Fermata – Page 7

Technique, or Dogma?

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

In his wonderful book Piano Notes: The Hidden World of the Pianist (2002) the American concert pianist, author and polymath Charles Rosen writes:

“There is no agreement on how to hold the hand at the piano: most children are taught to curve their fingers and place the wrist in a middle position, neither too low nor too high, but of course playing rapid octaves generally demands a higher position for wrist and arm. Horowitz played with his fingers stretched flat and José Iturbi used to hold his wrist below the level of the keyboard.
This variety is the reason that almost all books on how to play the piano are absurd, and that any dogmatic system of teaching technique is pernicious. Most pianists, in fact, have to work to some extent in late adolescence to undo the effects of their early instruction and find an idiosyncratic method that suits them personally.
Not only the individual shape of the hand counts, but even the whole corporal shape. That is why there is no optimum position for sitting at the piano, in spite of what many pedagogues think.”

Embracing our limits

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

“Every river has its banks, every ocean has its shores. Constant expansion is not possible. Everything reaches its limits, and the wise always try to identify these limits.”

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao Daily Meditations

I love this metaphor of the river: it is the banks which give it direction, focus its energetic flow, and encourage it towards its destination. It doesn’t want to burst its banks, and quickly dissipates when flooding causes it to. How much better to flow where its banks lead.

The shores of the ocean, meanwhile, are ultimately the boundaries which define it. The shoreline is a point of safety, security, a haven from the deep. And while I often remind students that piano playing is the journey of a lifetime, without destination, we all need to spend time in port, resupplying our vessels and finding refreshment.

The desire to push beyond our natural limits may have become an endemic demand in every field of human endeavour, but there is surely little doubt this attitude is responsible for many of the problems we face. So how can we come to terms with our limitations and leverage them to our advantage?

The Landscape of Play

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

In my article Putting the PLAY back into playing the piano, I set out what I described as a “radical manifesto for piano education”.

That article was a watershed moment that brought together many of the ideas previously proposed on Pianodao, and outlined a fresh, positive future for piano education. Concluding the article, I wrote,

“There will long be those who value a piano journey which ventures beyond a prescribed series of sequenced tasks, levels and achievements, who long to depart from the digital learning super-highway to explore lesser-travelled, but astonishingly beautiful and fascinating byways.”

Naturally, as readers have considered Dr. Stuart Brown’s seven properties of play and their application in piano education, many have asked what this looks like in practice.

A Lifelong Love of Music

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

I have previously quoted Andor Földes’ eminently humane views about talented children (he himself achieved fame at a prodigiously young age) from his book Keys to the Keyboard (1950).

Here is another equally thought-provoking snippet from the same passage of the book, and for continuing reflection:

“I heartily agree with the words of the great Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, who, in an interview some years ago, stated bluntly that nothing a musical child produces before the age of eighteen really counts. What matters is a person’s work between the ages of eighteen and seventy-five.”

When children take up piano lessons, have we yet sufficiently understood that this is just the beginning of what will hopefully be a lifelong love of playing the piano, or do we take too short-term a view?

A Child Prodigy Speaks

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

The pianist Andor Földes (1913-1992) was one of the great child ‘prodigies’ of the early twentieth century, making his public debut performing a Mozart concerto with the Budapest Philharmonic in 1921 when he was just 8 years old. Földes went on to enjoy a successful concert and recording career, as well as writing several books, including the seminal Keys to the Keyboard (1950), in which he comments,

“Everybody knows about prodigies; the writer of this book happened to be one. But the great majority of people are inclined to forget that for every prodigy who has made good, there are a thousand others who for one reason or another have not fulfilled the promise shown in their early youth.
They are the less fortunate ones, whose careers may have been ruined by a premature start in public playing, or because of the inevitable conflict between the growing pains of adolescence and the growing responsibilities of the budding artiste; the ones who have never made the grade, to the everlasting chagrin of their parents.”

That Földes was himself a prodigy adds resonance to his viewpoint, and though he proved to be that one in a thousand who found continuing success, he undoubtedly witnessed those he describes as “less fortunate”.