing tale about
Beethoven which Leschetizky told and which I have never
seen in print. An enthusiastic amateur was asking himwhether he really intended the first notes of the C minor
Symphony to represent a yellow-hammer, or the knockingof Fate or indeed what. The composer's uncompromising
. .S_
reply was : "I meant<
* J "j J | j. ^ that's what
I meant 1"*'
---*You will sometimes hear derisory comments on teachers
or others who gild their counsel with flowery similes. But
when these are appropriate enough there can be great
potency in them. Aptness and sincerity are the qualities that
justify their use. The great composers often had recourse to
them in their expression marks and in verbal statement.
H 103
Practising the Piano
Beethoven's direction "beklemmt", Haydn's "innocente",
Prokofiev with his "narrante", "alzando", etc., Bax with
"feroce", Debussy with hosts of suggestions, Hindemith's
"mitbizarrerPlumpheit"andScriabin's "perfide" (though
the last is totally unintelligible to me) spring rapidly to mind,
Debussy told Thomas Fielden that the opening of his piece
Mouvemcnt should be "like the hum of a great city". Most
impressive of all, perhaps, was Beethoven's hint that the
recitatives in the first movement of op. 31, no. 2, should be
like a voice from the tomb. A teacher's similes will naturally
tend to be modificatory rather than creative : "more persua-
sive", "why so sentimental?", "sterner", are essentially
related to efforts which already have some character of their
own.
There is a school of thought in this century that favours
the playing of music in a strictly businesslike frame of mind,
with total accuracy according to the text both regarding the
music and the expression marks, but with scrupulous
detachment on the part of the players, who should not
allow their feelings of love, reverence, joy or delight to add
to the presentation. The doctrine, however unacceptable to
some of us, was apparently a violent swing of the pendulum
away from the tendency at the end of the last century to
offer performances in which the individuality of players pro-
duced results too widely at variance with the spirit of the
compositions presented.An uncle ofmine who haunted St. James's Hall in the '8os
and '90$ used to expatiate on various famous pianists whomhe had heard there. It always ended up with eulogies of
Anton Rubinstein and how it was the dramatic significance of
his playing that gave him pre-eminence. Leschetizky's des-
scription of Rubinstein's intense expressiveness has prob-
ably left a deeper impression on some of his pupils' minds
than many of the magnificent performances we heard even
in our most impressionable years. "Heard melodies are
sweetj but those unheard . . ."
104
25
Memory
IT may be reasonably urged that those who are able to
memorise their pieces should usually do so and that those
who having done so play better with the music should
play with the music ; there is a vast difference between look-
ing at the page to remind yourself of what you already knowand looking at it to fill in the gaps by last-minute sight-
reading.At one time the public became very intolerant of soloists
who used the music, only a few favourites like Pachmannand Pugno could do so with impunity. The repertory of
recital programmes fifty years ago, however, lent itself to
easy and natural memorisation, rarely going back before
Bach and as yet uncomplicated by the bewildering develop-ments and experiments that were to follow Debussy.Beethoven, very often Bach, Chopin and most of the com-
posers up to 1900 or so fall into the normal pianist's
memory and stay there. Far fewer players can deal with someof the ever-changing fashions that have sprung up in the
present century. Going back to the Elizabethans, many of
their effective pieces are unusually difficult to memoriseto give only one instance, the captivating variations on
Bellinger's Round by William Byrd, which only take about
six minutes to play, provide over forty occasions where the
wrong turning could be taken without loss of coherence.
If you have not already learnt to play by heart, make an
105
Practising the Piano
attempt to do so. If you find you can only play uncon-
strainedly without the music, make a serious effort at self-
conquest and learn to overcome that very common but in
some ways regrettable limitation of your powers. The final
consideration should be the quality of the performances you
can offer, with or without the notes.
