Learn How to Play Piano from Expert

Now comes along the temperamental student, burning with ardour for the beauty of the music, longing to make the noble chords of some fine melody speak out its message! What special pitfall lies ready to entrap his zealous endeavours? Why, in his enthusiasm that the melody in both hands should be properly brought out, he gets one hand playing after the other! Only a fraction of a second after the left hand does the right hand strike, but in that loss of simultaneousness of sound the whole grandeur after which the performer is striving will be dispelled in the irritating effect of one part of the harmony always reaching the ear at a slight interval after the other. This is a most frequent failing amongst very musical people who enjoy tremendously what they are playing; and especially does it occur with them in slow movements, when they will arpeggio the chords between the two hands so much that it sounds to me like drawling in speech, or even like stuttering. These enthusiasts lose their sense of the symmetry of the sound in their intense pleasure over its component parts, and it is hard that the very virtue that lies in their love of the music can thus lead them into danger.

Dragging the time, another tiresome error of judgment, proceeds generally from the same cause of over-fervour. The player who suffers from this blemish mostly owes it to a lack of sense of proportion and taste, and to a certain want 01 artistic perception of the guiding line between true sentiment and sentimentality.

Pianoforte technique might almost be said to be divided into two schools.

The one seems as if it were exactly adapted to suit the peculiar powers of the instrument, and is that which, having been greatly modernized by Chopin, culminated in the genius of Liszt. The passage writing of both these pre-eminent composers for the piano are unsurpassed as pure pianoforte technique both as regards expression, effectiveness and brilliancy.

The other school, on the contrary, could almost be described as having developed on lines antagonistic to the piano’s natural limitations and even to those of the human hand. Some of the finest pianoforte works, however, are to be found in this category, two of its greatest representatives being Schumann and Brahms. (It must be remembered that I am speaking here entirely from the point of view of purely mechanical technique, and not considering the musical side of the question at all.)

This is why many of the pianoforte compositions of Schumann, and especially also of Brahms, are so terribly difficult to master. Brahms never seemed to stop to consider much about the limitations of the instrument he was writing for, but let his imagination and creative faculty develop unhindered, and undeterred, by questions of technical unsuitability. Thus some of his most beautiful passages are written almost in defiance of the natural technique of the piano, so that the pianist, in order to arrive at investing them with their full significance and effect, would often be glad of twenty fingers to play them with instead of the mere ten which he possesses!

In this kind of music, tending as it does more towards orchestral effects than to purely pianistic ones, the player must often resort to fingering that at first seems against all reason, to obtain the mastery over the difficulties. For though in general in all piano playing the principle should be firmly established that the hand must look natural and elegant to the eye upon the keyboard, yet here that rule must be thrown overboard, in order to preserve the necessary expression and plasticity.

Correct fingering is a very essential part of piano playing, for it not only conduces to an easy supple technique and to the proper performance of the music, but it also assists in giving light and shade to passages.

This is because some of the fingers are stronger by nature, and some are weaker, and by using them according to their different strength when required, a certain natural gradation of tones is thereby generated.

In the early days of pianoforte playing it was considered wrong to use the thumb or the 5th finger at all upon the keyboard, and later when these two were admitted it was still forbidden by teachers to take a black key with the thumb, and this even until quite a short time ago.

The reason that the use of the thumb was thus limited was partly due to the fact of its working rather awkwardly on the black notes owing to its construction. But the main objection to it really was that it was impossible to get a legato tone on the black keys if the thumb was employed. This would be so still if it were not for the help of the pedal; but until recently the pedal had not reached the perfection of mechanism which it now enjoys, and was consequently not applied so much. At any rate people did not think of using it to facilitate the free employment of the thumb. ‘Nowadays, of course, even jumps can be bound over by the skilful application of the pedal, and a smooth, flowing, continuity of tone can be obtained in the most awkward passages.

In some ways smoothness is even more difficult to master in arpeggi than in scales, as in them the intervals necessitate wide jumps, which have to be negotiated. I will take the arpeggio in the common chord of C major in the right hand, to illustrate first the method which I have found very successful with students.

The idea is the same as in the scale. The problem which presents itself is how to smooth over the jump between G and C. On the accompanying diagram I attempt to show, by the small lines underneath the notes, how the finger which falls just before the thumb (in this case it is the 3rd, on G) is raised from the wrist and inclined towards the direction to which the hand has to proceed.

Showing the 3rd finger placed with raised wrist for passage of thumb.

This 3rd finger should be placed upon the note exactly one and three-quarter inches length away from the edge of the key towards the back of the keyboard, and the thumb should fall underneath it upon C, just the length of its own nail away from the key edge, that is about a quarter of an inch. Thus :

Arpeggio. C major. Right hand ascending,
showing relative positions of the thumb and finger.

Coming down the position is reversed, as follows: The thumb falls upon the note at the one and three-quarter-inch position from the edge of the key, when it is lifted up by the wrist movement, and the 3rd or 4th finger, as the case may be, then falls over the thumb on to the note below, about one-quarter inch from the edge of the key. Thus :

Arpeggio. C major. Right hand descending (starting from right of diagram),
beginning with 2nd finger on E, so as to show relative position of the fingers used.

The movement of the wrist makes for smoothness at the jump and helps to prepare the hand for the next position. The principle is similar in both hands as in the scales, only reversed in the left; that is to say, when the left hand ascends the thumb is lifted by the wrist and placed one and a quarter inches from the end of the key, while going down it is the 3rd or 4th finger which assumes that position, the thumb falling on the key at the quarter inch from the end of the key, as in the ascending right hand arpeggio.

Arpeggio. C major. Left hand ascending (starting from left of diagram),
beginning with the thumb on C, so as to show the relative positions of the other fingers.

Arpeggio. C major. Left hand descending (starting from right of diagram),
beginning with the 4th finger on E, so as to show the relative position of the fingers used.

Exactly the same rules apply in all the varieties of arpeggio playing.

It is absolutely imperative for students who wish to acquire any proficiency in pianoforte playing to practise a good amount of scales and arpeggi every day. Therefore, he who starts his work regularly and thoroughly every morning with a course of scales and arpeggi will gradually find a fine easy technique coming to him and a mastery over the keyboard which will be of inestimable advantage to him when he starts investigating the treasure house of pianoforte literature.

We must pass on from five-finger exercises to the technique of extended positions of the hand, such as are to be found in scales, arpeggi, chords, thirds and octaves. I propose here to speak of scales and arpeggi only, and shall first say a word or two about scales, for which the five-finger exercises I have just been discussing are, of course, merely a preparation. But the great difficulty of scale playing, which consists in learning how to pass the thumb successfully under the other fingers, without causing a break in the continuity of the sound, is absent in five-finger exercises, though through them the student learns the right way of holding the hand on the keyboard, so that it is always ready to do its work when called upon in the scales, and also the fingers are trained to exert the necessary pressure on the key.