balance of the hands I

Part I of V about handedness and keyboard technique

In one of the interviews presented in Bruno Monsaingeon’s monumental video documentary Richter, the Enigma, Sviatoslav Richter mentions his belief that the right and left hands of a pianist need to be in balance. The video clips of Richter on this DVD (and any one of those available on YouTube) show impressively what he means by balance: the independence between the hands and, as it would seem to an observer, a lack of subordination of either of them. But the call for balance on an instrument played by both hands using the same set of basic techniques is, by itself, not very earth-shattering. Much more interesting is how the effect of balance is achieved, and at what costs. The following posts are about this topic.

To pave the way for explaining my view on keyboard technique and balance between the hands, I will, however, have to supply an introduction containing disclaimers, myth-destroyers, definitions and denials. Why? Because this is about handedness. I have heard very smart people say searingly stupid things about handedness.

harpsichord and nyckelharpa

To participate in the St Matthew Passion means that you meet another continuo player, which is something that doesn’t happen very often otherwise. While two oboists at the left and two oboists at the right huddle together and compare reeds between arias, while two plus two flutists practice their passionate bits of duo during the coffee breaks and while the assorted singers fine-tune their smiles and the pronunciation of words like “zerknirscht,” the keyboard section exchanges stories of life and talks about bold new projects. Andreas Edlund (organ, Choir I) whom I (organ, Choir II, plus some stray chords from the harpsichord) hadn’t seen for two years (a shame because his artistic and culinary tastes are impeccable) brought me his new CD with harpsichord and nyckelharpa (keyed fiddle).

talking to the audience

…and demonstrating historical keyboard actions

Public outreach is a term that does very well in academia these days. It guarantees that one’s research, one’s department, or even one’s university will be there tomorrow. If we want to make people appreciate our work and open their purses in our favor, we have to go to places where these people are and we have to learn to talk their language.

Musicians have known this for quite some time. Even for someone with good references, it is pretty much more difficult to get funding for a cute concert idea than it is for an established researcher to get a stipend for a snazzy research project. We have learned to talk about our work. We have also learned to deal with the old problem that one may not use too many words to tell an audience that what they never knew before one started talking is in fact very interesting.

This took me some getting used to.

sitting high sitting low

The author of one of my books about bicycle maintenance explains how one determines the height of the seat. It is, he writes, not a matter of preference, it is a matter of finding the ideal height in relationship to the length of one’s legs and the position of the pedals. There is only one way to sit well on a bike: in their stretched position, the legs should be straight but not tense. I followed his advice and, after a period of getting used to it, I found it to be good advice. I am sure that there are thousands of people who disagree and sit on their bikes any which way. I am also sure that really successful professional bikers have spent a lot of time figuring out how to sit properly.

Can this be transferred to professional keyboard playing? Is there an ideal manner of sitting behind the keyboard that makes us play more relaxedly than any other way, that prevents the development of back trouble and that helps us to concentrate on the music instead on tense or blocked muscles?

To prepare yourself for my non-linear answer, take a few minutes break from reading here, go to youtube.com, search for Brendel, Horowitz; Berezovsky, Cziffra; Kempff and Gould and look at some of the videos. High low; high low; high low.

humidifiers

March. Even in Sweden, the sun occasionally shows its shy face, and the days get longer and longer. What used to be the usual boring weather becomes all of a sudden a pressing matter for the harpsichord owner: it gets too dry. Not surprisingly, this has been a problem at all times, as you can read in Robin’s new post about an unlucky Schiedmayer fortepiano.

voicing, complete pdf

To download my complete voicing article,

click here: harpsichord-voicing.pdf

voicing VI

The final part of my article about harpsichord plectra

Things To Observe

I have mentioned this before: to achieve good voicing results, especially with quill, a positive attitude towards the work is absolutely necessary. If you tend to see voicing and harpsichord maintenance as a hassle, quill is not for you, even if many people exaggerate the problems connected with this material. If you have very little time available for maintaining your harpsichord, you are probably better off with delrin as well.

It is a good investment of one’s time to learn from the start how to give a smooth finish to one’s plectra. Most of the time, a newly inserted plectrum needs to be made somewhat thinner in order to sound good. One always only takes away material from under the plectrum. I use a standard-size woodcarving knife for this task which I keep very sharp (an instruction for sharpening, albeit for kitchen knives, can be found here). It is to a large degree a matter of taste whether one cuts the material or scrapes it thinner.