Learn How to Play Piano from Expert

There are other serious faults which hamper pianists, pertaining more to purely technical matters. Such is, for instance, sticking out the thumb, instead of always keeping it ready underneath the palm of the hand in order to facilitate its rapid passage during the changes of position on the keyboard. This is an important affair, as if this sticking out of the thumb is not checked, it will impede the technical perfection of passage-playing and cause it to be awkward, heavy and laboured.

Keeping the elbows out is a trick that many fall into, which is both unsightly and detrimental to tone-production, because it forces the hand into unnatural positions, and stiffens the wrists, as well as impairs rapidity and suppleness of execution.

Excessive movement of the body, too, while playing, is disturbing to the sight and to the player’s power of elasticity, yet it is a bad habit which is much indulged in. No doubt it seems to help people to intensify what they are feeling, but this is an illusion. Exaggerated gesture, on the contrary, tends rather to diminish an impression which might otherwise be deep, and weakens it, by a suggestion of hysteria, while too frequently it borders on the ridiculous, in which case the impression is altogether lost. Movements of the body while playing can be divided into two classes, namely, jerky movements (generally confined to the head and shoulders), which produce stiffness and tension, and swaying movements of the whole frame, which disturb the rhythm.

Hurrying the tempo is nearly as bad, and is sometimes caused by nervousness, though indifference, want of confidence, and the very general mistake of looking upon a crescendo as an accellerando also give rise to it. People who are inclined to be nervous when playing before others often get a queer kind of defiant sensation when technically difficult passages hover in sight ; the ” let’s get it over and be done with it ” sort of feeling, which makes them hurry in an extraordinary manner.

Of course, hurrying may just as well arise from a lack of instinct for rhythm in the student. Where this is the case, it is rather a hopeless look-out, as it is so hard to inculcate a real feeling for rhythm into someone who is not naturally endowed with it. But it has often been my experience to listen to students who were gifted with a most highly-developed sense of rhythm, and yet who hurried, especially over their technically difficult passages, until I began to get positively breathless. This kind of increasing the speed was, of course, due to want of nervous control.

To begin with, there is no more usual failing, or one more damaging to good piano-playing, than too much use of the pedal, and its application in the wrong places. The pedal is really a very dangerous attraction to the inexperienced and yet enthusiastic performer. It is such an alluring temptation to hear the notes welling into one another, also the blur of sound produced by much pedalling covers up so many deficiencies of execution.

There is no doubt that the pedal carries with it a sort of special glamour of its own, so that even children when they first start learning the piano are always clamouring to be allowed to play with the pedal. It is their greatest ambition. Yet bad use of the pedal is quite capable of completely marring the effect of what might otherwise be a fine rendering of a piece of music. The pedal should be used to enhance, but never to cover up, and should be regarded as a means for producing certain definite tone-effects and variations of tone-colour at precise moments, and not as a sort of general mist of hot vapour or steam by which each note, passage and chord becomes enveloped.

Misuse of the pedal is a horrible fault, and can affect great and small alike; it should be carefully guarded against. Indeed, the state it produces on the mind of the listener is similar to that which overheated air creates in the lungs, namely, fatigue, nausea, lassitude, and even, alas, drowsiness!

When a student comes to play to the artist with whom he desires to study, how often does he ask, when he has finished his performance: ” Master, what I really want you to tell me is, whether I have any very serious faults in my playing? ”

Serious faults in his playing! Poor fellow! He probably has several which he has not yet discovered himself, and which most likely no one has ever drawn his attention to.

What, then, are some of the most common faults, and at the same time some of the worst of those which students of the piano may fall into unsuspectingly through careless tuition? Well, these are many and various, and are generally very difficult to eradicate. Moreover, they beset the most talented players, just as much as their less gifted brethren.

The true interpretative artist should not only be content with “letting the music speak for itself ” (to borrow a stereotyped phrase of those critics who regard personal thought and individuality as a source of reproach). Such a passive attitude is merely looking at the musical art from the standpoint of photography. No; rather must the interpreter endeavour to step into the composer’s shoes, to imagine with the poignancy of his imagination, to feel again what he felt, and by so doing to rekindle in the music all the power of fantasy, life and individuality with which it was originally endowed by its creator.

For music is essentially an art that demands interpretation at least, for its highest effect and appeal. There are continual controversies about this aspect of music, but in my opinion the pianist whose part it is to be the public performer must find in the interpretation of the music the kernel of his whole profession.

Of course, the boundary line between interpretation and the odious vices of distortion and perversion must be kept carefully in view, and for this reason there are some basic rules to guide the student, from which it is impossible to diverge, and it is about some of these that I wish to speak here.

As regards what is now commonly called classical music, as distinct from the romantic or modern creations, it comprises most of the compositions that were written up till the death of Beethoven in 1826. In this kind of music the ideas and effects are for the
most part presented by means of certain recognized and distinct forms of expression, and these, though greatly amplified and varied according to the genius of the composer, remain very similar as regards the main structural features.

Around this great school of musical thought, which contains some of the finest treasures of pianoforte literature, many traditions have arisen as to the methods by which the interpretation of such masterpieces should be approached. This is due partly to the distance that separates us from the time of their creation, but mainly to the fact that some pre-eminently great performers have given renderings of these works at various periods, which renderings have been handed down by their pupils and followers, who afterwards themselves became teachers on a lesser plane. Thus the tradition grew up from teacher to student, until by degrees it crystallized itself into a prescribed and definite point of view that has to be taken into account.