There was some interest in this in another thread. Rather than derail it, here it is. It's a pity some couldn't be bothered to read Matthay. Perhaps those with no respect for him could start their own thread?
What he is saying is that from outside appearances you can't tell which part of the body is actually contributing the effort. http://www.archive.org/details/visibleandinvisi009582mbp page 149.

There's a touch I teach I call 'flick' - which Matthay would call 'second species' if the wrist is seen to move independently of the arm, but 'third species' if the arm and wrist move as a unit. Here the finger uses an invisible force (flexors and extensors) to fix it's shape, not initiate movement. Where the expert knowledge comes in is seeing the difference when a student adds some movement from the knuckle rather than solely and invisibly fixing. It's takes a trained eye.

'Flick' is the third touch shown in this silent video.

Attempting to learn how to play the piano anno 2010 by reading Tobias Matthay is the same thing as learning modern health care by studying the historical texts on blood letting, using lead as a tonic and prescribing cocaine and methamphetamine as innocent pick-me-ups for housewives: they are all historical artifacts representing a degree of danger, based on ignorance, founded on faulty principles and superseded by contemporary (scientific) insights.

Oh, and Matthay's prose is atrocious.

So, has the piano changed? Has anatomy changed? Has physiology? The invisible is there. That it was elucidated nearly 100 years ago is hardly relevant.

Attempting to learn to play the piano anno 1910 reading Matthay would be equally unrewarding. These are texts for teachers (and student teachers).

Could you point out where this extract 'represent[s] a degree of danger, based on ignorance, founded on faulty principles and superseded by contemporary (scientific) insights'?

I think TheJourney is being very subjective saying this. Yes, approaches to piano learning and improving one's technique are very numerous nowadays, and one can always choose what fits better for his or her personality, etc.
However, I do not thinkg that Matthay's aprroach is so old that it's not worth considering. The language may seem a bit too dryish, but if understood it and applied to piano, you will see that this teacher was quite right and knew his business very very well.

Just like F.M.Alexander who invented his world known Alexander Technique. Just think, it was about a century ago now, but its principles are widely used today. There is a very interesting book on this issue -
"The Pianist's Talent" by Harold Taylor. It touches upon the similarities of AT and Tobias Matthay's approach in application of both to piano. Very interesting read for a musician, in fact.

As for the quotation from the book, given by Keyboardklazt, the similar things are very well presented in Seymour Bernstien's "With your own two hands", when he speakes about piano technique and body work, Joints of Movability and Joints of Stability. He uses different vocabulary, but the essense remains the same. So, if you are interested in this matter, the book will be very interesting in this respect as well. Chapters 7 and 8 (You and the Piano, and Choreography).
No doubt, Seymour Bernstien is very well familiar with many systems and piano techniques, including Matthay.

I personally love Bernstein's approach!

Here's what Arnold Schultz had to say:Far from faint praise! I agree, and again, it takes an expert to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Well, that is really the hitting the nail on the head of the problem isn't it? If one -- who is not already an expert -- follows all of what Matthay actually preaches, then one risks harming onself from all the chaff.

Has our understanding of the underlying physics governing the piano and its sound waves and the neuroscientific understanding of how we can most effectively train our automatic piano playing unconscious and how we perceive sound from the piano changed? Absolutely. Like the difference between night and day.

Has our understanding of anatomy and physiology changed? Absolutely. For example, Matthay's recommendation to use his practice triangle was based on the fallacy of mechanically ‘strengthening’ the muscles of the arm and finger.’ His exaggerated views and imprecise teaching on relaxation (he even used the phrase "the Gospel of Relaxation") were guilty for unwittingly sending generations of pianists off into bizarre out-of-control arm dropping and flopping about and a mis-guided lack of insight into the need for a carefully cultivated controlled tension in skillful piano playing.

Has our attitude towards and understanding of the 'invisible' changed? Absolutely. In Matthay's days it was still all the rage to hold seances with invisible spirits from the herebeyond. There was little understanding of the actual functioning other than vague platitudes of the really important invisible things going on in acquiring a good piano technique (or any other automatic fine motor skill) which have every much to do with what happens inside one's head as inside of one's hand.

