Jeux D'eau Fingering help

[franken]

I'm just barely starting out on Ravel's Jeux D'eau and had some questions for suggestions on Fingering in the 4th 5th and 6th measure of this piece.  I've tried so much but everything feels awkward.  Anyone got some good suggestions?

--Frank--

[mikey6]

from half way through bar 4 - you don't have many options - 1235 4212 (*2).  measure 5 - 1235 32 1-1235 (*2).  measure 6 - 1235 4213 2123 234 1234 1-4 1234 1234.  fingering is a personal thing so do what you think works.

[arensky]

Mine is slightly different; I continued to the 1st two beats of m.7 to complete the pattern. It actually gets easier to figure out from this point

       
m.4/ 1245 1245 12354212 12354212
 
       
m.5   1245 421235 1245 421235

                                           5                        5
m.6    1245 4213 2123 1231234  12341234    m.7    1245  421245 etc. 
                                           3                        2

                   Hope this helps you...

Dieu fluvial de l'eau qui le chatouille....      

Hah! The River God laughs at the pianists trying to conquer him!!!!                                     

[Jacey1973]

Oh i love this piece. What's it like difficulty-wise? I learnt the Alborada del gracioso last year, but im tempted to learn the Sonatine first as i have recently fallen in love with it.

[Motrax]

Here's my fingering:

m4 - 1245 1235 1245-4321 (break) 1235-4212 (break)
m5 - 124542 1(on both notes)235 repeat
m6 - 12454314 3234 2341234 (slide from the black key to 45 on the white key grace notes) 12341234

I wouldn't rate Jeux D'eau as a particularly difficult piece, but it feels very natural to me. I've heard a lot of people put it above Sonatine and Tombeau de Couperin and the like.

[lisztwasgod]

were i in your shoes, i would try arensky's fingering...it seems to fall under the hand a touch better (a slight word to the wise on ravel though...pretty much everything is going to feel awkward the first time around; you kind of have to build a fow from broken hand movements in jeuz deau and ondine...its part of the challenge). The first time around i would try to just play the notes and get a feel for the music...my guess is, youll probably fall into your own comfort zone in a month or so and improvise your own fingering...ive played a few pieces from ravel and the fingering never gets easier! so trust me on this one, its all about sticking with it and working it out. When i first started playing ondine i met my first challenge with the wierd tremollo pattern right off the bat, and after i mastered that, my problems were only beginning...same thing with scarbo. I think the challenge of Ravel, best put, would be extracting beauty and developing a smooth hand flow and fingering transition from notes that are by no means kind and/or merciful! Good luck with the Ravel! You've chosen a fantastic piece! (remember, just try to work it out note for note, and move forward, and the correct hands will come naturally, or at least it has been my experience that that which does not fall nicely under the hand the first time around is a problem that never sticks, because even if it feels awkward at first, your muscles will soon relax to those smae movements and youll find yourself graceful and limber on even the most abrupt and broken passaging! Again, good luck!

[franken]

Thank you everyone for the fingering help, the piece is going along great!

[ravel]

i am still fine with jeux d eau  .  but i learnt ondine before that, and thats obviously much harder . but i am not at all satisfied with my playing of that piece.  have lots of problems with it.  would really appreciate general advice on how to play it better. or maybe even some specific advices about some parts.  cuz i have problems with lotsssssssss of it. i barely manage the piece somehow, but it doesnt sound that good,  and what good is it if i cant make it sound good.
i know i shouldnt have a problem with the piece , since i composed it   , hehe, but well,  hey , even ravel ( i mean the real one) had problems with playing his own pieces. didnt he?

[pita bread]

Make sure you play INTO the keys, don't play all brushing over the keys and airy, the way people do it nowadays. Learn to keep a light sound while playing all the way into the keys.

