PianoTechnique.net

(More extensive excerpts from Reginald Gerig related to the connection between harpsichord and piano technique can be read in the following separate articles:

J. S. Bach & His Sons ; Handel & Scarlatti ; Gerig on the Harpsichord )

:Harpsichord and Piano - Not As Far Apart as They Seem

Much has been made of the differences between piano and harpsichord technique, but little attention has been paid to their similarities. Piano technique grew directly out of harpsichord technique, and the modern pianist has much to learn by returning to the harpsichord and learning by sensory experience what a fine world of touch discrimination was needed to play the earlier keyboard instrument, and how much piano tone can be enriched by employing similar means. Listen to Reginald Gerig speak on the subject:

“The nature of harpsichord tone – bright, shimmering, incisive, well-defined, and more easily sustained than generally realized — requires the most careful attention to articulation… There is no room at all for vagueness of touch — every tone stands out in sharp relief. A legato is completely controlled by the fingers—the slightest deficiency is immediately evident [bold mine].

‘Varying the length of sound duration of individual notes can produce a sense of accent or increasing intensity within a tonal line. The instrument has an infinite capacity for subtle rubato and this should be achieved with the lightest possible degree of pressure in the finger tips. The fingers must be held close to the keys and move in as precise a manner as possible. The plectrum action against the string can be felt in the keyboard touch to a very remarkable degree and in itself presents a great challenge to the performer.”

Here we see that legato – the physical joining together of notes – the foundation of piano technique, was also the key element of harpsichord technique. We can assume that harpsichordists, if taught to employ this well, did not suffer from the collapsed arch we see so often in modern piano players, because the practice of a true legato would prevent their hand from falling into such dysfunction. Gerig further writes,

“The sound of the clavichord was even weaker and more intimate than the harpsichord. It is not that clavichord technique was transplanted, but rather that the quality of tone colour of this extremely rich and sensitive instrument nourished the creative imagination of the harpsichordist. Pianists today should likewise perfect and discipline their touch, as well as sharpen their listening powers, by working at both the harpsichord and the clavichord.”

Wanda Landowska provides a fascinating example. She was well-trained as a pianist; her Chopin was said to be exquisite although no recordings exist. She then re-discovered the harpsichord and virtually single-handedly returned it to the 20^th century concert stage. But much later she returned to the Steinway piano to record several Mozart sonatas. Follow this link to listen to some Landowska Mozart Sonata Excerpts. These performances are a revelation. She brings the sensibilities of a harpsichordist back to the piano, and the result is a fascinating lightness of touch that allows a wonderfully differentiated sound – each nuance of articulation leads to a new phrase colour. Mozart speaks in all his operatic eloquence, instead of the generic ‘niceness’ we too often hear. And her rhythm is wonderfully flexible and simultaneously virile – no mannerism here, but a marvellous capacity to shape phrase through rhythmic manipulation that again grows out of harpsichord technique, where dynamic shaping was not possible.

Virgil Thomson elaborates on Landowska’s magical Mozart:“Landowska approached the harpsichord and its literature by taking risks and playing with an astonishing expressivity in a highly florid manner. She approached the piano in a similar way, making it all the more fascinating to hear her on this instrument as she performs on it in a manner completely opposed to the virtuosic style of the day, using the pedal sparingly and giving more focus to the fingers’ articulation and implementation of improvised flourishes.

‘She likes to play Mozart in evocation of the way Mozart himself must have, or might have, played on the early fortepiano. To this end she employs, as Mozart certainly employed, a high- fingered technique similar to that which gives the best result in harpsichord playing. She never plays louder than forte, not because she wishes to keep Mozart’s music small but because she wishes to keep it musical. The modern pianoforte gives another kind of sound, in many cases an ugly one, when played with arm weight. In any case, the extension of piano writing into the domain of modern power pianism, an extension that began only with Beethoven, seems inappropriate to her, as it does to many modern musicians.

‘And so, limiting her dynamic range to approximately what was available to Mozart on the Stein fortepiano, she plays his solo sonatas for the musical contrasts that they unquestionably possess rather than for those for which they were never planned. As to rhythm, tempo, phrasing and ornamentation – all the rendering of their basic musical content – her performance is matchless. She makes them large and alive and vivid, just as she does the harpsichord works of Couperin and Scarlatti and Rameau and Bach. Her conceptions and interpretations are a lesson to any musician.

‘I recommend Landowska’s pianoforte Mozart, because I recommend any music she touches. It is the best piano Mozart I know. It is a model of understanding musically, as it is a tour de force technically.”

An Elegant Cure for Improper Use of Arm Weight Technique

Arm Weight technique when employed properly allows the fingers the finest possible sensibility in manipulating the keys. However, if the weight of the arm is actually allowed to transmit down through the fingers into the keys, their fine capacity for differentiation is drastically reduced, and the piano tone although perhaps remaining rich, loses its differentiation. In this discussion of Landowska’s playing we see her return to harpsichord technique on the piano as an elegant cure to this wrong turn that Arm Weight technique seems to have taken.

Harold Shonberg’s description of Bach also calls into question the idea of a drastic difference between harpsichord and piano technique:

“ ‘Bach is said to have played with so easy and so small a motion of the fingers that it was hardly perceptible. Only the first joints of the fingers were in motion; the hand retained, even in the most difficult passages, its rounded form; the fingers rose very little from the keys, hardly more than in a trill, and when one was employed the others remained quietly in position.’ This quietness extended to his position at the clavier. ‘Still less did the other parts of his body take any share in his playing, as happens with many whose hand is not light enough.’ ”

Videos of Michelangeli show a remarkable similarity to this description of Bach. Michelangeli’s hands and body were so still most of the time that it seemed strange that there was any music at all – you couldn’t see any movement! But Michelangeli was playing not only Scarlatti, Galuppi, Haydn and Mozart on the modern piano, but the staples of the large Romantic repertoire – Chopin Ballades, Etudes, Ravel’s Gaspard and virtually all of Debussy.

This raises again the question, what are the real differences between harpsichord and piano technique? Yes, it takes very little energy to depress a harpsichord key, but this is true for the piano as well. If a truly efficient, precise movement is used, with no muscular cross-motivations to increase the sense of effort, it takes surprisingly little effort even to produce a resonant forte. Michelangeli’s example is the proof in the pudding: what is required is not so much a physical effort but rather the mental effort to establish an effective physical coordination – and this was true for harpsichord technique as well.

Interestingly enough, my own work with the structure and function of the hand is useful not only to pianists but to harpsichordists as well. I have seen the simple process of overholding a group of notes, thus bringing the hand to its position of full structural integrity, double the amount of resonance coming from the instrument in virtually no time. Again, this is achieved through no increase in effort but only improved body organization.

Could it be possible that piano technique is not so different from harpsichord technique after all, but merely a continuation, an extension and expansion of certain practices? Could the principles of movement involved be the same, only needing a certain logical development to encompass the different tonal possibilities of the modern piano?

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Article researched and written by Alan Fraser for PianoTechnique.net