As regards the task of memorisation, the somewhat nega-
tive policy of daily studying pieces and awaiting a moment
when you find you know them by heart will often prove
successful. But a more methodical approach will sometimes
be necessary and may often be preferable. One of these
would be called conning if you were learning a poem. You
utter a succession of words, one line for instance, over and
over again with your eyes on the page, and eventually try it
with your eyes shut or turned away. When you have uttered
fourteen separate lines, each one without looking, the sonnet
(say the psychologists) is already in your memory. If after
success with the fourteenth line you try to start again, you
may seem to have totally forgotten the beginning, though it
is a comfort, if a cold one, to be told that the impression is
there in your mind, merely covered up by subsequent
impressions. The truth, however, in this cold comfort will
emerge later, possibly next morning.
Taking the delayed continuity of chapter I as the basis
of such conning, the ritual advocated could be modified in
some such way as "plan play try it by heart", but the
preliminary rehearsals, mental and physical, would often
have to be repeated a number of times to be effectual, or
else supplemented by a series of alternatives. Earlier chapters
and your own habits of work should provide a goodly stock
of these. It may be added that four, eight, or even more
bars at a time will usually be preferable to the very short
phrases used in illustration of chapter i . There is no need
to be rigid ; you can carry out as much of the programmeas you find you are able to enjoy regarded as a musical
experience. In doing that you will be ensuring a general
improvement in your playing quite apart from the degree of
106
Memory
success in the memorisation. Indeed, if you find you cannot
play the chosen stretch by heart in your mind, it will often
be better to play it with the music and pass on to the task
of conning the next stretch, in preference to the bulldog
tenacity of further struggling with the present one. Thework you have just done will in any case bear more fruit a
week hence than can be expected today.If you play chosen stretches several times out loud with
the music and then try them once without, that would beless intensive conning. The more repetitions there were,
however, the more danger would there be that the playingswould become dull and perfunctory. A precaution againstthis would be to avoid any repetition when your interest
in the actual music wanes. It will probably allow of a greaternumber of profitable repetitions if some of them are care-
fully varied, very slow, very soft, with different tone schemes,and so on. Even some trivial irrelevance, like shutting one
eye, may startle us into a new alertness. But as advised in
the previous paragraph, to pass on in the case of momentarylack of success can be better than too much grim persistenceat the time.
Whatever our methods of attacking the problems of
memorising, subsequent tests need to be applied and should
be varied. One very good one is playing on the surface of
the keys. My own pupils have often been told : "If you can
play this through correctly on the surface of the keys byheart, you deserve to manage it out loud, but not unless." Thesame could be said regarding playing by heart in your head.
Another test is whether you can begin anywhere within
reason, such as immediately after good stopping-places. In
sonata form movements, for instance, to be able to beginwhere the bridge starts or the second subject, or the second
melody of the second subject when there is one, or at the
codetta, would all be good starting-places. To repeat suitable
lengths two or three times in succession by heart gives us
experience in starting at various points without the usual
advantage of having just arrived there.
107
Practising the Piano
A useful if quaint device for beginning anywhere is to
play from further back (the very opening if necessary) on the
surface of the keys, and, at the moment at which you desire
to start, suddenly to play out loud. This is quite amusingly
helpful and will often enable you to start at a given spot a
number of times in succession for the purpose of tryingalternative nuances, pedallings, fingerings and so on, by
memory.Sometimes we can play or think passages by memory up
to time, but not very slowly. In such cases to remedy the
detected weakness will certainly bring additional safety.
