3 ms·
When you get up to more advanced music, suggested fingerings often become more initially surprising, though normally you’ll eventually figure out why they sugge
by chrismorgan 5y ago
When you get up to more advanced music, suggested fingerings often become more initially surprising, though normally you’ll eventually figure out why they suggested it.
I recently came across a score, Debussy or similar I think, where the left hand is following a pattern of a base note, then ascending by something like a fifth, and then again by something like another octave; and in the first roughly four bars, the recommended fingering was along the lines of 3-1-5—yes, it had you turning your hand upside down to finish the run each bar. Then something or other happened after those first few bars so that that wouldn’t work any more (perhaps the third note of the sequence became some chord?), and it switched to the more typical 1-3-5 (or similar), so that I wonder whether it was really worth the fuss of the unusual fingering and hand placement for just the first few bars. Perhaps it is, given that those notes are the focus in those first few bars, and 3-1-5 will let you play it more smoothly, so long as you can contort your hand appropriately.
And that makes me think of Für Elise too: in the section with the rapid repeated A₂, I’ve seen fingerings suggesting rotating through three fingers, but as soon as you get the the D₂/A₂ chords, that’s no longer tenable, and so I wonder whether it was worth the bother in the first place. (My conclusion there is that it actually depends on the piano. On a grand, probably, on an upright, probably not. And indeed when a few weeks ago I seriously played on a halfway decent grand piano for the first time since I was a rank beginner, I found myself finally understanding the reasoning of a few fingerings that I’d never liked. And now I won’t be satisfied until I have a grand piano of my own. I can see I’m doomed to be one of those guys that ends up with half a dozen pianos of various types, as well as half a dozen recumbent tricycles of various types.)
- istjohn 5y agoDo you mind explaining why one fingering would be awkward on an upright but natural on a grand? I always assumed the human-piano interface was basically the same on uprights and grands, all the difference lying behind the keys.
- john61 5y agoOn the modern grand you do no have to lift the key fully up to press it again. Therefore, you can play better legato without the pedal, and you can hit the same key faster. The dynamic force distribution on the key travel is also different. Key travel has a completely different feeling.
- chrismorgan 5y agoThis is correct. If you’re interested in learning more, the key term to research is action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_(piano) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_(piano) is a decent overview with a couple of diagrams, though fairly dry. Simplifying drastically, grands strike upwards and gravity returns the action to its base position, whereas uprights strike sideways, have shorter pivot points, and in the end have less weight making the action return, plus they often depend on fabric straps to help it to return in a timely fashion, which still results in significantly inferior key repeat rates. (A grand piano wouldn’t work at all upside down. An upright… hmm, I haven’t tried it but I suspect that you could actually get a little bit of sound out of some normally-inferior actions.)
- Doxin 5y agoI've been to a concert that had an upright piano rolling around the stage, being upside down at several points. Apparently getting it to work involved installing some extra springs in the piano. Unrelatedly they also had a trick piano where the whole backside and frame with strings would detach at the climax of the song and come crashing down to the floor on cue. Apparently they didn't need to tune the piano used for that an abnormal amount.