Welcome to the Piano World Piano Forums Over 3 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments. Over 100,000 members from around the world.
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
A friend was mentioning this to me today. I found some clips on YouTube; sort of interesting teasers I suppose. Looking at his website, however, the DVD does not appear to be for sale as is advertised on YouTube.
The links that CN did not think to provide for us, so we would have some idea of what s/he was talking about are here : DPS
By the way, it's not "Deeper Piano Studies" but "Deeper Performance Studies" and applies to many disciplines as well as to piano.
From the above link....."If you have memory lapses; suffer from stage fright; feel pressure at competitions; feel your practicing could be or should be more efficient; have questions about your career direction - then you are ready for Deeper Performance Studies (formerly Deeper Piano Studies)."
A friend was mentioning this to me today. I found some clips on YouTube; sort of interesting teasers I suppose. Looking at his website, however, the DVD does not appear to be for sale as is advertised on YouTube.
Thoughts?
Thought about the DVD not being on sale, or about the course?
If the latter, you might find this thread to be of interest.
Even before knowing of his recording of the music of Gurdjieff and Hartmann, many Gurdjieffian aspects of Chiu's teaching method were apparent to me and I think there may be a connection though Chiu is not overt about it. Just to be clear, I don't agree with most of what is from Gurdjieff although there is the central importance of being in maximally conscious control of one's decision making which is significant. The idea of being fully conscious of what one is doing and actively purposeful at all times resonates with Chiu's method, as do the cooking exercises to take one out of one's comfort zone and potentially unsettle one's inner workings to help dissolve habits, and also as does the study of music away from the piano to isolate the music from the body.
I still think most pianists need a lot of daily practice but it can be revealing to form one's ideas of a composition away from the piano just to show how rigid the pianistic habits of the body can be.
Chiu doesn't seem to want to answer the big purpose unifying question of why do music. I suppose he figures it will be different for every pianist and is something to discover on one's own.
It isn't clear if it is part of Frederic Chiu's course - maybe a participant can elaborate on this? - but he advocates sitting in a chair. One outcome of my experiences last year which reactivated me as a musician was a strong preference for sitting in a chair and a distaste for sitting on a bench.
A chair feels quite rooting, especially as it usually has a slight slope to it (hence one sits in it vs. sitting on a bench) and helps with the activation of the back muscles and deep sources of motion.
A chair feels quite rooting, especially as it usually has a slight slope to it (hence one sits in it vs. sitting on a bench) and helps with the activation of the back muscles and deep sources of motion.
M.
A chair might work for the Glenn Goulds of the world, but it certainly wouldn't work for me; I think it wouldn't work for many pianists. The slope of a chair seat pushes one back against the back of the chair meaning that, no matter how close the chair may be moved to the keyboard, one has to slouch forward to play. It seems to me that that kind of position, sitting on the thighs, negates any use of body weight to produce tone. How can one sit erect and properly balanced if the configuration of the chair forces one into what I would consider an unnatural playing position?
A chair feels quite rooting, especially as it usually has a slight slope to it (hence one sits in it vs. sitting on a bench) and helps with the activation of the back muscles and deep sources of motion.
M.
A chair might work for the Glenn Goulds of the world, but it certainly wouldn't work for me; I think it wouldn't work for many pianists. The slope of a chair seat pushes one back against the back of the chair meaning that, no matter how close the chair may be moved to the keyboard, one has to slouch forward to play. It seems to me that that kind of position, sitting on the thighs, negates any use of body weight to produce tone. How can one sit erect and properly balanced if the configuration of the chair forces one into what I would consider an unnatural playing position?
Everyone is different as a pianist - what works for one might not work for another.
I prefer to be able to sit a bit low and with the chair well back from the keys and with angle inside of the elbows quite more than 90 degrees and elbows turned pointing a bit out to the sides - but still with the option to lean forward (back still straight!) and narrow those angles for a different use of muscles and weight and an entirely different palette of sound and touch.
Some chairs will pull one back. I think maybe the right chair is needed, not just any chair, maybe a wooden chair with the indent in the center and leveling toward the edges. I sit toward the edge, not on the thighs
I'm not dogmatic about it but believe some experimentation with it is worthwhile. At least then if it does not work for a pianist this is found out, and also if for a particular pianist it is a big improvement then this is discovered as well.
A chair feels quite rooting, especially as it usually has a slight slope to it (hence one sits in it vs. sitting on a bench) and helps with the activation of the back muscles and deep sources of motion.
M.
A chair might work for the Glenn Goulds of the world, but it certainly wouldn't work for me; I think it wouldn't work for many pianists. The slope of a chair seat pushes one back against the back of the chair meaning that, no matter how close the chair may be moved to the keyboard, one has to slouch forward to play. It seems to me that that kind of position, sitting on the thighs, negates any use of body weight to produce tone. How can one sit erect and properly balanced if the configuration of the chair forces one into what I would consider an unnatural playing position?