We can remember the printed page, though unless it sug-
gests the sounds it is musically null and void a sense of
sight. We can remember the physical sensations of playing,
many of which are included in playing on the surface of the
keys (which tends to bring other aspects of memory with it)
a sense of touch. We can remember the sound of the
music upon which the meaning and beauty depend a sense
of hearing, though if this is not allied to the memory in yoursense of touch it will not enable you to play the music, while
if your memory of the printed page is added to both, the
total security will be the greater.When playing by heart the boldest spirit may be intimi
dated by a sudden thought that a memory hitch is impend-ing. A policy which is sometimes followed in such a crisis is
to stop thinking and play by mechanical memory, but
positive thought is preferable. The more your technique is
based on the habit of your keyboard journeys resulting fromthe inward singing of the melodic and harmonic progres-sions, the more safety will there be in ceasing to look at the
keys so as to stimulate the groping propensities of your
fingers and singing internally with concentrated determina-
tion. My pupils and I have a somewhat crude motto for use
in exorcising this particular demon of fear which for the
polite world could be translated as : "Shut your eyes and
sing inwardly with all your heart and soul."
108
26
Conclusion
A FEW general observations may not come amiss. Whenstarting to practise, try to form as clear an idea as possibleof what you are hoping to achieve* Then when you stop youcan judge better whether the time has been well spent. Ofcourse this is more difficult to estimate when some goal is
in view that is certain to take weeks to attain. Even so
you can ask yourself many questions like : "Do I graspthe musical meanings more fully? Do I know the notes
better? Am I clearer what to attempt tomorrow? Whatabout the pedalling? Is the execution improving? Whatelse?"
In planning ahead we must sometimes decide to concen-
trate more specially on learning new works and sometimes
on improving those we know. Adding to our repertoire often
improves the quality of pieces already learnt, partly by
giving the latter a rest and partly because of the increasingskill and experience that are being acquired. But it is not easyto foretell which works will thus benefit.
Periodical overhauls are stimulating and sometimes lead
to weak points becoming strong ones. Accuracy, trills,
pedalling, audibility in$, mellowness in jf, rhythm, the left
hand, are all typical objects for such a special overhaul. Asone of these progresses there will be no need to deteriorate
in other directions.
At an early stage the problem may arise as to whether we
109
Practising the Piano
should spend more time on exercises, scales, studies or
pieces. It is partly a question of personal inclination and the
beliefs of your teacher, but still more depends on how you
practise what you do practise, let us even say how tastefully
you do so. If this were agreed we could add that if you use
studies of the Czerny and Cramer type, it is best to choose
those which would charm an audience if beautifully playedat a concert, and very rarely, if ever, to practise them in a
totally detached or dry manner. And it is better to practiseactual passages out of pieces instead of inherently meaning-less and humdrum successions of notes in preparation for the
subsequent conquest of those or like passages. In any case
the flowing passage work of Byrd, Bach and others is likelyto benefit you more than even the most melodious typical
study, as in the former, the notes which lie ahead are so veryoften aurally and technically less expected. First hearingthese notes in your mind and then finding them on the key-board with the fingers best suited to do so give you a
better foundation for your technique than that upon which
many players build.
Sometimes learn pieces that are unquestionably too diffi-
cult, not intending to master them in one spell of work. In
such an enterprise let there be a month or two of workfollowed by a long interval during which you keep busy with
other pieces, then a second month ortwo followed by a similar
long interval. At the third or fourth spell of work you mayquite likely succeed in completing a task that might never
have been achieved in one spell (however grimly determined
the effort), and although there will probably be some piecesthat you do not master even in the end, the work on themwill prove of far-reaching value in regard to your general
progress. Fanny Davies once told me that she often workedat Beethoven's op. 106 and intended to play it some day.She was then in her sixties. She had great vitality andwhether she ever performed the sonata or not, it must havenourished her glowing imagination to work at it. On oneoccasion when Leschetizky was talking about various
no
Conclusion
pianists who did not play Schumann's Toccata, he added :
"Of course they've studied it."
If this book can be said to be written from a given pointof view, its dominating idea might be described as the cultiva-
tion of conscious purpose in all our playing and practising,and an endeavour to reduce the parrot element to a mini-
mum. An experience outside the sphere of music may serve
as an illustration. At the outset of one of my few attemptsto learn a new language, the little grammar book which was
placed in my hands urged readers always to think about the
meaning of the words they were writing or uttering,whether referring to the hues of a sunset, the perfume of a
rose or the everyday concerns of gardeners and their aunts.