[lisztwasgod]

i am still fine with jeux d eau  .  but i learnt ondine before that, and thats obviously much harder . but i am not at all satisfied with my playing of that piece.  have lots of problems with it.  would really appreciate general advice on how to play it better. or maybe even some specific advices about some parts.  cuz i have problems with lotsssssssss of it. i barely manage the piece somehow, but it doesnt sound that good,  and what good is it if i cant make it sound good.
i know i shouldnt have a problem with the piece , since i composed it   , hehe, but well,  hey , even ravel ( i mean the real one) had problems with playing his own pieces. didnt he?

another thing i did to improve my playingon ondine is far less echnically oriented, but the sound results are the exact same...what i did as, leaving out all of the filigree, i played the nots to be accented (wih the proper fingering of course) and got used to the sound of the piece, as east what should be dominant)...the i added in he arpeggios and strange key patterns and, lo and behold, it sounded better, more completet, more balanced between the melody and the accompaniment! In my personal opinion, regardless of what people say, i think Ondine is much more difficult than scarbo, so stick with it!

[ravel]

good stuff,
i ll try and do what you did.

hopefully it shoud work.
any suggestions on the part just before the climax, and ofcourse the climax it self??? thats what gives me the most problem.
thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!

[franken]

Ok, I'm back!  I've made it pretty much through the first page fairly well for right now anyway but have made it to some more troubles!  I'm having the most trouble on the start of the second page around measures 9-11.  What's really getting me is how I should relate my hands to each other, which should be over one, and what should be over the other.  I just get tangled a bunch.  Can you guys help me out with the fingering and the hand movement there?

[Motrax]

For measures 9-10, I keep the right hand underneath the left hand all the way through. There are a number of ways to go about it from there. You could keep your entire left arm raised and "pluck" the 5ths with the tips of your fingers, which gives your right hand a great deal of freedom. I choose to keep the left hand lower, to the point where my right wrist is underneath the line of the keyboard and the fingers of my right hand are completely flat. There are notable advantages and disadvantages to either method, but one thing that applies to any way you play that passage is to keep the weight travelling with your fingers on your right hand. To do this, move your wrist laterallyalong with each note you play. So for the first note, with finger 5, your hand should be close-to-parallel with the keyboard. Moving your wrist accordingly, when you play the last note of each 4-note figure (with finger 1), your hand should be bent as far to the right as is comfortable. This ensures that all the notes ring out nicely, and it makes it a bit easier to hit the keys.

My fingering (in case you were wondering) is 5-4-2-1 5-4-2-1-2-4.

For the second half of measure 11, keep the left hand underneath the right. I use the same lateral movement in the right hand, using the following fingering (I play this part with very flat fingers too), starting with the sextuplet in the RH:

1-2-3-5-3 1-2-1-2 4-5-4-5

The 4-5-4-5 figure may be very awkward at first, and probably isn't necessary depending on what sound you want. It may be easier to use 3-5-3-5, or even to jump and use whatever fingers you want.

In measures 12-14, I keep the right hand underneath the left, where applicable (since the RH is on white keys and the left is jumping around on black keys). The other measures shouldn't be difficult to figure out (though if you do feel like you need help with them, I'll be happy to answer more questions).

As with all over-the-internet explanations, if it doesn't feel natural, don't hurt yourself trying it out. I'm not sure I've been entirely clear, and I don't want to mess you up further. 

Good luck! It's a great pieces you've chosen. And don't give up no matter how daunting the piece looks like it becomes - once you work out the notes, it's a lot more comfortable than one might expect.

-M

[franken]

Thank you very much motrax!  Your advice is very sound and I am excited to go through this next passage.  I don't have a teacher in person to help me through this one and so it has been very helpful to be able to come here and ask other pianists for advice.

[thierry13]

Dieu fluvial de l'eau qui le chatouille....      

Hah! The River God laughs at the pianists trying to conquer him!!!!                                     

Not exactly. It means : River god of water who tickle him.

[arensky]

Not exactly. It means : River god of water who tickle him.

I know that!! It's a JOKE!!! You know, humour?? IRONY!!! SPOOF!!!?

HEHEHAHAAHEHEHAHAHEHEHAHAHEHEHAHAHEHEHAYHAHEHAHAHA     ho.......

 

                                                                         
                                 
You need to get out more kiddo! All Piano Forum no play makes Thierry une jeune homme lourd...

[pianistimo]

changing the subject just slightly. do you need a different kind of meditation to play jeux d'  eau?  for some reason ravel and debussy are terribly hard for me to play, let alone memorize.  what does one think when attempting to get through this piece.  obviously not about all the notes because there are so many.  do you just get by  on a wing and a prayer or is there some kind of memory work that you do that is different than the normal sonata or whatever.  do you memorize hand movements as ice-skaters memorize movements or what?

