PL.. actually this thread was in response to a comment you made in the recording section (on the Chopin Nocturne No 20 in C sharp Minor (Steinway M))

"If it sounds legato where it should I don't think it makes any difference whether that is done with the fingers, the pedal, or some combination of those."

you have better clarified your thoughts and thanks. I just wanted to read other people's opinions on this. I don't know whether you were disagreeing with me to disagree or really thought this.

Personally, I am very precise or try to be, in EXACTLY how notes are sustained. (I play a lot of Bach and CHopin and also organ.. it's really fun for me to play around with how tones support, overlap, sustain and a challenge of course to play the score exactly as intended).

I love playing Bach totally without pedal but generally love to color the sound with pedalling.. just sharing a bit.

These kind of passages are very rare and today's grand pianos all have sostenuto pedals. If the piano has no sostenuto, then obviously one has to make a choice. I doubt the poster I was responding to was thinking about these very rare passages combined with playing on a piano without the middle pedal.

I don't think you read my post carefully. The comparison was between a passage played with finger legato and the pedal held down throughout vs. the same passage played without finger legato and the pedal held down throughout.
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There IS a difference, though in many cases the only way to tell is to be looking at the score while the person is playing, or have an excellent working knowledge of the score. I had a student this past weekend play a double third motif - 4 double thirds up in a tetrachord - and I could tell without looking at her that she hadn't played them legato, as indicated in the score. She did hold the damper down throughout the measure.

How do you know she just wasn't skillful enough at making them sound as if she used finger legato? The two methods don't automatically sound the same and for some passages it would be difficult to make the passage without finger legato sound as legato. Did you read Keith Kerman's example at the beginning of the thread?

My point is that(using the two note example I mentioned earlier to take difficulty out of the picture temporarily)there is nothing going on inside the piano to make the two note passage played sound different when played with or without finger legato.

Do you think you could tell the difference on the two note passage? I also don't see how looking at the score could ever help decide if the sound was legato.

I just tried this a few different ways on the piano. The fundamental difference between using your fingers to create legato and using the pedal instead is that the attack is different. Legato requires a sustaining touch; if you're looking to use the pedal, a tap will do. I found that I could get the same sound as my legato thirds and legato line by playing portato instead.

If I have to go through that much work just to fool my ear, I'd rather just play legato.

I think the arguments on this thread stem from a failure to agree on a definition of legato. So, despite being one of the least qualified here to do so, I'm going to throw out my own definition:

I think legato is a psycho-acoustic illusion produced to make the listener think that a piano is doing something that many other instruments do but which a piano is actually completely incapable of doing. In a violin or a clarinet, the bow or breath continues without interuption while the length of the string or tube is changed to change pitch. That is true legato. A piano can't do this, so we try to hit a succession of notes with a timing and a relative volume that gives the illusion of this happening.

Some may argue that the relative loudness of the notes is not legato, but phrasing. But if you accept that it is a psycho-acoustic illusion, then phrasing can be crucial to maintaing the illusion.

With this definition, both Pianoluverus and Minaku can be correct. Using the pedal can make the ends of notes overlap, but does nothing to affect the relative volume or attack, which may well be different, not because its impossible to imagine hitting disconnected notes the same way as notes connected with finger legato, but just because that's the way the hand works.

They are not the same.

You are absolutely correct in that it is a psychoacoustic illusion that we perpetuate on the listener. There's no other way to go about it. A true legato involves a milliseconds-long overlap of two frequencies.

An interesting and very related psychological phenomenon is the idea of liaisons between words. I went and grabbed my psychoacoustics textbook for this but unfortunately it doesn't address this issue; I believe my psycholinguistics text would have, but I no longer have it. Anyway, we humans are able to distinguish disparate words in speech even though the air flow is constant and there is no discernible break between words. We even append various consonants or vowels from the last word onto the next, making it more confusing. However, through certain factors such as consistency of volume and timbre, understanding of learned words, and continued conditioning that humans do in fact speak a certain way, babies can learn to understand human speech instead of hearing a stream of sound. Like gestalt psychology for the ear, to make another analogy.