Following this advice may have delayed arrival on the last
page by many a long day, but its beneficial influence bymaking me think in the language, instead of translatingwords as I went along, was of permanent value.
In piano playing the higher the proportion of will-powerand conscious direction of the mind becomes, the slighter
becomes each actual effort of will. These efforts are gradu-
ally transformed into a kind of second nature that has the
advantages of mechanical execution without the drawbacks,
furthering the sense of human intention, significance and
beauty for the listener, the concentrated absorption of the
player, and the greater reliability and permanence of
technical control, whereby one's playing does not get nearlyso rusty when physical practice has not been regular.
It is difficult to find the right words with which to con-
clude. It has been said of those who uphold a certain line of
thought : "They speak truth, they have one-twelfth of the
truth." If what is written in this volume has a small fraction
of the truth it may help some of my fellow music-lovers to
make further headway on their road. Above all, let us
remember that every pianistic problem has both its origin
and solution in the music itself.
in
INDEX
AcCELLERANDO, JZAcciaccatura, 45, 46, 50
Adagio, 1 8
"Alzando", 104
Analytical listening, 23
Aptness, 103
Arpeggio, 51
Audibility in pp, 109
BACH, J. S., 4, 8, 10, 52, 60,
83,89,91,92, 102, 105, noBallade in F minor (Chopin), 73;
in G minor (Brahms), 46;
(Chopin), 6 1-2
Bax, Arnold, 104Beat, flexibility of, 72f.; flexibility
within, 72!*.; marking the,
29-30Beating with the other hand, 84Beethoven, 3, 4, 8, 23, 73, 77, 80,
8 1, 86, 90, 93, 94, 96, 103,
104, 105, no"Beklemmt", 104Berlioz, 102
Binary form, 1 5
"Black Key" Study, 86
Bodily stillness, 96-7Booth, Victor, 43Boult, Sir Adrian, 33-4
Brahms, 5, 46, 47, 99, 100
Byrd, William, 37, 105, no
C/ADENCES, 63Cantabile, 70Chopin, 2, 21, 24, 25, 27-30, 48-9,
50, 55-9, 61, 62, 73, 74, 77,
80-1, 86, 89, 95, 99, 105
Chords, 10-16, 17-18; six-note, 18;
solid, 47-50; staccato, 16, 100
Coda, 33, 57Concerto in D minor (J. S. Bach), 8
Conducting, 7-9, 67, 72
Continuity, 1-6; dekyed, 66
Contrapuntal sense, 13Cramer, noCrescendo, 15, 1 8
Czerny, 52, 92, no
UAVIES, FANNY, noDebussy, 85, 103, 104, 105
Development, 33Difficult passages, 55-9Diminuendo, 15, 85
Dissonances, momentary, 24Dominant sevenths, 12, 35-42Dramatic significance, 102-4
Duplication, 94
English Suite in E Minor (J. S.
Bach), 91
Erlkonlg (Schubert), 90Etudes Symp&ontfues (Schumann)
16,97Execution, 5
Exposition, 33
FADINGS, 85
Fantasy Impromptu, 50
Fatigue, 98JF.
"Feroce", 104Fielden, Thomas, 104
Finger passages, 27-30
Practising the Piano
Fingering, 2, 29, 35-42, 49, 50, 54;
57, 60-2, 95; grotesque, 79;
legato, 61; mixed, 35, 37-8;
organ, 35, 39-40; recurrent,
35-7; unorthodox, 41Forearm, rotary movements of, 83-7
"Forty-eight, The", 10, 6$ff.
