Who was the pianist/composer who ruined his hands with rubber bands...

[barnowl]

...and who knows with what else? 

Back in the 80's, my piano teacher told me about him but I can't remember the composer's name.

The poor guy had flying pinkies (like me) which would uncontrollably stick straight up or out while he played, and it embarrassed him because all other pianists could keep their pinkies nicely curled. So he tried various remedies including rubber bands which ended up ruining his hands.

Anyone know who this man was?

My teacher has assigned me Hannon with a special, but very hard trick to work on during this worse-than-leprosy condition. 

Pray for me.   

[pies]

Schumann? I'm not sure.

[jas]

I thought Schumann invented some kind of device. There were loads of finger stretching and strengthening devices doing the rounds back then. I don't know who the elastic band person was. I can make certain educated guesses about his intelligence, though!

[prometheus]

Probably Schumann though I don't know what the nature of the device was. So I can't say it definetely were rubber bands. But when you think about it; what other way could you stretch out your hands? Metals bands? Wood?

[debussy symbolism]

Greetings.

Robert Schumann inserted probes between his fingers to increase their flexibility. The probes probably weaken the tendons and therefore weakened the fingers.

My advice is to not use anything to solve the problem, because it can worsen it. Paying attention to your playing and finger/hand position, and working correctly is the safest way to not weaken hands or induce tension.

[nicco]

Look here for a theory on schumanns "disfunction" (although it would seem his real disfunction was in his head)

It starts on page 4.

[barnowl]

Thank you all, and Nicco, that's a nice thing to do - to link the relevant section from The
Physiology of Piano Playing. I'll read it all tonight.

[loops]

my theory, after a great deal of examination of my own left hand pinkie (which is now OK) is that my flying pinkie was trying to make up for a weak muscle in the back of the hand.. it was trying to hold my hand up
and to get it facing more down, perhaps as I/it had no real idea of where was a good place to put it/be in relation to not getting in the way. When it started to hurt, I would say to it, no-one is asking you to stick up.
This did not help, amazingly enough. (!!) Anyway, I paid close attention to feelings in muscles on back
of hand, observing what feelings went with pinkie up and pinkie down. As soon as I noticed the various
correlations, it went down by itself.

That said, I once went to a concert by a university professor of piano. All Beethoven sonatas. The sound
was beautiful, very intelligent rendition, thoroughly enjoyable. But I had a full view of both hands. He had, almost permanently, fourth AND fifth fingers on BOTH hands straight up in the air pointing at the ceiling. They went down when he needed them to, obviously, he did not play beethoven sonatas with 4 fingers and 2 thumbs...such a hand position seems very, very tense, very hard to achieve, he must have "practised" it a long time...not too sure about the moral of this story......