Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Back to the Matthay Triangle

Not easy, but I tracked down RAM's description from the card. Everything bar the pictures: http://www.ram.ac.uk/emuweb/pages/ram/Display.php?irn=11408&QueryPage=Query.php

You must tell me how you play, then, for I have found rotation, however little, to be immensely helpful in all my playing. Especially when it comes to runs of arpeggios.

Well, I just plain like the idea of letting larger muscle groups do the work before smaller muscle groups.

Minaku - look carefully at the Matthay illustration. The first note is rotated toward the thumb. The second note, played with the 2nd finger, is rotated "Towards Little Finger." So far so good. But Matthay instructs you to rotate the following 3 notes "Towards Little Finger" as well. The only way to do that is to rotate BACK toward the thumb AFTER having already rotated towards the little finger to play the 2nd finger. This is what Taubman calls a "Double Rotation." So you do this "double rotation" on each of the four fingers 2 through 5. Ridiculous - there is no justification for all this useless movement, I don't care how small and invisible it is - it serves no good purpose.

This is different from the natural rotation that occurs when you play arpeggios and rotate slightly to the left (RH) to play the thumb, and to the right to play the NEXT 2 OR 3 NOTES(depending on whether your arpeggio is a simple triad or 7th chord) i.e. one rotation encompassing several notes going in one direction. That is perfectly natural movement. I would still advise against relying entirely on the rotation of the forearm to play arpeggios and scales "cartwheel" style. It is a poor SUBSTITUTE for competent finger articulation. Best to have them work TOGETHER.

Matthay is not talking about movement in most cases. Maybe support is a better word? Here's this Matthay quote again.
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.

I also think it really is pedagogical knowledge - when a player plays naturally it is what happens, but they have no need of this knowledge.

Can you explain what this means??

I'm aware of what Taubman calls it. I'll get specific - I had an issue with the evenness of the AbM arpeggios in op. 110. I tackled it from different angles, working with a metronome, working in rhythms, working in blocked groups, forwards and backwards. None of those really got the job done until I applied Taubman, or the double rotation technique, and everything came out beautifully, rhythmically perfect, and with the lightness and flow that I wanted. Say what you will about double rotation, but it does work.

I don't believe anyone has ever advocated that only the forearm do the work; the playing mechanism should not be isolated to only one aspect of the body. Of course the fingers need to be strong. We aren't talking about flopping all over the piano here. And if you saw me perform those arpeggios you probably would not realize that in order to solve my problem, I applied double rotation. Perhaps it's a mind game. Or perhaps it really does work. Taubman is simply a tool in the arsenal. There isn't a place for rotation in everything we do. But don't dismiss this tool entirely as useless. There are some useless things out there, like playing too high, too low, too close, too far. Rotation isn't one of them.

As for Matthay, it is possible to continue your rotation as one gesture towards the fifth finger. You don't have to do a double rotation.

Minaku - the AbM figure in op. 110 is not an arpeggio, it's a broken chord - a significant distinction in this case because broken chords call for very few double rotations (usually none, but this passage uses a sort of hybrid, or modified, broken chord), as the figure mostly changes directions with every note (double rotations occur when 2 or more notes follow in the same direction, as I'm sure you know.*). To be more specific, there are double rotations on only 2 of the first 16 notes of this cascading AbM broken chord - the 2nd and 3rd Eb's (the RH part - I think you'll agree the LH notes that follow are pretty easy to play). But if you find double rotations help you, all the power to you.

[*edit for those not familiar with the details of double rotation - the thumb always rotates in its direction. When the 3rd finger crosses over the thumb coming down, it rotates in the opposite direction, so there is no double rotation despite the two notes following in the same direction - an exception to the rule, illustrated in this passage.]

According to Taubman, rotation is the quickest and most effecient way to move from note to note. Taubman said that because piano playing involves side to side motions across wide distances, it is necessary to move the forearm. She claimed that if you only move the forearm up and down or side to side, it will never move as quickly as it does during rotation. That is why she believes that you must rotate (single or double) before every note. The rotation will supposedly bring you to each note more quickly than merely moving the arm from side to side.

I have no axe to grind and haven't studied Taubman much, but I did find the following review to be pretty devastating:

Debunking the Myths of the Taubman Approach

In particular the parts about how they show the rotation slowly but abandon it completely for fast scales. I guess they say it's invisible but that just smells too fishy for my liking.

(As an aside, does anyone know how "independent" that website is, it seems to be a little bit of a love-fest for Alan Fraser).

That is Fraser. I wouldn't give credence to anything on his website - he really doesn't know his stuff i.e. cites no sources.

That article does make a lot of sense in many places, although some points may need clarification. The author's accusation that Taubman only focuses on dead arm weight and advocates inert fingers is not consistent with what I know about the approach. Taubman has always advocated a balance of action among the fingers, hand, and forearm. She never suggested that the fingers don't work at all.

I'm surprised Golandsky has yet to adopt the Matthay Triangle. Maybe they're waiting for it to come out of copyright! (which is soon)

As long as this thread has been bumped, I'll take the opportunity to clarify something about my earlier post here. When making my comments about the AbM broken chord I was looking at measure 105 where the RH only plays the first half of the measure and the LH takes over the rest of the measure. The FIRST appearance of the figure, in measure 12, illustrates my point even more. There the entire figure is played by the RH - 24 notes and only 2 double rotations.

As an aside, what a genius Beethoven was to be able to make such sublime music out of a string of right-side-up and upside-down Alberti figures!

I believe this quote refers to wide leaps. Certainly the idea that rotation is quicker than simple finger articulation when playing from note to note in close proximity is just plain untrue - that is, if you have properly developed fingers (and the idea that double rotations is quicker is ridiculous). Rotating the forearm when executing wide leaps is pretty much a non-issue - the forearm is going to describe an arch naturally - i.e. you'd have to make an effort not to, so I'd agree with this. Taubman's prescription to rotate on the first note of a leap in the OPPOSITE direction of the leap (not described here) is interesting. It sounds illogical and inefficient to me, but I haven't had much experience testing it out so I can't discount it.

Actually, Taubman clearly stated that rotation occurs before every note, not just before leaps. Every note of a scale is supposed to be preceded by either single or double rotation, even at the most rapid tempi. According to Taubman's philosophy, even when playing two notes right next to each other, you must shift arm weight from key to key. Because the forearm is slower when it moves side to side, Taubman believes that rotation is the quickest and most efficient way to transfer arm weight from key to key- even when the notes are right next to each other. Allegedly, if you simply move the forearm to the right side to play D after playing C, the forearm won't be as quick as if you rotated toward the D. Taubman claims that when the forearm is moved rotationally, it can move just as fast as the fingers.

One wonders if Taubman never properly developed her fingers (i.e. ability to move each of her fingers with great speed) to have come up with such a convoluted way to play two notes right next to each other. I'm very familiar with all of this, LRN - studied Taubman method very enthusiastically through their video tapes and private lessons with a wonderful Taubman teacher (on the staff of the Golandsky Institute) over the course of 2 years. In the end, though, I came to reject most of what they are about. I just don't buy the whole rotation-is-the-basis-of-playing-the-piano approach. YMMV.