Studio News

October, 2007 -- 

Posture and Hand Position     Scarlatti

Welcome to Studio News for October. 

The last term was very demanding for many and also very exciting.  Several students sat for written exams, and should receive their results and certificates soon.  A number of students have been preparing for performance exams and their efforts are impressive.  Everyone has been consistent in his or her efforts to learn music.  I think everyone is totally brilliant and I am lucky to be your teacher!

This month’s articles explore the basics of hand position for playing the piano and introduce the Italian Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti.  Scarlatti’s Sonatas and studies form part of the repertoire for any pianist learning to play classically.  Hand position is essential for the quality and control of sound produced at the piano and should receive deliberate attention for some of every practice session.       

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Posture and Hand Position  

Correct posture, including neutral hand position, is the source of all sound quality and control when at the piano.  Many pieces are impossible to play if we don’t move in the correct way.  Much of learning to play the piano, therefore, involves learning how to move effectively from the basic starting positions and back again, using different movements for different affects and without too much extra effort.  It means knowing where to start from, then being aware of how the movements feel and listening for changes in sound when we move in different ways. 

    It simply is not possible to be good at playing the piano without thinking a lot about these things when we practice.  Also, if we don’t sit and move properly we risk fatigue and injury.  So, check the following every time you sit at the piano – make it a habit.  (Parents, please help young children at practice time.)

Curved hand shape:  Next, check your arm and hand position.  With your hands positioned over the keys, your arms should gently slope up towards your shoulders.  To find the correct hand shape, rest your hand over your knees where they feel comfortable.  They will form a rounded, cup shape without the fingers bending too much or stretching out flat.  Every finger joint curves around slightly.  The thumb will be on its side, bending in a little towards the fingers.  

    Alternatively, turn you hand palm upwards in a relaxed position and it will fall into place automatically.  The trick is to keep that relaxed position as you move to the keys.

Curved fingers when touching the piano keys: Once your hands are gently curved, lift them onto the keys and place the ends of your fingers towards the black keys, not too close to the edge of the white keys.  The end of the finger touches the keys.  Try touching the blunt end of a pencil to see if you can feel that part of your finger (see left).  To keep this part of your finger on the keys, you need to keep each finger joint curved around when you play.  This means you have to grasp with your fingers and let your hand feel heavy from gravity.  Don’t play on the flat part inside your finger.

The thumb moves away from the fingers, sideways:  Movement of the thumb is critical.  Look at the size of your thumb and how it moves differently from your fingers.  Your thumb is the closest finger to the wrist and makes about 1/3 the entire size of your hand.  If you turn your hand over, looking at your palm, you will see this even more clearly.  Each finger curls in towards the palm.  The thumb moves sideways instead.  The strength of the hand depends very much on how you use the thumb.  If you drop down on the thumb, playing on the joint, the wrist falls down and the hand loses its power and ability to move.  It is important to keep the wrists up, comfortably straight, and push your thumb sideways and away from the fingers.  This means that your wrist doesn’t drop down when you play with the thumb, and you touch the keys with the edge of your nail.  The fingers move inwards, the thumb moves sideways.

    Once you have the neutral hand position, return to this position every possible time when you play stretches, chords or scales.  Coming back to neutral as often as possible means you can play for longer and faster with less effort.

Moving your Fingers

To depress a key, push forward and make a grasping movement with your fingers, curling around a little as if taking a small ball in your hands, or stroking the key with your fingertip.  Don’t pull down or backwards with your fingers or wrists. 

When you pick something up in your hands, you usually know just how much effort to use – not so much that you squeeze it and not too little so it falls out of your hands.  You need to be aware of your hands and trust yourself to be able to give the right pressure with the piano keys.

Relax your wrists, not too high or too low, but in a fairly straight line from your arm and rising a little to your knuckles.  

When you move your fingers, keep the curled position with the fingers and move mostly from the knuckles.  The knuckles should almost always be the highest point on your hands, where you can see them.  Every finger joint should curl inwards, led by your knuckles

Strong Hand Structure

When we play the piano, we use different muscles than when we normally use our hands.  The muscles we usually use automatically make our palms flat.  These muscles are on top of the hand, joining to the wrist and between the knuckle and first finger joint. 

When we play piano, we use the muscles inside our palms.  Imagine that you are moving from the middle of your hand rather than using fingers by themselves.  When you have been practicing with using these muscles properly, you can feel warmth in the middle of your palm.  The picture to the right shows the place you can feel this most. 

Correct postural movement is not automatic.  It takes awareness and work but the rewards are countless.  Young students need parent support during practice to learn these skills.  

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Domenico Scarlatti   

Domenico Scarlatti, born in Naples of Italy on October 26^th 1685, was one of the greatest keyboard players of all time although he was shy and didn’t really like to perform publicly.  He was born in the same year as JS Bach and GF Handel.  His father was a very famous opera singer and composer, and Scarlatti began to learn the harpsichord at a very young age. 

    Scarlatti worked at the Royal Chapel in Naples in 1701, and later records have him in Rome in 1709.  He lived in Italy and Spain until 1733, when he settled in Spain in the service of the Princess Maria Barbara.  Scarlatti married and had five children while in Spain. 

    Scarlatti wrote many of his short pieces as gifts that he gave to friends and visitors.  Finally, from 1752, he began to compose more seriously and to seek publication.  He was full of musical ideas and wrote an average of one Sonata a week over the last six years of his life.  Most of his fame came after his death in 1757, but he succeeded in publishing a collection entitled 30 Exercises, which was very popular across Europe at the time.  

    Scarlatti learnt music while in Italy, but most of his music has a Spanish sound.  His work is tonal, with unusual blocks of sound at one time.  Most of the other composers of his time wrote with voice lines, weaving through different ranges like a choir. 

Also, since Scarlatti had very fast fingers, his works tend to have many quickly moving lines and more hand cross-overs than any other composer.  In order to write these dramatic changes from one end of the keyboard to the other, Scarlatti invented the two-clef connected system we now use.  Passages crossed freely across the two connected staves. 

    Scarlatti’s work was very much admired by some important composers, including Chopin, Brahms and Bartok – thus his work has become highly respected and influential.  Among other techniques, Scarlatti pioneered syncopation and cross rhythms, affects very popular a hundred years later.  Scarlatti wrote more than five hundred Sonatas, mostly in the last few years of his life.  His Sonatas are often used for developing modern piano technique, but he wrote many that are impossible to play on the piano because of the different mechanisms from the harpsichord. 

    Scarlatti wrote brilliant, cheerful pieces that were well ahead of his time, bridging the Baroque and Classical Periods.

Annah-Valerie Hyrst (teacher)

Individual Dynamics

Rouse Hill, NSW  

Last modified: January 16, 2008