It's this idea I want to see applied to legato. My old teacher in undergrad was on me constantly to match the sound from note to note. The human ear inherently listens for sounds that are consistent and thus applies it to the whole. So, to bring this back to legato, this is why pedaling non-legato yields a different sound than pedaling a legato. We do understand it to be one line. In that respect, the idea of legato is achieved; there are overlapping sounds and we take what we hear as one idea. But the sounds are not always consistent from one note to the next. Playing portato mimics this same-touch approach that you'd have with legato and that's why it sounds the same. We are matching the sound from one note to the next, deliberately addressing each note with the notion that the ear will naturally look for things that are the same and group them together.

This sound-matching in both attack and volume is what results ultimately in the most satisfying legato for me. It's like listening to a Shakespearean actor versus William Shatner. We understand both; William Shatner doesn't speak with a period between each word. The Shakespearean actor, however, is so much more pleasant to listen to.

Oh, dear. pianoloverus, you’ve garbled the post you quoted in a most unfortunate way. Had it not already been deleted when you hastily responded, it should have read as follows:


Now you are absolutely correct that *I* misread your post, and for that reason I deleted it almost immediately after posting because I realized my error. You’ve incorrectly attributed my language and my misunderstanding - which as I said were deleted! - to bennevis.

I apologize for misreading your post. I apologize to bennevis for a result that wrongly attributed my language to him or her. I think you should apologize as well for allowing your own post to stand with the knowledge that it was a *misrepresentation*.

The like notes, the C's in other octaves, for example, would resonate with the pedal engaged.

I wonder if people who can't (or won't) use the UBB tags properly shouldn't refrain from quoting?

It's not question of "fooling" your ear...it either does or does not sound legato. It's only fooling your ear if one assumes that a legato sound can only be achieved with legato fingers.

I never said one should always use pedal with non legato fingers to play legato when one has a choice between doing that and using pedal with legato fingers. I said sometimes it's easier to use pedal plus non legato fingers and that the same effect can be achieved as pedal plus legato touch. My example from way back was the Rach G minor Prelude.

And sometimes the only way to achieve a legato sound is with the pedal and non legato fingers because legato fingers are not possible(as in Chopin C minor Prelude or Rach D major Prelude).

Why should there be an overlap of frequencies? With most orchestral instruments and in singing, that's not even possible, yet they do legato playing and singing.

I should have been more specific in saying that a true piano legato. Other instruments have sustained sound from note to note, but the piano cannot physically do this, so we simulate it by overlapping sounds.

Pianoloverus, where in the Rach D major? Towards the end, where there are lots of octaves? LH legato and lots of phrasing in the RH chords will go a long way towards creating a legato line.

The opening two notes in the LH and every time the first two notes in that configuration are beyond reach. Just like the opening of the Chopin D flat Nocturne and throughout that piece in the LH. The legato can only be achieved by holding down the pedal.
Or the Chopin C minor Prelude, but here the legato can only be achieved only by syncopated pedaling.

The legato between the D and the A can be achieved by playing them with two separate hands with the sounds overlapping. What you won't get is the sonority of all the rest of the strings if you leave off the pedal.

Of course one can do that, but very few pianists choose that approach. Rachmaninov didn't write it that way and knew what he was doing. There are many other similar places in that same piece and throughout the Chopin D flat Nocturne where one cannot use two hands(because the RH is playing its own part) and the pedal is the only way to play legato.

Why you keep trying to deny the obvious is beyond me. There are tens of thousands of examples where pedal is the only way to achieve legato.

You can achieve legato with the pedal, but do not equate it with a legato done with the hand. They are not the same.

As for the Rachmaninoff, there's a lot of hand crossing going on in the piece anyway, and splitting the opening figures is a creative way of getting around the legato while still being faithful to the way Rachmaninoff intended it.

I never said it can't be done, but even the examples you've given you can still have a legato in the hand, without the pedal. I stand by my statement that the two are not the same, and if you want one to sound like the other you have to approach the piano with a different touch.