Learn How to Play Piano from Expert

I now come to the loud or sustaining pedal, which Rubinstein aptly called “the soul of the piano.” It certainly is the best friend the pianist has at his disposal for helping him to overcome the material drawbacks of the pianoforte’s constitution, and without it no legato playing or prolongation of tone would be possible at all.

Of course, there are two pedals on the modern pianoforte, even sometimes three, but the soft one is only used, as its name implies, for deadening the sound. The loud pedal, as it is called, is the real important factor, and when I speak of the pedal in future as a general term, it is always to this one that I am referring. The name “loud pedal” is really a misnomer, as its function is rather to sweeten the sound and render it more open, and also to add brilliance to the tone rather than actual loudness. If the pedal is a good friend it can also be the worst possible enemy if badly employed. Nothing is more terrible than the general blur cast over everything by the pedal when it is applied without expert knowledge. A few simple rules about how it should be used are as follows.

I have already mentioned that the pedal must be changed on different harmonies; it should also never be taken directly on the first beat of the bar to obtain the best results, but in syncopation with that beat, as in the example below.

Well, I will start from the first third in the scale of C major, which will be C and E. Next come D and F, and in attempting to pass rapidly from the first third to the second one a difficulty will be immediately encountered. This is the ungovernable tendency of each finger to run apart from each other, and refuse to pull together at all. A purely mental difficulty though is this, and it can be overcome by training the mind, and accustoming it to govern the hands and fingers in complete independence one of the other. In fact I am convinced that in general, technical facility and control can only be obtained by great mental concentration, and not merely through mechanical practice.

That is why some people are able to learn to play a scale in thirds in an hour quite decently, because they possess the necessary power of brain, while others who may have quite as much musical talent will never master one at. all though they work six hours a day at it! I do not mean to say by this that thirds do not require an enormous amount of study, because of course they do, only to be successful the practice must be accompanied by much concentrated brain effort. Therefore one of the principal efforts of a good pianoforte teacher should be to stimulate in every possible manner the mental faculties of his pupils.