Bach Partita #1 in Bflat, Gigue

[arigatuso]

Hi everyone. I have been practicing the Gigue (Giga) from Partita #1 in Bflat of Bach. I have made no progress lately. Specially I have troubles with my right hand. Can anyone suggest me some practice routine/ tips?

Thanks,
Alejandro.

[bernhard]

Yes.

1. It is essential to memorise this piece, since it will be quite difficult to do the skips and crossing of hands accurately without looking at the keyboard (at least in the beginning.

2. Work in very small sections: one RH unit (two notes), flanked by two LH notes. Once you can do this, throughout a section , say two bars, increase to 2 RH units and three LH notes. Keep doing this until you cover the whole passage. Your aim is accuracy of movement.

3. Start with separate hands. You don't need to learn the whole piece with separate hands. Just the small section you are working on. As soon as you can od it comfortably with separate hands move straight to hands together.

4. Now perhaps the most important: play the two RH notes as a chord, that is together. Only when you can play the whole passage like that break the chord by "wiggling" your fingers.

5. Leave the ornaments for the end. You will need to work on them separately.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes
Bernhard.

[arigatuso]

BERNHARD:

THANKS for your answer. It really helped me.
I have some other questions.

1. Does make any sense to practice the rigth hand ALONE slowly, lets's say at mm=70?. Suppose that I start with the 2 notes as a chord, like you say, then I start "splitting" the notes, then, I slow down. Is there lower limit for this kind of practice?

2. Does make any sense to practice hands TOGETHER slowly, very slowly?

3. When playing the notes of the right hand, either as a chord or breaking it by "wiggling", (a) must I depress the keys to bottom?, ALLthe way down? (b) How can I make it sound pp? (c) Should I use pulling or pushing fingers? (d) curled, semicurled or flat fingers

(Sorry, I have so many questions...I'm really confused about this stuff... curled fingers, flat fingers, pushing, pulling,.. I've read a lot, I bougth some books but It's really difficult without a real example. My teacher follows the traditional approach... She is really good but, she only says, slow down and practice more; before she, i have another... worse, i have to play hanon, czerny, ... very slowly... always hands together...from beginning the end, stoping at every mistake...)

5. When I play the right hand as a chord, hands together.. the chord is in the place of the first note of the triplet, the second, should I play it like a 1/16 note? (perhaps, I'm a little confused in rythm matters)

1  2  3  4  1...
L--L--L--L--L
R--R--R--R--R

OR?
1 2 3 4 1...
L-L-L-L-L-
-R-R-R-R-R  

6. Should I use the pedal for practicing the left hand alone? and hands together?

7. And a last one.. when I play fast it is difficult to me to focus on the expression; what should I do?

Again
VERY, VERY thanks,
I always read your posts.

...
Ale.

[bernhard]

1. Does make any sense to practice the rigth hand ALONE slowly, lets's say at mm=70?. Suppose that I start with the 2 notes as a chord, like you say, then I start "splitting" the notes, then, I slow down. Is there lower limit for this kind of practice?

Yes. It makes sense. But you must understand why you are practising slowly or fast. I have written at great length about this in other threads, so I will not detail it too much here.

Basically:

1.      Play fast to figure out the movement. Then slow down (but not to much) to polish the movement and acquire total accuracy (in this piece this will be more a left hand problem due to the wide skips).

2.      Really slow down in order to create memory other than hand memory. But hand memory is crucial to this piece: it is impossible to play it without it, it is just too fast. Yet by playing very slowly you are effectively making it impossible for hand memory to take over. So other kinds of memory have to develop. Never ever play slowly to develop technique. It does not work no matter whoever says it. Once you acquired the technique and the movement, then yes, by all means practise slowly for polishing the technique (medium slow) and for developing backup memories other than simply hand memory.

3.      Don’t waste too much time in practising this piece with separate hands, it is not really necessary. Move on to hands together as soon as possible – the hands are never together in this piece anyway. Don’t think of the structure of this piece as one LH note - two RH notes - one LH note – two RH notes. Instead think of it (this is mental practice not piano work – in fact only go to the piano once you get this sorted out mentally) as a long sequence of three-note (or better still – three sounds) triplets which just happen to be distributed amongst the hands in the 1 – 2- 1 – 2 pattern. It shouldn’t sound or feel 1 – 2 – 1 – 2, but 1 – 2 –3 – 1 – 2 – 3. Does that make sense?

4.      It is more important in any case to isolate the LH simply because that is where the melody is, and you want this melody firmly embedded in your mind. So you are not doing the LH alone for technique, but for purposes of outlining.

5.      Get to hands together as soon as possible and do small sections (say a bar) with the single aim to make the movement so precise and natural that you can play it (this is all done at speed by the way) with close eyes. You will not be able to do it fir long phrases to start with, so stick to small passages (some times as small as one or two triplets) and make sure you overlap this small passage to a great extent. You want at this stage to develop hand memory, so that the playing becomes completely subconscious.

2. Does make any sense to practice hands TOGETHER slowly, very slowly?

Yes. It makes sense but only for the purpose of testing your memory of the piece and making sure that you are not relying solely on hand memory (which is very unreliable – you want to develop all sorts of back-ups to hand memory). It makes no sense of whatsoever for the purposes of acquiring technique or discovering the best movement patterns. For this reason fast practice must ALWAYS precede slow practice.

