06/19/2021
An excellent post about why fi*****ng should only be viewed as "roadmaps" and not mandatory, immutable rules.
Is fi*****ng on the piano largely intuitive? Or are there specific fi*****ngs you are supposed to follow for each song?
Fi*****ng on the piano: Ah! What a wonderful puzzle which can never be fully solved!
Let me supply a few observations from my own adventures as a classically trained pianist, concert performer, master class giver, and researcher in performance practice in late 18th- and early 19th- centuries.
Fi*****ng printed in a piano score is only a road map. Your fingers are the actual point of contact and of interaction between your whole body and the piano. The piano has a complex series of moving and interdependent mechanical components, plus intangibles such as overtones, dampers with after-resonance which is partially controlled by the speed of the upward movement of your fingers, and very greatly influenced by the pedals, all two or three of them.
There are almost infinite possibilities of sound and silence, in all gradations of duration, volume, release (quashing of sound by dampers). This is where fi*****ng serves multiple, often hard-to-predict functions. This is where piano-playing stops, and music-making begins.
In the three centuries that the “piano” has existed, the human body has not changed, but keyboards and piano mechanisms have! What worked then as piano technique does not work well on today’s pianos. Today’s concepts and precepts would easily have killed the music on instruments Mozart and Beethoven used, and probably destroyed the instruments as efficiently as a sledge hammer - leather hammers, hammer shafts, fragile mechanisms, thin strings, lightweight legs and all-wood frame and lightweight construction.
Fi*****ng is a formula, much like the type or size of a shoe you feel most comfortable wearing. Appearance, color, length, width, softness, padding, sole.
A great shoe, no matter how well it is made, will make your life utterly miserable if it is not comfortable. Your right foot might have slightly different anatomical details from from its mirror image which is your left foot, and that has to be taken into account, too, to get a perfect pair of shoes. You do not wear light slippers to go on a long hike, or put on boots to go to the bathroom at night, at least not habitually, I hope, although things would still work, up to a point.
Fi*****ng is a system, but one not meant to fit everybody at all times. In printed music scores, any proposed fi*****ng will give us a strong hint about what the editor (or composer) thinks about the music in question. It may work for you or it may need some modification to fit your comfort and your anatomical configurations of hand, wrists, elbows, shoulders. It is a starting point. You have to make the adjustments, if any are needed
To frustrate you further, you may discover that a particular fi*****ng is perfect a SLOW speed, and hopelessly inadequate in the very sane passage at a GREATER SPEED.
Here are some allied topics I would like to discuss in another essay on Quora:
Moving laterally on the keyboard, (up or down the keyboard). The movements involve each joint of hand, wrist elbow, shoulder, and will be quite different for each individual because of anatomical differences. The length of fingers, breadth pf shoulders, weight of forearms. and many other surprising factors become an annoying complication.
Leaps on there keyboard, large or small
Resolving problems in stretches that can produce tension.
Octaves, sixths, thirds.
Comfort zones at low speed and high speed may well be quite different for the same passage. The slightest feeling of awkwardness or imbalance can lead to wrong notes or bad phrasing, angular or lumpy passagework
Then there are other facets influenced by fi*****ng:
*the downward-upward movement of the key.
*how far down do we go
*how long before the finger starts going up
*relationship of these movements to duration of sounds: noon legato, adjacent quasi legato, overlap legato, distinct silences which have to be timed exactly no matter how fast the passage - less than half sound half silence, exactly half sound half silence, more than half, or faster than the key itself can rise Then there is simultaneity in double notes, chords of three, four, five or six notes, simultaneity in one hand, and simultaneity in both hands (up to 12 notes all struck precisely together).
Some may be played louder than others, Some may be longer or shorter than others.
Some melodies are best played just by the thumb, or third finger, or thumb and third finger combined. I
Then there is the afterglow because of dampers slowly extinguishing the sound.
This will be different in every piano in a microscopic degree, and different in resonant vs dry rooms.
