Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Just for those totally devoted to Chopin

Seabelle: We most sincerely welcome you here as a new member and are pleased that you have posted. We respect your opinion and will "fight to the death" (perhaps not quite) your right to express it.

We have existed as long as we have because we, while not always agreeing with one another, have valued and most certainly have encouraged everyone to speak his or her mind. Some of us have been able to do so with elegance and wit. They lend a certain quality and charm to our thread that makes us unique (not better just different). I hope you will continue to visit us here knowing that we pride ourselves on our civility.

Now, back to practicing those runs.

Liszt Addict: I can never understand why lifting one’s fingers high in the air helps to improve our playing, especially on those runs. It would seem more logical to me that keeping the fingers close to the keyboard would eventually help us get up to speed.

Now this is silly, I know, but I have taken to wearing one of those support belts (mine is much wider and I got it after having spine surgery). My back kills me when I sit at the piano for only 20 minutes at a time. It seems to help…not my playing, but my ability to practice for longer periods without a lot of discomfort.

Has anyone with the same problem tried this?

Mark: You are not alone about thinking about omitting those runs. But then I feel so guilty.

Respectfully always and to all,
Kathleen

"I have taken to wearing one of those support belts... My back kills me when I sit at the piano for only 20 minutes at a time. It seems to help..."

Really. I don't suppose you'd post a photo or give a bit more of a description? I know the problem only too well, not from surgery but disc degeneration. Cause unknown, treatment, finally, enough drugs to keep the lid on the pain, and using great care in moving.

They used to have gentlemen wear girdles, the kind ladies used to wear to control the embonpoint. If you're talking about the kind of wide belts warehouse workers and delivery guys wear, it sounds a lot less undignified.

"I can never understand why lifting one’s fingers high in the air helps to improve our playing, especially on those runs."

My personal experience tells me that the gesture is more subtle than actually cocking the fingers back in the air (which can be risky for injuring the hand if overdone). It's a little more lift, largely mental, that gives me a slight extra measure of additional control of articulation.

I've always treated the finger lifting as a technique to ensure the key is pressed with the finger muscles, allowing the rest of the hand to be relaxed while playing runs. If I (as a beginner) don't make an effort to lift the fingers, I find my hand tensing up during scales and similar runs.

Am I wrong in this?

This is for practice purpose only.

If I may attempt to clarify, I believe that what LisztAddict is recommending is exaggerating the lifting of the fingers somewhat during slow practice, adding a little extra effort, so that then when one speeds up and makes normal, smaller movements it seems so much easier. Is that it? (I don't think I'm describing it very well.) This principle can work on other instruments as well, and with dance.

There are so many different ways of thinking about and visualizing what parts of the mechanism are doing what (heaven knows my Taubman-oriented teacher would about have a stroke if I talked about lifting my fingers high) but my impression is that most effective players arrive at more or less the same basic technical concepts-- more or less.

Bunneh, in a sense you are in fact "wrong," because the fingers don't have any muscles! They only have tendons. The muscles that move the fingers are actually located in the forearms. This amazed me when I first was told about it-- I had already had anatomy training, but my subjective sensation of having muscles in my fingers was so strong that I believed they were there. So it's not surprising if you feel like you have muscles in your fingers too.

I wish I could observe you playing and see exactly what is causing you to develop uncomfortable tension. There are a number of possibilities. Make sure your arms are hanging loosely, neutrally from your shoulders. (This is a core Chopin principle, and it is crucial and widely agreed upon.) Have your fingers firm but not stiff, as if you are "standing" on your fingers-- it feels like a very slight contraction of those nonexistent finger muscles. The "standing" sensation can go a tremendous way toward bringing efficiency and comfort to your playing. The hand does stay flexible this way, or as Chopin would say, supple.

One more thing about practicing those runs. While we want to have them smooth and even in the end, varying the rhythm in practice, intentionally making them uneven, can smooth over any slight "bumps" and hesitations. That is, play them as triplets, or dotted, or any rhythmic figures you can think of, and keep tricking your brain to do them in different ways. This is important in practicing scales as well. (While I haven't learned that 48-note run up to blistering speed I've learned lots of others....)

Mark, leaving out that measure sounds tempting-- and there are two other measures I wouldn't mind bypassing in 27/2, despite their gorgeousness. But while working on it, how about improvising a simpler run of your own and claiming that you are being especially Chopinesque, since he was a master improviser? Hey, he didn't always play things the same way-- far from it!

I really appreciate the reminders that by steadily practicing something difficult for even a few minutes every day one may successfully learn it. I know this but I can easily lose sight of it.

Kathleen, the support belt sounds like a good idea to me. Of course for the rest of us with back problems I'd also recommend therapeutic exercise for strengthening the supporting muscles, acupuncture, manipulation, etc. etc.

