Learn How to Play Piano from Expert

As hurrying and also dragging the tempi are both errors connected somewhat with faulty rhythm, I will speak of this next as a highly unsatisfactory failing. Rhythm is no doubt to a great extent instinctive, and is bound up a good deal with individual temperaments. But it must be carefully developed by teaching and analysis, for too much emphasis can never be bestowed upon giving every note in music its proper value, apart from any other rhythmical consideration. For rhythm in. piano-playing is so essential a factor in obtaining a good tone-production, that it is imperative to cultivate it with great attention to correctness of outline.

Lack of rhythm, or faulty rhythm, will take all character from a musical performance, and will leave an impression of insipidity and monotony where there is no rhythm, and of irritation where the rhythm is inexact, as the case may be.

Close on the heels of bad rhythm comes the weakness of always using the same kind of tone while performing. Plenty of variation of tone-colour is absolutely necessary for inspired and interesting playing on the piano, as, indeed, on all instruments.

On the piano this is more difficult to arrive at than on the stringed or even the wind instruments, and needs much study of the technique of touch. For frequently we cannot understand, after coming out from a concert, why what we appreciated as a really fine performance of a musical work had not arrested our attention more, or aroused keener pleasure. A certain sense of monotony or dullness had crept over us while listening.

Such a feeling, or rather want of feeling, is almost always the result of the performer’s failure to grasp the possibilities of his instrument in relation to tone-colour. Everything he plays is in a similar hue of tone, therefore a sameness and lack of life and contrast pervades the whole. It is a strange anomaly that the more beautiful is the touch of the pianist by natural instinct, the 1 more he is apt to fall into the fault of using it indiscriminately in the same strength, because he takes so much personal pride and pleasure in it. It is like the case of singers who are gifted with wonderful top notes, and, therefore, are always inclined to warble them forth in full but monotonous volumes of sound.

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.

The fault of most players who come to me is that their preparation before attempting to attack a great work has not been sufficient. And for this the teacher must sometimes be held responsible to a certain degree, because, naturally desiring the pupil to make quick progress, he gives him Liszt’s Rhapsodies and .Beethoven’s greatest Sonatas to play, after only a few months of perfunctory study. The students also have a natural desire to astonish their parents and gratify their patrons, and often to justify the spending of a good deal of money on their musical education. Most of them rely on so-called musical feeling, charming touch, and other elusive qualities, which have possibly been “enthused” over by their supporters! Thus they fritter away valuable time in chase of shadows, instead of settling down under a severe and accomplished master to genuine hard study of scales and other exercises.

I am constantly seeing advertisements by teachers of “how to play the piano in five minutes by correspondence!” But I know by my own experience that after thirty years of continuous study there are still many problems in piano-playing that I cannot solve.