Here's something from the Golden Fingers guy (the bold is mine. I don't necessarily agree with all he says on his web page.):

Thanks Tj, the triangle's a new one on me:

Anyone know how to use it? The Academy page just says ' It is held upright on the lap, and the fingers work on the outer apex of the object.' Knowing Matthay I'd be surprised if it is for "‘strengthening’ the muscles of the arm and finger.".

'seances'!? He's just talking about what can't be see like the foundations of a building or the engine of a car (his analogy).

Sheesh, do piano teachers know about this?

Not if they spend their professional development time reading old Matthay tomes they don't...

Would you care to share these changes with the rest of the class?

well, apparently you believe that a hand need exert no force to balance post-strike. Perhaps matthay Never advocated such nonsensical breaches of the laws of physics. However, it shows the importance of thinking for yourself rather than blindly quoting people.

I don't disagree with the particular passage. However, the idea that this proves that all pianists flop and that you are only one with the expertise to spot is an epic fail. It doesn't even allude to the flop, nevermind prove it. if you're looking to prove some kind of special insight, start putting it into practise at your instrument instead of claiming to see invisible nonsense.

Perhaps you'd also use a text on the fact that air is invisible to 'prove' that invisible demons exist? At least find something relevant to your phony doctrine. It would just as fair to claim that this supports the idea that pianists invisibly play with their dicks.

Sorry KBK - I had a teacher - Isabel Sant'Ambrogio, may she rest in peace - who was a huge Matthay proponent - totally obsessed with arm weight, relaxation, rotation, wiping the keys, kneeding the keys, spent hours dropping my "dead weight" arm onto the keys, all with the obsessive goal of producing a beautiful tone. Trouble was there was practically no attention given to the very foundation of piano technique - articulating the fingers - thus I was left a cripple at the piano - able to produce a nice big fat tone, completely incapable of playing a series of 16th notes competently.

What notable pianists other than Myra Hess came out of the Matthay school, KBK? For that matter, what notable pianist studied with Arnold Schultz?

The understanding of physics in Matthay's time was very much a mechanical, Newtonian view of physics. He sensed that piano playing needed to break free from the fixed hand approach but substituted a systematic mechanical approach, and did not have the insight to be able to make it actionable and fell into the trap of mechanical practicing himself as did his predecessors. This view sees the world through "clockwork" glasses and has as a fundamental assumption the idea that everything is reducible to its mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive constituent parts and that the man-machine connection to the piano resembles and can be approached as a machine-machine connection.

There was also no clear understanding of how we hear nor of the fact that hearing (and listening) is not in your ears but is in fact a subjective mental process and that what we hear can be influenced and even replaced by what we expect to hear. Or of the few and incomplete aural cues that are needed to provide a listener (or player) with the idea that he or she is hearing something (at all or versus something else). The unconscious fluidity, ruthless pruning and pre-conscious merging of our perceptions from our various senses before presentation to our conscious was also not understood, e.g. the fact that we can and do hear with our eyes and with our fingers.

There was no clear understanding of what was really happening in the "invisible". Otto Ortmann put to rest the claims of Matthay and other weight and relaxation specialists. Using dispassionate laboratory readings he demonstrated that it is physically impossible to play even a moderately rapid scale without tightening, in one degree or another, of wrist, elbow and shoulder. Ortmann concluded "the need for a partical return to the older schools of Reinecke and Clementi; undue stress on relaxation has seriously restricted velocity and technical brilliance."

Finally, there was next to no understanding of the nuts and bolts of physical learning processes and neuroscience as we understand it today (where it is still in its infancy). For example, the inability to change autonomous processes directly, the ultimately false dichotomy between "mind" and body, the neuronal basis for learning, how memory works and the importance of white matter in our grey matter, the difficulty or even impossibility by which humans can forget anything once learned, the meager bandwidth of the conscious mind and the implication for building a solid foundation towards a reliable automaticity, the notion of gaining control by letting loose, and any number of psychological constructs that can accelerate learning and encourage the development of integrated and synthesized skills freeing up the budding artist to focus on creative expression, etc. etc.