Regards,
Bach, Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Czerny, Leschetizky, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ravel, Saint Saens, a young Rachmaninoff, and a few thousand pianists in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, had more than one thing in common. That one thing is that they sat in a chair when they played.
Go figure.
When Carey and I were at North Texas, a magnificent accompanist/lieder coach, by the name of Harold Heidberg, always played from a chair.
Bach, Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Czerny, Leschetizky, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ravel, Saint Saens, a young Rachmaninoff, and a few thousand pianists in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, had more than one thing in common. That one thing is that they sat in a chair when they played.
But did they choose a chair over a bench or were benches not readily available at the time?
Bach, Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Czerny, Leschetizky, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ravel, Saint Saens, a young Rachmaninoff, and a few thousand pianists in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, had more than one thing in common. That one thing is that they sat in a chair when they played.
But did they choose a chair over a bench or were benches not readily available at the time?
Fred knows way more about the history of the piano bench than I do, but I do have a distinct perspective - in that, I play on a 63 year old bench.
That bench is what was termed, the "Jose Iturbi" bench by the Baldwin piano company. It is not the button tufted leather piece of concrete (carp) most of you have sat on.
It is, here it comes, elephant hide, which never cracks and stretches according to my body weight every time I sit down. The wood used is also top quality, and the bench will probably outlive me, as it did my late father who bought it with the 1950 Baldwin Baby Grand that I have played on my entire life.
Parenthetically, according to my Steinway factory trained tuner/technician, it is the best Baby Grand in San Antonio. You heard the video!
Now, as to the original question, I cannot find any legitimate research information that tells me when the bench came into being. My only guess, is that Steinway, Baldwin, and M & H decided that it was much easier to mass produce a wooden piece of junk bench that was thrown in for the sale of each, mostly upright, piano.
In that every major city in Europe had hundreds of woodworker craftsman, and every city had at least (Rigbie Turner) 40 piano factories, it would have been no big deal to produce a bench for pianos in the 19th century.
I will leave it there for now, and if anyone has any additional information, I would appreciate the input.
Bach, Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Czerny, Leschetizky, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ravel, Saint Saens, a young Rachmaninoff, and a few thousand pianists in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, had more than one thing in common. That one thing is that they sat in a chair when they played.
But did they choose a chair over a bench or were benches not readily available at the time?
Fred knows way more about the history of the piano bench than I do, but I do have a distinct perspective - in that, I play on a 63 year old bench.
That bench is what was termed, the "Jose Iturbi" bench by the Baldwin piano company. It is not the button tufted leather piece of concrete (carp) most of you have sat on.
It is, here it comes, elephant hide, which never cracks and stretches according to my body weight every time I sit down. The wood used is also top quality, and the bench will probably outlive me, as it did my late father who bought it with the 1950 Baldwin Baby Grand that I have played on my entire life.
Parenthetically, according to my Steinway factory trained tuner/technician, it is the best Baby Grand in San Antonio. You heard the video!
Now, as to the original question, I cannot find any legitimate research information that tells me when the bench came into being. My only guess, is that Steinway, Baldwin, and M & H decided that it was much easier to mass produce a wooden piece of junk bench that was thrown in for the sale of each, mostly upright, piano.
In that every major city in Europe had hundreds of woodworker craftsman, and every city had at least (Rigbie Turner) 40 piano factories, it would have been no big deal to produce a bench for pianos in the 19th century.
I will leave it there for now, and if anyone has any additional information, I would appreciate the input.
So it appears that when the chair was popular it was the could easily have been the only choice and when both the bench and the chair were options the overwhelming percent of pianists chose the bench.
What you are missing from my, cursory at best, analysis is that in the 19th century, you bought a piano. You didn't buy the bench because they didn't sell a bench because you didn't need a bench. Everyone sat on a chair.
In the 20th century, they did so because they (the piano salesman) hyped the fact that all of the world's concert pianists were now sitting on a piano bench.
Jesus, my father paid $50 for this bench 65 years ago. Do you think that if they could buffalo a Phi beta Kappa M.D. into making that purchase, that they would have had any different result with the general public for a wooden piece of junk that they thought they were getting for free?
It just dawned on me. Before, I decided to go back to music school, I actually worked (1970's) as a piano technician/trainee at the largest Baldwin distributor in south Texas.
Accordingly, I saw a whole lot of junk pianos (and organs) go out the door to people who did not have a clue as to what they were buying.
Because, the salesman were not selling pianos, they were selling a concept. You were buying "Culture" for your new American Dream middle class family.
Bach, Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Czerny, Leschetizky, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ravel, Saint Saens, a young Rachmaninoff, and a few thousand pianists in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, had more than one thing in common. That one thing is that they sat in a chair when they played.