I will answer your other questions later. Have to run now!

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

3. When playing the notes of the right hand, either as a chord or breaking it by "wiggling", (a) must I depress the keys to bottom?, ALLthe way down? (b) How can I make it sound pp? (c) Should I use pulling or pushing fingers? (d) curled, semicurled or flat fingers

(Sorry, I have so many questions...I'm really confused
about this stuff... curled fingers, flat fingers, pushing, pulling,.. I've read a lot, I bougth some books but It's really difficult without a real example.

Ok. Before I answer, understand that there are only a few limited number of basic movements one needs to do when playing the piano. However these basic movements are then combined in ever increasing sequences of co-ordinations to the point where there are literally infinite ways to play any piece.

Consider language. The number of words in any language is limited. However you can express the same meaning of a sentence using a variety of words. If instead of sentence you think of a novel, there is no limit to the number of ways in which you can use words to write more or less the same novel. Hence the ever expanding fiction market. And if you now think instead of words letters of which there are only 26, you can say that all the books ever written are just combinations of these twenty six letters.

Likewise the basic movements that make up piano technique are pretty limited. But as they grow into co-ordinations of movements and these into huge uninterrupted sequences of movements it becomes impossible to keep track of everything that is going on. But there is no need to . No one would approach a book by counting the number of letters in each page. Likewise the way to approach technique is not to get too distracted by the movements themselves. Of course you need to know them, just like you need to know the letters to read. But once you know the basic movements, you refer to the sound you are producing. If the sound you are producing is the sound you were aiming at, then the movement is right.

However there are a number of movements that may produce the same sound. So you may want to investigate further movements, since the ones you may be using may lead to injuries (lots of pianists that had amazing sound did so at the expense of ergonomically incorrect movements – Leon Fleischer, Glenn Gould, Byron Janis and Alfred Brendel come immediately to mind – all had serious problems that for Janis and Fleischer meant that they had to give up the piano).

All the movements you mentioned can be used. But I cannot give you more details because this sort of thing is not only very difficult (perhaps impossible) to write about, as it is very easy to misunderstand what is being said form the written word. Ideally I would have to see you playing and then demonstrate a series of movements. This is really hands on teaching I am afraid. Moreover, what works for me may not work for you at all simply because we have different bodies.

It will also depend on the passage. Usually playing on black notes requires a more flat finger approach. Playing composers like Scarlatti requires a more curled finger position. Just watch any video of Horowitz (the most flat fingered pianist ever) playing Scarlatti sonatas.

As for the question of depressing the key all the way to the key bed, have a look at this thread where this issue is discussed:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=post2

5. When I play the right hand as a chord, hands together.. the chord is in the place of the first note of the triplet, the second, should I play it like a 1/16 note? (perhaps, I'm a little confused in rythm matters)

Ignore the original rhythm when playing in chords. The chord should have exactly the same time value of the LH notes. That is, you play everything evenly without gaps. The reason to practise in chords is to have your RH fingers in the correct places, so that you don’t hesitate about the next note. Also it is the fastest way you can play these two notes together. When you split them you just stretch the time to accommodate two notes instead of one chord.

6. Should I use the pedal for practicing the left hand alone? and hands together?

You can play this piece with or without pedal.  You must make a series of interpretative decisions before you can go on. But if you decide that you are going to use the pedal then yes, you must practise with the pedal. Otherwise when are you going to practise? During the performance?

If you play this piece without pedal the left hand will be extremely detached – staccato almost. It will sound dry and bouncy. This is not at all undesirable. After all the piece is a Giga – a very fast dance. This can be very effective especially if you play it really fast. Glenn Gould plays it like that.

Or you can decide to really make the melody sing. In this case you must use the pedal. But now there are so many options for phrasing – all equally valid – that cannot really be described in writing. Listen to Rosalyn Turecks’ interpretation of it (my favourite). She is not as fast as Gould, but the phrasing is amazing. Then there is Arrau’s recording of it when he was in his late eighties. He plays it very, very slow. Some people hate it, but I think it is one of the most incredible recordings ever of it. For a start it sounds like a different piece altogether. At that speed and by bringing out the melody he must of course use the pedal. His phrasing although impeccable is altogether different from Tureck and Gould. Another four worth listening to are Dinu Lipatti, Angela Hewitt. Maria Joăo Pires and Richard Goode.

I suggest that you learn this piece both ways: without pedal and with pedal (with a variety of pedal effects). Then you will be able to choose which one you like the best.

7. And a last one.. when I play fast it is difficult to me to focus on the expression; what should I do?

As the purely mechanical aspects of your playing become more and more and more subconscious, this will sort itself out. Once you find yourself hitting the right keys without knowing how you are doing it (a sure sign that hand memory is in place) you will be able to devote more and more of your awareness to the musical aspects of the piece. The most important advice I can give in this aspect is this: Have a very clear aural image in your mind of how you want this piece to sound and your fingers will comply. Needless to say, Bach didn’t give any directions whatsoever in that respect. So it is up to you!

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[arigatuso]

Thanks Bernhard