You may be filled with music in your soul, and have a great feeling for all music, but unless you can express those feelings through the piano, you are not a pianist.
Even musically gifted people are often crippled by bad muscular habits and a lack of physical knowledge about the piano and their own physical equipment.
One great piano teacher who saw this truth was Tobias Matthay, who taught piano in England at the Royal Academy of Music from 1876 to 1925.
Matthay’s motto was, “Every effect must have a cause.”
Matthay saw pianists attributing a great sound at the piano to what were almost “occult influences.” Mastery at the piano was supposedly unattainable for all but the few illuminati who had devoted their lives to experimentation, and what made a great sound at the piano was regarded as mystery.
In other words, pianists had no idea how they were producing the myriad of sounds at the piano. It was Matthay who first tried to scientifically determine how a pianist makes various sounds at the piano.
The first revelation was the source of tone quality, or volume. Most had speculated that it came from the weight of the hand or fingers on the keys. The reason for this was that most pianists had the sensation of weight and variations in that weight when playing the piano. A loud sound felt heavier than a soft sound, and a soft sound felt lighter in the “weight” of the hand.
But Matthay proved the actual source of variety of tonal color was the velocity with which the key was depressed, not the sensation of weight. A pianist may have the sensation of weight, but the operative factor that determines the tone quality of a key is the velocity with which it is played.
Matthay recognized that almost all good pianists arrived at the right personal piano technique by a process of trial and error. His life’s work was to codify and make logical the physical steps one must take to play with the widest possible palette of color and sound, saving the pianist those needless years of trial and error.
Because all of Matthay’s observations were physical, and are easy to verify, he is an historic figure in the history of piano pedagogy.
A part of his legacy is a group of simple physical formulae for attaining the greatest possible expression at the piano.
But as to being a great musical artist, Uncle Tobs is said to have remarked, “The rest is up to you.”
By John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2010 Walden Pond Press All Rights Reserved
See also THE BALLET OF THE PIANO HANDS
See also RULES FOR PIANO PRACTICE
See also TIPS FOR ADULT PIANISTS
See also PIANO FINGER STRENGTH IS CUMULATIVE
See also THE PIANO ZONE
See also MAKING EVERY MINUTE OF ADULT PIANO PRACTICE COUNT
