Studio
News
February,
2008 --
Our
Hands, the Gymnasts of the Keys Handel
Welcome
to the February issue of Studio News.
This month has been a period of settling back into routines and planning
goals for the year ahead.
Most students are now re-establishing practice habits, so it is a good
time to think carefully about what we are realistically willing and able to do
on an ongoing basis.
Practice is an area of learning that benefits from cooperation and
communication between teachers and the family.
It is undeniable that the quality and time given to practice is strongly
related to the rate of progress and confidence of a student.
Some families have begun positive reward approaches to practice, which is
already leading to much improvement in students’ development.
^
Our
Hands, Gymnasts of the Keys
When
practicing the piano, it is instinctive and tempting to play mostly our
favourite lesson pieces – and to play them at performance speed (or faster)
from beginning to end. It
is tempting to think that this is successful practice.
Unfortunately, this limits our opportunities to develop in performance
skill.
Playing piano can be compared to training for sport.
Although piano playing relies on thinking and listening skills, it is
also very physical.
We use muscles and nerves that must be trained in strength and movement
patterns so that we can effectively carry out the ‘game plays’ at the time
of performance.
In fact, due to the much smaller size of muscles (there are more than 30
muscles and ligaments in the hands alone) and movement accuracy required for a
successful ‘play’, physical training for playing piano demands even more
precision. Playing
the piano is possibly the easiest instrument to learn as a beginner – but it
is the hardest instrument to master.
When learning piano, our hands are in training to become the gymnasts of
the keys.
When training for sport, there are three main areas of training: endurance and
fitness, skill development / new learning, and game play.
No successful team or athlete spends most of their practice sessions
throughout the season just playing games.
Baseballers practice swings and catches over and over.
Gymnasts and ice-skaters refine the smallest movements, one at a time,
before placing them together into a routine or even simply a completed tumble. Basketballers
and netballers plan and rehearse the steps and turns that will get them from one
end of the court to the other.
When we learn piano, our hands are training gymnasts.
We develop mental and physical fitness.
We learn increasingly complex and more refined skills.
We prepare ourselves physically and mentally for full performances of our
chosen pieces.
The best performance is the result of carefully laid foundations during
fitness and skill training.
The Foundations
of Careful Practice
Skill development only comes through careful, initially slow rehearsal of
isolated movements.
With the teachers help, every movement involved in playing the piano
needs to be broken into the smallest parts.
We need to feel these movements, understand them, know why we are doing
them and then keep repeating them until they are automatic.
We can then build on these skills or join them with others, making a full
routine – a completed piece of music. A
rewarding part of this very careful work is that we develop a set of skills that
make learning new, more demanding pieces much easier.
We can tap into a collection of previously learnt abilities.
Our playing becomes much more musical and controlled, much more pleasant
to listen to. We
can learn or simply sight-read new pieces more quickly at a standard that makes
them enjoyable to hear sooner.
We need to spend quality time every practice session slowly repeating the
simple movements that are the building blocks of playing.
The movements are taught during lessons and are a main reason for having
lessons. They
can also be discovered by listening and tuning into our feelings carefully.
They need to be repeated at home so they can be programmed into the
nerves and muscles.
This can’t be achieved in the short time of a lesson once a week.
Playing through pieces musically from beginning to end is the reward for
this work. Only
playing pieces through several times, beginning to end, is a much slower way of
developing higher-level skills.
It really only increases our reading and knowledge of the current piece.
There is definitely a place for this in our piano playing experience –
but to go beyond our present abilities we must learn how. We
must treat our hands as gymnasts in training.
^
G
F Handel
George
Frideric Handel was born in Germany in 1685 - the same year and country as JS
Bach and the same year as D Scarlatti, two other very famous Baroque composers.
Germany was near the heart of musical culture during this period.
Handel
was keen on music from a young age. He
began lessons at 7 years, but had already developed considerable skill on the
keyboard instruments of the time. He
began writing his own music when he was 9.
Handel’s
parents disagreed about allowing him to learn music.
His father, who worked in the Saxony courts, thought there was more
security if Handel became a lawyer. Fortunately,
Handel was given a little keyboard instrument by his aunt.
He kept this in the attic and would sneak away from his father to play it
whenever he had a chance.
According
to his father’s wishes, Handel started studying law at the regional university
when he was 17. However, his father
died the next year and Handel left law to work as an organist in a local church
and then as violinist and harpsichord player at the opera house in Hamburg.
Hamburg was the main centre for French, German and Italian opera styles.
Handel was inspired to write his first publicly performed operas around
this time.
Over
the years between 1706 and 1712, Handel lived in Italy and in Germany.
He composed mostly Italian opera, a rather serious style of music.
In 1712, he moved to London – where he was to stay until his death in
1759. The Italian opera became less
popular and Handel started writing more ballads as well as oratorios.
His famous Messiah
was the first of the oratorios that he wrote during this later time in London,
after 1741, when he changed his preferred musical style.
A famous orchestral work of this time is Music
for the Royal Fireworks.
After
a stroke that paralysed one arm, Handel could no longer play his instruments for
concerts. Also, quite sadly, Handel
lost his sight in 1751 and was unable to compose.
His passion for music continued and he conducted orchestras in London.
He conducted a recital of the Messiah
the day before his death.
Handel
had become extremely popular and more than 3 000 people attended his funeral.
He was given state honours and buried at Westminster Abbey, in the
poets’ corner.
Handel
is most famous for his vocal works (more than 40 operas). His style ranges from very serious pieces to playful, joyful
choruses and anthems. His melodies
cover every emotion and are quite appealing and sometimes powerfully contagious.
He also wrote for orchestra, chamber group and solo instrument (more than
150 works). He wrote for
instruments that were rarely before included in orchestral groups, including the
lute, clarinet, trombone, harp and French horn. He composed 16 keyboard suites, the most famous being The
Harmonious Blacksmith.
Handel
has always been highly respected among musicians, although some of his works
were neglected before being revived in the last half of the 1900s, when Baroque
music received fresh interest. Bach
is believed to have said, “Handel
is the only person I would wish to see before I die, and the only person I would
wish to be, were I not Bach" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handel).
Annah
Hyrst
Individual
Dynamics
”Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the
imagination, and life to everything." - Plato