Elene

I know this sounds like a trivial question, but have you tried maybe adjusting the height of your seat?
My seat cannot be adjusted unfortunately. I once posted here I wanted to buy a new adjustable one, but then I found out the minimum height would have been the same as mine, and I need a lower seat. Astonishing, considering I am pretty small... I might get back pain too when I grow older if I don't correct this.

CA

I'm just 5'6" and have the same problem. Mine is the result of having a combination of short arms and a long torso. I've got an artist's bench (Chinese off ebay). I have it at the minimum height and I still had to remove the little metal caps at the botton of each leg. That lowered the seat maybe another 1/4". Someone suggested raising my piano on caster cups. It's a thought - someday when I have about three big hefty guys around to lift it up for me.

Maybe we both need a sawed off porch chair like Glenn Gould.

With all respect for Glenn Gould, his technique (which was very specialized--- as was his piano's action) may have worked for him, but I would hardly recommend that either it, or his sitting position be emulated. He had absolutely terrible pain: arms, hands, shoulders etc.

ChopinAddict, you're right on the money with your feeling that the seat needs to be adjusted so that your sitting posture is effective for playing and protects your body.

I would think it might be easier to take off some of the bench leg than to levitate the piano. A power sander with a coarse paper will take some length off pretty fast--- not in your music room, of course. I had to buy longer legs for my bench to get it right for me. I had no idea they offered them, but they do--- and shorter legs, too. Between that and the amount of adjustment the bench mechanism offers, it got rid of a lot of the back pain.

I'm pretty sure he would agree totally with you about Glenn Gould.
The Gould thing was just a laugh line.

Exactly! and this practice also helps you play more evenly with all fingers.

This discussion of seat height makes excellent points. And watching Glenn Gould, I thought his positioning looked incredibly painful. I knew he took a lot of meds but didn't realize some were for that reason.

I have a long torso and short legs, and for guitar and lute I need a chair that's lower than standard. I have an old desk chair that goes really low but is too heavy to take for gigs; often when playing out someplace I've worn heels to make up the difference. Used to have a wooden stool with the legs sawn down. I really should try to find another.

At the same time, I need to sit pretty high at the piano, for which I have another office chair with a nice waterfall front to the seat which doesn't mash my thighs or other underparts. It's set as high as it goes. I understand why I need a low chair for plucked strings, but don't know why at the same time I need a high seat at the piano! The geometry must make sense, though.

At any rate, I always found that just sitting in a harmonious position at the piano could make an incredible difference for students. My mother, for example, was having pain and immobility from the arthritis in her wrist, but if she simply paid attention to sitting up straighter so that her arm hung at a comfortable angle, the problem instantly disappeared.

Elene

A patient just sent me this link:

http://www.artsjournal.com/creatived/2009/11/public-concert-private-music.html

It isn't Chopin but it has to do with a Liszt piece and how Andre Watts' playing of it made a huge difference in someone's life. This crazy thing that we do every day can really matter....

(Keeping a bit more on topic-- there is a story that Chopin at one point went to play for an acquaintance who was dying and had asked for him, even though he was feeling awful himself at the time.)

Elene

Sorry to keep bombarding you, but one more thing:

Frycek wrote, “And remember for speed, let your whole hand move your fingers, not your fingers move your whole hand.” This is so important. As you move through a scale-type passage the arm and hand have the job of carrying the fingers along laterally and the fingers sort of just go along for the ride. Allowing the arm to move freely, paying attention to that smooth lateral arm movement, makes a huge difference.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to express this and allied concepts for a chapter I’m working on, and have debated with my teacher which part of the mechanism initiates the movement. Is it the arm? the fingers? the hand? etc. My sense is that, in Chopin’s way of doing things, the arm appears to be just following the hand. That is, the arm is actually quite active, but it FEELS as if it’s not doing anything in particular, just hanging there and going along with the hand.

We don’t have any Holy Writ that I know of on this subject (except for one sentence about a supple hand and everything following the hand in the right order), but Mikuli reported it this way: “According to Chopin, evenness in scales (and in arpeggios) depended not merely on equal strengthening of all fingers by means of five-finger exercises, and on entire freedom of the thumb when passing under and over, but above all on a constant sideways movement of the hands (with the elbow hanging freely and always loose), continuous and even-flowing rather than in steps, a movement he illustrated by a glissando over the keys.” (Eigeldinger p. 37) I haven’t come up with any better way of describing this concept than that.

Once you’ve mastered that 35-note run in the C#m Nocturne, you can try the original version of the piece, in which each hand has a different time signature for a while starting at measure 21, preserving the rhythm of the mazurka tune from the third movement of the Fm concerto. Have fun….

Elene

Back to the girdle thing. I am afraid I gave the wrong impression on what I am using. It is a very, very wide piece of very, very heavy elastic that is secured with velcro. Something that you might get from the doctor after you broke a few ribs (which I did a couple of years ago). I wrap this thing around my middle, pulling it as tight as I can, and then keeping it in place with the velcro. It could act as a girdle (good grief) if I were to stretch it across my ever-protruding stomach.