[franken]

Well you don't exactly memorize hand movements.  Your hands do! 
I think the meditation for this piece that you would want to be looking for is a dream in a sense.   That is what I have been told anyway.

[arensky]

For the second half of measure 11, keep the left hand underneath the right. I use the same lateral movement in the right hand, using the following fingering (I play this part with very flat fingers too), starting with the sextuplet in the RH:

1-2-3-5-3 1-2-1-2 4-5-4-5

The 4-5-4-5 figure may be very awkward at first, and probably isn't necessary depending on what sound you want. It may be easier to use 3-5-3-5, or even to jump and use whatever fingers you want.

In measures 12-14, I keep the right hand underneath the left, where applicable (since the RH is on white keys and the left is jumping around on black keys). The other measures shouldn't be difficult to figure out (though if you do feel like you need help with them, I'll be happy to answer more questions).

I concur with all of this but my fingering for the 2nd half of m.11 is;

12353 1313

And in the 2nd half of m.10 I shift the RH over the LH until m.13 when the RH returns to the bottom...

On all those black key 5ths and 4ths that jump around in the RH I find it helpful to make a large finger by pressing my 4th and 5th fingers together, so from m.13 my RH fingering is;
1235321  1    1    1   1245421   1   1   1  (m.14)     1235321 1245421 1235321 1245421
             34  34  34                34 34 34    

For the LH mm.13 to 14.....12 21 12 21/12 12 12 12
                                     45 52 45 52/45 45 45 45

At m.15 I put the RH on top again until m.19 on page 3 but let's do page 3 another time, whew..    

                                                              

Hope this makes sense...

[Motrax]

That's a good point with using more than one finger to hit the jumping black key intervals. Although I don't do it personally, I'd image it'd work very well depending on the shape/size of your hand.

Regarding the mental approach one should take - I didn't feel like I needed to "shift gears" in order to begin playing Jeux D'eau. I approached it from the same direction I approach any piece, that is - first, begin with the structure on a very small scale. You should concentrate on individual notes (or at least individual beats... no need to become extremely nitpicky) and then "zoom out" little by little. Once the notes are in your fingers a little bit, you can start looking at phrases and larger sections. Jeux D'eau, despite it's being "impressionistic," is a very well-thought out, structural piece of music. Ravel treats his melodies carefully, and I find the harmonies to be very easy to learn because of his use of the whole-tone scale. Instead of thinking in G major or E major or whatever, I just think "so this passage is whole tone and it moves up and down by step" (to give a vague example). By thinking with the whole-tone scale, you can reduce huge chunks of music into rather simple forms. His melodies are often very small figures which are simply moved up or down a step and repeated, or repeated in a different key.

From a musical standpoint, I treat the piece almost like a fugue by Bach, just in the sense of paying attention to all[/i[ of Ravel's writing. For example,, the second half of measure four has some awkward passagework in the RH, and the LH plays a few descending (by minor 3rd) intervals. While the right hand might seem a little random at first, notice that the first and last notes of each 8-note group also descends by minor 3rds - so you can draw a relation between the two hands. With this relation in mind, it seemed natural to me that this decent by minor 3rds is very important structurally, so I played around with emphasizing the descent both in the LH and RH seperately and simultaneously (by accenting the first and last notes of the 32nd groups, in the RH, and playing the LH intervals heavily instead of lightly). I decided that it sounded best with the LH played heavily and the RH descending notes not emphasized, and so I play it that way.

It's a lot of writing for what took all of a few moments to notice and test. But you should look for these sorts of things and just keep them in mind when playing impressionistic music. When the piece is put together (in Jeux D'eau's case), many of these details become obscured to anyone besides the performer. However, without careful attention to the direction of the music, harmonically, rhythmically, and on small and large scales, it will indeed be very difficult to grasp the music as a whole.

It's 2 in morning, so I apologize for my extra-wordy post. I hope you can sift through it and find something useful. And if you have any more questions, I'd be glad to help out. I've been working on this piece since summer, and I've got to keep it prepared for a winter performance, so I'll be freshly familiar with it for a while.

-M