Piano playing is one of the most complexly synthesized of human activities. Piano playing is brainwork and our brain must coordinate cognitive function (knowing and remembering), sensory function (including kinestheisia), motor functions (controlling movement) and emotional function (feelings) in very specific ways at a level of detail that is impossible for the bandwidth of our conscious mind to follow. It is very important to get the correct balance of the physical movements and to build them systematically as a pyramid or an iceberg of which only the tip being worked on is in active awareness. Spending too much time getting hung up on trying to actively and instrumentally control physical processes while neglecting the other aspects of piano playing is ultimately counter productive. It is like trying to think one's way through a golf swing rather than having an automatic swing that allows the golfer to focus on the target.

Describing piano and learning to play piano in words is treacherous ground in whatever system and terminology one invents. The most carefully worded description of even the simplest actions will be full of potential for misunderstanding by an inexperienced student. There may be no way around it; a student can't know for sure whether what they hear, whether from a teacher or a book, until they've spent enough time finding out through experience what works. Looking back, I could say much of my time spent grinding at the piano has been a refinement of the art of learning piano (with still far to go!).

One could just as easily get hung up on how our grey matter works or the limitations of Newtonian physics (does Einstein help us learn piano better?) as whether we're using enough invisible shoulder.

Personally my favorite approach is to simplify it to the physical feeling of ease, and careful listening. If it feels and sounds good it can't be far off track.

2 stars?!?! Cruel but fair?

The flick looked like the hand was trying to put the moves on the keyboard.

/jk Im bored

The bottom line is there are dozens of muscles involved in playing a note or chord. Ever had a bad back? Then you know nearly every move you make causes you pain even if you are not expressly using your back muscles
Since without postural support your whole body would flop off the bench. When you move your arm up an octave, you are engaging an array of musculature.

I think this discussion really boils down to two interrelated key points.

1) Ease of movement. Through practice and awareness, your body will find the best way for you to execute the task.

2) Secondly, not to be overlooked...after playing a note, your mechanism needs to be ready to play the next one. If you are out of position or bound by excess or unnecessary tension, you will have trouble making the next move.

We can make all kinds of moves to play an isolated note...which proves exactly nothing. It is the context of being able to play the NEXT one in a facile manner tells you if you are on the right track. My $0.02.

I like that.

Folks this thread went OT straight away. How about this: Is there or isn't there elements of technique which are invisible because they are not movement? If you accept there is, then that is what this thread is about - discussing that, not Matthay's reputation either way.

Jerry, I go with you part way - I wouldn't use Matthay technique on music pre-Chopin.

So, there are teachers who teach a relativity pedagogy? I know there is a relativity of Biology but isn't that a bridge just too far at the moment?

You mean you hear what you want to hear? I'm sure Matthay knew that. He wrote an excellent book on intepretation.


Which were put back by Schultz.
Exactly, still in its infancy.

He would agree and wrote on/taught many aspects.

I agree with that. Its getting to the state where you allow your body to do its work without interference by the self/ego/mind.

of course there are. However, if you are trying to prove your self-aggrandising claim of being the lone authority who can spy secret flops everywhere, forget it. Invisible movements are possible. However, your claim that everyone MUST be secretly flopping is a whole other matter. Your motivations for starting the thread are not going to lead anywhere.

That's why Matthay's writing for teachers and student teachers. He did do a series of beginner books. Initially you played with your fist, I think.

My reading of the original prose leads me to believe that your "flicking" does not fall under any "species" of "finger touch" because as Matthay says, "all these three totally diverse forms of action (or 'species') here come under the heading of so-called 'Finger-touch,' because only the finger is seen to move."

FYI:

Matthay --> Mannheimer --> John Perry, Anne Kocielny, Constance Carroll

(Constance Carroll --> Me, incidentally)

Matthay--->Myra Hess, Denise Lassimone---->Margaret Littell--->Me.

Ms. Littell never espoused a specific method, per se, but she always stressed relaxation of the hand and using the least amount of physical effort in playing.

Matthay --> Grindea --> me

jscomposer, flick would be wrist touch (second species) though for big chords using the arm - arm touch (third species).

Perhaps this thread should be retitled

My Invisible Piano Technique?

LOL.

Reminds me of My Favorite Martian

I agree that there are techniques where you don't actually see the movement. For example: rotation in scales. When you play a scale slowly you can really exaggerate the rotation. As the tempo rises you see it less and less until it looks like there's none at all, yet it's still there.