Franck, C&ar, 24, 25French Suite in G (J. S. Bach), 4Fugue, 63-7
CJRACE NOTES, 41-2Gradation, uneven, 15
Grieg, 90, 103
Group practice, 28-9, 53, 83-4
HALF-CHANGE, 24Hall Classics, 55Hamlet, 78Hand positions, preparing, 76-9Harmonic effect, 13; progressions,
i off!
Haydn, 37, 104Hindemith, 104Hummel, 74
"TINNOCENTS", 104
Inversion, 13
JACOBS,W. W., 22
KEY CHANGE, 12; signature, 10
"Kreutzer" Sonata, 73Kuhnau, 103
LAMENTS, 102
Largo, op. 7 (Beethoven), 80
"Lebewohl" Sonata (Beethoven),
103Left Hand Study (Czerny), 52
Legato, 3, 17, 19, 24-5, 32, 37, 39,
40,41,53-4,61Leschetizky, i, 7, 22-3, 27, 74, 76,
98, 100, 103, 104, noLieder, 103
Lullabies, 102
MARTEIXATO, 86
Matthay, Tobias, 34, 85Mellowness in^ 109Melodic tone gradation, 8; unit, in.
Memorisation, 4, 105-8Mendelssohn, 3, 22, 23, 46, 47Mental rehearsal, i, 2, 4, 79, 106
Mentalising technique, 5, 44Metronome, practising with, 29"Mit bizarrer Plumpheit", 104Modulations, 12, 21
Moment Musical (Schubert), i, 24Mood-line, unbroken, 3 1-2
Mordent, upper, 84-5Mouvement (Debussy), 104Mozart, 102
Munday, John, 103Muscular development, 98-101
104NARRANTE"Neuritis, 98Nikisch, Artur, 3 1
Nocturne in B major (Chopin), 21;
in D flat (Chopin), 74; in F
sharp (Chopin), 74
V-/CTAVE, 51-4, 58, 60-1; coupler,
65 gauge, 5*; kgato, 53-4?
staccato, 52-4
One-finger practising, 60-2
Opera, 102-3
Over-accentuation, 83, 85
Overtures, 103
114
JL ACE, THE DIFFICULT, 92-3Pachmann, 105Pause, iff., 23, 24, 66
Pedalling, 2, 17-26, 32, 65-6, 80,
85, 109; changing, 25; con-
scious control, 18; influence on
rhythmical life of pieces, 25;
intermittent, 19-20; legato, 17;musical expression, 18; over-,
26
"Perfide", 104
Petersburg, 31
Phrase, iff.
Physical discomfort, 14Piano Concerto (Grieg), 90; in
B flat (Brahms), 99Postman's knock, 45-6
Practising on the surface of the keys,
32, 43-4; special, 14-16; with
wrong hand, 94-5
Prelude^ Aria and Finale (Franck),
24, 25; in C minor (Chopin),
24; in F sharp minor (Chopin),
. f8
Principal note, 84
Programme music, 102, 103
Progressions, 10-14
Prokofiev, 104Prometheus Unbound^ 32
Pugno, 105
JtvALLENTANDO, 72
Recapitulation, 33
Rhapsody in G minor (Brahms), 47Ritual, ix, 1,15Rhythm, 30, 37, 65, 109; postman's
knock, 45-6
Rotary action, 85; freedom, 85-6
"Rowing", 53, 68-71
Rubato, 72, 73Rubinstein, Anton, 104; Competi-
tion, 3 1
ST. PETERSBURG, 3 r
Sarabands, 102
Index
Scales, major, 10; double-note, 35-
41; minor, 10; octave, 51-4;
single-note, 37; whole-tone, 85Scherzo (Mendelssohn), 46; in B
minor (Chopin), 89Schubert, i, 2, 24, 90, 103Schumann, 16, 97, 103, noScriabin, 104
"See-sawing", 29, 44, 53, 68-71
Self-criticism, i, 2-3
Bellinger's Round (Byrd), 37, 105Semitone shifts, n, 13Senza tempo, 72
Shakespeare, 78Shaw, G. B., 44Shelley, 32Shoulder looseness, 68-71
Sight-reading, 88-91
Sincerity, 103
Singing, 7-9, 32-3, 76-8Slow practice, 6, 20, 27, 28, 94Slurs, 36, 37
Smudge, 21, 22, 23, 24, 43, 78Solid intervals, 86Sonata in C minor for piano and