When Carey and I were at North Texas, a magnificent accompanist/lieder coach, by the name of Harold Heiberg, always played from a chair.
Indeed he did. And I had the pleasure and privilege to study vocal accompanying with Heiberg as a grad student when he first arrived at UNT in 1971. He continued to teach full time at UNT into his early 80's and passed away last June at age 91.
So it appears that when the chair was popular it was the could easily have been the only choice and when both the bench and the chair were options the overwhelming percent of pianists chose the bench.
It seems to me that the main reason for choosing a bench over a chair is that benches are generally adjustable in height. Unless you're the sort of pianist who likes to shift sideways while playing.
I never used a chair for playing until I bought my piano three years ago, and being a stingy sort of person, didn't want to spend any more money to buy a bench. So, I appropriated one of my kitchen chairs, which is comfortable and of standard height, and the right height for me to sit at the piano. And I discovered a new world of comfort: I can lean back and have my back supported, or sit upright, or lean forwards. On a bench, I cannot do the former.
Mr Chiu and Mr Lupu have got a thing or two there.....
One of the things not being discussed here is that Fred, as well as my coach Thomas Mark, make a big deal about the relationship of one's entire body to the playing of the piano. Thomas is always experimenting around with bench height.
I sit with the bench way back from the piano. And, I sit at the very edge of the bench and lean forward, with my head held still and high.
Finally, here is a link to a photograph of someone sitting in a chair pulled way back from the piano. You should try and play his music that way. It makes for a very different sound.
Bach, Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Czerny, Leschetizky, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ravel, Saint Saens, a young Rachmaninoff, and a few thousand pianists in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, had more than one thing in common. That one thing is that they sat in a chair when they played.
And also Josef Hofmann - every video of him I've ever seen has him sitting in a chair. The question is how much of it was tradition or convenience, and how much of it was real physical advantage, for the pianists in the past who did this. I think maybe some pianists are physically adapted to be in a chair, others on a bench, each as a result of natural traits of the body and overall pianistic orientation, and that there may be psychological factors as well involved in one's preference.
M.
[note to Mark_C: I didn't see your post on this subject in the other thread until after the thread had been locked, and as well a PM could not be sent to you about this. It was due to my mistake that I did not respond to your post. To have ignored someone as it might have appeared I did, and to do so especially when there is a direct response in an interesting discussion, is not my way of communicating!]
I wanted to chime in on the two subjects here - the original thread about the DPS work and the DVD. Thanks for pointing out the lack of a clear link. I've put a more straightforward link at the www.fredericchiu.com/dps website. The only differences between the chapters available on Youtube and the DVD are: 1) better quality video on the DVD, 2) performances that are not on Youtube, 3) easier navigation through the DVD chapters than on Youtube. If those are important to you, then please purchase the DVD!
On the subject of benches vs chairs, I've sat in a chair since my adult years, first out of convenience (a piano in NY without a good bench) then quickly out of choice, when I noticed that my technique (back muscles vs. weight) favored the lower position. Because I use my back muscles a lot, I like having a larger angle between the arm and the body, and I like having the opportunity to relax the torso by resting on the chair back. My teacher Abbey Simon does the opposite; he puts riser blocks under the back legs of a bench, and sits very high.
To each his own, I say. But just be clear that you really know what you are looking for - I would say that many think they are comfortable, but they have never really felt true comfort and don't know what they are looking for.
I wanted to chime in on the two subjects here - the original thread about the DPS work and the DVD. Thanks for pointing out the lack of a clear link. I've put a more straightforward link at the www.fredericchiu.com/dps website. The only differences between the chapters available on Youtube and the DVD are: 1) better quality video on the DVD, 2) performances that are not on Youtube, 3) easier navigation through the DVD chapters than on Youtube. If those are important to you, then please purchase the DVD!
On the subject of benches vs chairs, I've sat in a chair since my adult years, first out of convenience (a piano in NY without a good bench) then quickly out of choice, when I noticed that my technique (back muscles vs. weight) favored the lower position. Because I use my back muscles a lot, I like having a larger angle between the arm and the body, and I like having the opportunity to relax the torso by resting on the chair back. My teacher Abbey Simon does the opposite; he puts riser blocks under the back legs of a bench, and sits very high.
To each his own, I say. But just be clear that you really know what you are looking for - I would say that many think they are comfortable, but they have never really felt true comfort and don't know what they are looking for.
First, do you know how many concert pianists of this man's rank and stature would take the time away from their schedule to do this? Fred is probably it, so, read, listen, and learn, while you have the opportunity.
Second, in order to illustrate what he is talking about in regards Mr. Simon, I list the following link:
First, do you know how many concert pianists of this man's rank and stature would take the time away from their schedule to do this? Fred is probably it, so, read, listen, and learn, while you have the opportunity.
+1
I always feel it's an honor when this kind of thing happens here. (Although I do think there are others.)