I have gotten rid of my bench and use a chair now. I am thinking of wrapping that thing around the chair back and then around me. This might help me to sit up straight and then have the back of the chair as support. Oh, what we won't do for our art. I had a thought...if I had to get out of the house in a hurry (like in a fire), I would be running out the door with a chair strapped to my back!!

I also thought that Gould's position at the piano was crazy, and that it had to cause him much discomfort. Pretty much the same discomfort when I listen to him play Bach's first prelude. I watched that film about him. I never could figure out just what the big fuss about him was or is. Pretty strange to me, at least. But what do I know?

Elene: I believe that Chopin did not believe that all fingers should be of equal strength. That is not to say that we should not exercise them. But he believed that each finger could only be "strengthen" so far and that this was the beauty of using different fingering for different notes. I believe he made reference to his weak "4th finger" in one of his letters. Reading this rather made me feel much empathy for him, since my 4th and especially my 5th are like noodles sometimes. And I do love to change from one finger to another while holding down a note. At least, I am pretty good at this technique.

I have the book Chopin's Letters collected by Opienski and translated by Voynich. Does anyone know of another book of his letters out there someplace?

Once again,, my screen is jumpiing around so I can't see what I am writing. [size:14pt]

Thanks, Kathleen[/size]

Glad you mentioned that......I've seen an edition that had it like that and didn't know what to make of it, other than (as you said) that it preserves the rhythm from the concerto.

I've never heard anyone play it like that, though, except myself a couple of times just "trying" it and "deciding" that it doesn't work but of course that wasn't much of a trial.

Kathleen,

Indeed, Chopin did not believe or teach that the fingers should be of equal strength; a major contribution of his was the understanding that each finger has a different sound. I hesitated to include the entire Mikuli quote for that reason. I find it hard to believe that Mikuli entirely missed the point of Chopin's philosophy of fingering, and don't quite know what to make of that part of his statement.

However, in the letter where Chopin referred to his weak 4th finger (as well as his enormous nose), I think he must have been joking, or at least meant that his 4th fingers were weak in the sense that everyone's are. I don't know for sure, but no one seemed to suggest that his playing was in any way impaired at that point.

Crazy things get written, as we know. Someone else wrote that Chopin played without arm weight, which cannot be true, unless that person defined arm weight as meaning actively pressing the arm down into the keyboard. One way or another, it is difficult to put instrumental technique into words.

About Gould, I'm with you on the first WTC prelude, but have you heard him play the Goldberg Variations? That would perhaps give you a better idea of where he was coming from.*

Tying oneself to a chair back wouldn't work anyway, because the torso has to move freely! But I kind of like the idea of a back support if only as a reminder to keep the back and abdominal muscles engaged.

I don't know of another edition of Chopin's letters in a book, but there is a website which gives them in the original languages-- invaluable to those who can make use of them.

Elene

*Possibly another planet. But an interesting one.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet has recorded the original version of the C#m Nocturne. I think it's on his "The Chopin I Love" album. (The album is not impressive otherwise, though.) It does work, but I don't know how to teach my brain to even get started on it. But then I haven't really made much of an effort.

Elene

(I'll look for it.....I just looked on youtube and it seems not to be on there. Thanks for mentioning!)

It's NOT possible for 5 fingers to have equal strength. But they should be able to produce even tone quality to a certain level. Let's say we have a long run which we must use all the fingers, we certainly don't want to hear soft-loud-soft-loud all over the places. That said, we must be able to play the thumb, finger 2 and 3 a bit lighter, finger 4 and 5 a bit heavier to keep even volume. The 4th finger does not lift up very well either. If we don't train this finger well, we also get uneven duration between notes in a run.

"Indeed, Chopin did not believe or teach that the fingers should be of equal strength; a major contribution of his was the understanding that each finger has a different sound."

I just finished 600+ pages of Gerig's Famous Pianists and Their Technique, and he makes that exact point. Some composers specify fingerings that seem awkward because they intend for the sound to reflect the difficulty.

Gerig's book tells a sorry tale of entirely mistaken schools of technique, which have ruined many a student. The contraptions they used to make young pianists wear on their hands...

But, there are also better stories; anyway, he pretty much covers the territory and the times, and it is music history that's given in a way that brings it home, since the knowledge of technique is every pianist's heritage.

Now, about strapping one's self to a chair--- it's true that it would be too limiting and maybe outright dangerous. It reminded me of my backpacking days. I finally spent the money and got a really good Gregory pack, with a wide belt and stiff stays which, along with the arm straps, did not allow the spine to go out of alignment. Yet, it was quite comfortable and allowed complete freedom of movement of the arms and legs. Maybe I should give it a try (unpacked) at the piano.