violin (Beethoven), 96; in D(Hummel), 74; op. 2, no. 3
(Beethoven), 90; op. 10, no. I
(Beethoven), 81; op. 26 (Beet-
hoven), 23, 86; op. 27, no. I
(Beethoven), 77; op. 27, no. 2
(Beethoven), 3-4; op. 8iA
(Beethoven), 93Song without words (Mendelssohn),
3
Sound-point, 17
Staccatissimo, 14, 28-9Staccato, 3, 19-20, 41, 45-6, 52-4,
65* 76, loo; bumpy, 38; hand,
27-8;sempre, 37Staleness, curing, 44Stopping practice, i, 5
Stops, experimental, 4-5
Strain, 98Study in A flat, op. 25, no. i
(Chopin), 55-6; in C minor,
op. 10, no. 12 (Chopin), 58-9;in F minor, op. 25, no. 2
Practising the Piano
Study cont.
(Chopin), 86; in G flat, op.
25 (Chopin)^ 57-8; op. 10,no. 3 (Chopin), 2; op. 10,no. 7 (Chopin), 49; op. 12, no.
12 (Chopin), 27; op. 25, no. i
(Chopin), 50; op. 25, no. 12
(Chopin), 48-9; op. 740, no. 3
(Czerny), 52
Swellings, 85
Symphonic poems, 103
Symphonic Variations (Schumann),
97Symphony in C minor (Beethoven),
103
1 EMPO, CHANGING THE, 74Tenuto, 4, 28
Thinking back, 3, 34; forward, 3, 34Tied notes, 65Timbre, 82
Time, gradations of, 72-5
Toccato (Schumann), noTone, beauty of, 80-2; gradations,
21, 28, 29, 85; schemes, 15
Tovey, 103
Tranquillity, 18
Transposition, 93-4Triads, inverted, 10; root-position,
10
Trills, 83-7, 109
Two-part Inventions (J. S. Bach),
52,60
VARIATIONS ON A THEME OFHANDEL (BRAHMS), 5, 100
"Vienna period", 90
WALDSTEIN" SONATA, 37Waltz, op. 34, no. i (Chopin), 25We Piano Teachers, 43Whole-arm work, 53Wrist work, 53
116
Interpreting Mozart
on the Keyboard
EVA AND PAUL
BADURA-SKODA
Although this book refers mainly to
Mozart's keyboard music, it is designed
to interest anyone who loves the com-
poser's works, whether as performer or
listener. The means of music-making
have changed; the piano is virtually
another instrument; the constitution of
orchestras has greatly changed. This is
dealt with in the first chapter. Much
space,, with many musical examples, is
given to the obscure but important ques-
tion of ornaments. Other chapters deal
with cadenzas and with passages in
Mozart where the performer is expected
to improvise embellishments. A chapter
on Rhythm and Tempo shows the
rational, exact way in which the composer
treated this fundamental question, and
points to some pitfalls for the modern
interpreter. Here, as throughout the book,
the authors draw generously on Mozart's
letters, and on treatises written by other
leading musicians of the time, including
his father and C. P. E. Bach. For the
pianist there is a chapter on some specific
technical problems presented by Mozart's
keyboard writing. The long final chapter
provides a detailed commentary on three
of his best known piano concertos.
"This scholarly and stimulating book . . .
It is a book which no thoughtful player
or teacher can ignore." Listener
"Until the coming of the present book, I
cannot recall one which deals so fully
with the interpretive aspect of his work."
Music Teacher
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