Random ideas about piano playing and teaching

When starting to play again after a long period of being away from the piano, it is better to begin to play real music — however slowly — rather than to start with exercises. This is because real music encourages the muscles to work in a more fluid and natural way with a wider variety of movements than in, say, Hanon.

Uncertainty and confusion are much to be prized, for out of these can grow much that is creative and original. An artist who believes he/she is in possession of unshakeable truths is best avoided unless one has a high tolerance for boredom.

Every day we have to find our ‘voice’ on the piano, a tone that ‘rings’ and projects, in the same way that a singer has to daily experiment with resonance and awareness in the muscles so that a marriage between the vision and the feel of a sound becomes possible.

Reliable technique is formed in response to a ‘need for sound’ (to paraphrase Patsy Rodenburg’s title, “The Need For Words”), just as reliable walking is developed by a ‘need’ to move from ‘A’ to ‘B’. To take a specific example: When practising overlap pedal, you first have to experience the desire or ‘need’ for a note, then the need to make the sound richer by raising the dampers - thus adding sympathetic resonance, next the need to hear two notes sounding together in the same pedal and finally the desire to hear the first note cease and the second note continue on its own. No amount of mechanical counting and up-and-downing of the pedal can produce such certainty and control, because it is not based on musical needs.

First develop your powers for imagining the sound — ‘the vision’ — then develop your muscular awareness so that you can mate the vision with the physical feel of making the sound. This ‘mating’ can only be achieved by constant experimentation — by imagining a sound, trying to produce it so that it matches the image in your head and then by remembering the feel and associating the two together. All of this practice being driven by a profound ‘need’for the sound. “Feel the sound,” as Warren Jacobs has said. To which I would add “Listen with your muscles.” Ernest Empson used to say “The music makes the muscles.” Pupils do not often realise that this process is the way to develop a brilliant technique. They think that slow, thoughtful practice produces slow playing and that fast, mechanical practice, with little thought, produces showy fingerwork. In fact, once you have developed a reliable connection between mind and muscles, you have only to think music — at whatever speed — to physically produce it.

Musical integrity is the most important single quality a musician has and should be encouraged from the beginning. Pupils should be constantly faced with interpretative decisions so that they can develop confidence in their own instincts and faith in their ability to solve problems. It is better that they develop these qualities, even if they play with what may be ‘bad taste’ to a more experienced musician, than that they should have another's instincts forced upon them — (musical ‘rape’). The teacher should certainly provide options and examples, insist on accurate score reading and encourage a responsible attitude to what we can discern of the composers wishes; but this still leaves plenty of room for individual choice. This is not subscribing to the cult of “The self is everything. Who cares what the composer thought? — He's dead anyway.” Far from it. I am talking about developing a sense of responsibility and the use of instinct to serve what one perceives as the composer's wishes. However, teachers should be wary that they do not regard their own instincts as being synonymous with those of the composer.

Music hooks into meanings and associations far beyond the notes pure and simple. We should readily accept this richness into our musical vision.

Do exercises for four fingers — checking that the remaining finger stays relaxed all the way through.

Muscular breathing. There must be a cycle of tension and relaxation to keep the muscles healthy.

The relationship between the voice and the fingers. Opening a channel between the vision and the muscles.

Rhythmic curves in structuring a piece or a phrase. Likened to building a bridge with each block a different shape, so that every block depends on every other and is therefore an indispensible part of the whole. Unlike a wall where every brick is the same size and shape.

Practising pianissimo. First with no sound, but put the keys right down. Float on the keys.

Pedalling — various ways of finishing a chord from sudden stop to gradual feathering out.

The ‘dance’ of the hand. When the phrasing and articulation are right, the dance is right.

Play studies with musical phrasing — this often solves technical problems and reduces the risk of injury.

Constantly experiment with the many possible ways of balancing chords to produce as many colours as you can imagine.

Animal intelligence in the hands — Ernest Empson advised me to study Maeterlinck's essay on “Intelligence in Plants,” how roots find their way to water (fingers, to the notes) Enjoy the feel of the hand constantly changing shape — and the fingers finding their way to the notes. ‘Decentralise’. Don't feel everything is directed from the head, that the fingers are senseless props to be poked at the keys at the command of the brain. Use spinal intelligence and all the nerves and ganglia that are part of the brain in the wider sense. Although not conscious, they are super-fast and efficient. Develop an awareness of this unconscious intelligence that is working throughout the body and enjoy the ‘feel’ of using it.

Use Schenker-style analysis in order to appreciate the often extraordinary nature of the composer’s invention over a simple foundation.

The finest musicians play well because they cannot tolerate rough playing any more than people with sensitive feet can tolerate walking on broken glass. Practice therefore becomes a need, not just something they feel they ‘ought to do’.

Music is a kind of hypnotism. The rhythm is vital to keep people ‘under’. Break the rhythm and the magic is gone - people feel they have been woken from a dream. We are all babies at heart. We love to be rocked. If the rocking becomes unrhythmic we cry.