But I have a question. OK, I started piano about a year ago and I am advanced musically: I know where my trouble spots are when i am practicing, I know a lot of music theory and history, i can put emotion into my music. But, my teacher tells me I am a beginner when it comes to technique (which is pretty much all true). He doesn't give me technical excersizes like Czerny or anything. He just tells me to practice scales and arpeggios, and how to practice them of course. And recommends that i practice Liszt technical excersizes every once in a while because they will strengthen my hands and improve my technique. Though he says i should be learning Chopin or Liszt etudes (which i absolutely LOVE!) because I am not ready technically. Should i listen to him? I mean I know what the etudes should sound like and where my trouble spots are and everything. Anyways, while I am doing all this technical stuff, he assigns me advanced pieces at the same time (right now I'm learning Bartok's Allegro Barbaro and Brahms op. 79 Rhapsody no. 2). So what should I do? Would it be the wrong thing to do to just go ahead and learn a chopin etude?
There are several questions here. Let us go by parts.
I know where my trouble spots are when i am practicing
Very good. Many people do not know even that. Now what are you going to do about it? How are you going to tackle these troublesome spots so that they cease to be troublesome? If you think you know the answer, ask yourself: Is it working? If it is not, do something else. If you are lost about what to do, ask your teacher. After all you are paying him! And then again ask yourself is it working? And if it is not, is it because my teacher does not have a clue or because I am not following his instructions to the letter? Piano playing is highly complex, but it is not complicated. You should experience difficulties (a Chopin study will never be easy) but you should have no problems.
He just tells me to practice scales and arpeggios, and how to practice them of course.
There is a lot of misunderstanding concerning the practice of scales. So let us clear some of them.
1. Scales (and arpeggios) are absolutely essential. Anyone claiming not to know scales does not know anything about European music of the past 500 years.
2. Scales are completely useless as technical exercises.
3. How come? These two statements are certainly contradictory.
4. Not at all. Scales are important for two reasons only:
a) the most important: scales will get you familiarised with the concept of key, without which music understanding is impossible. And if you do not understand what you are playing you are a typist, not a pianist. This means that your scale practice must be geared not towards finger dexterity, but towards knowing the scales back to front. You should be able to identify the predominant scale in any two bars of music by simply looking at the notes. You should be able to see the modulations as you play.
b) Scales teach you a way of fingering. But if you follow the orthodox fingering (e.g. Hanon’s) you will not be deriving much benefit from this.
5. Scales rarely use the fourth finger and almost never the fifth, which happen to be the weakest fingerings. So how can scales be good as exercises? Only if you want to exercise fingers 1- 2 –3 which do not need the exercise anyway.
6. 99% of the pieces that involve scale runs will be restricted to one hand at a time. It is rare to find a real piece where you have to play a scale both hands together. So why practise scales with hands together, unless you are tackling a piece that demands it? Moreover, in most pieces the scale fingering used in the piece is not the orthodox fingering. This is true even at a very basic level. Just have a look at Mozart’s K 545, first movement. If you have really practised your scales ingraining the orthodox fingering, tackling that sonata will be a nightmare, since you will have to spend extra time relearning the appropriate fingering. Which again goes to show that there is no “general” technique that you can learn in isolation. If you sent your children to school and instead of being taught English they were taught “general” sounds and syllables that may come in hand in case the child wants in the future to learn any possible language, what would be your response? Yet everyone seems to accept this absurd idea when it comes to development of technique.
7. Therefore, if you want to practise scales, have as your aim to learn the scales (meaning: the notes of the scales; identifying immediately the tonic, the dominant, the subdominant and the submediant which are the most important degrees). You want to be able to immediately bring to mind these things the moment someone say the name of a scale. Someone says Ab major. Can you tell immediately all the notes of the scale [Ab, Bb, C, Db, Eb, F, G, Ab]? The key signature (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db)? The tonic? [Ab]. The dominant? [Eb] The subdominant? [Db] The submediant? [F] The leading note? [G] Can you tell immediately that the most likely modulations in a piece written in Ab major will be to Eb major, Db major, F minor, C minor and Bb minor? Can you do that for all the 24 major and minor scales without a moment’s hesitation? Because this is the stuff that really matters. I have seen people ripple scales trough the keyboard and being unable even to tell me the name of the scale. This is the equivalent of being the fastest typist in the universe, but who cannot read, so everything s/he types is gibberish (but fast, very fast).
Though he says i should be learning Chopin or Liszt etudes (which i absolutely LOVE!) because I am not ready technically. Should i listen to him?
You are paying him, so you better listen to him! If you are not going to listen to him better pay someone you are happy to listen to. No one is ever ready technically to tackle any piece. Every piece has new technical challenges that must be met afresh. If you are a five year child trying to play the octave study you are not ready physically: your hands have to grow. That is a different matter. If you are a pampered 7 years old who never had any major distress in your life you are probably not ready to tackle Janacek’s On the overgrown path which he wrote as an investigation of grief after his only daughter died. But this is simply because you lack the life experience to understand what that music is all about. But most importantly, you will not want to play these pieces anyway. You will only be technically ready to tackle the Chopin studies after you master them! And then what is the point, you already mastered them.
Would it be the wrong thing to do to just go ahead and learn a chopin etude?
Do it and you will find out! In the meantime consider this:
Chopin had no piano teacher. He had a music teacher (who was a violinist) and he attended the conservatory where he had composition lessons. But as far as his piano technique was concerned, it was pretty much self-taught. His teachers at the conservatory left him alone. In fact there is a letter form the head teacher who says as much: “Musical genius, leave him alone”. But Chopin lived in a small village in Poland, a real cultural backwater. Whatever impression he may have caused in his compatriots, the real test of fire was Paris, the cultural centre of the world then.
Chopin was acutely aware that his piano technique was different. In fact when he arrived in Paris aged 19, he went to a recital by Kalkbrenner, the most celebrated pianist in Paris. After the recital Chopin was dismayed. He thought of himself was the worst pianist ever. He did not dare to appear in public. Things were so bad that he actually went to Kalkbrenner for lessons. Kalkbrenner heard him play. The diagnosis was not good. Chopin had too many bad habits and a very deficient technique. He proposed that Chopin becomes his pupil and if he obeyed his instructions to the letter, he could promise that he would be able to play properly after a period of four years. At the time, the dogma regarding technique was that nothing should move but the fingers. They should be brought up high and work like little hammers. Wrists should be stiff and arms should not move. Coins were placed on the backs of the student’s hands to avoid any movement other than finger movement. Does that sound familiar?
Thankfully, Chopin came to his senses and refused Kalkbrenner offer. He went on with his “defective” technique (which is surprisingly in accordance with modern ideas of arm use, weight, relaxation, etc.) to dazzle Parisian audiences. And here is the interesting thing: you could not possibly play Chopin’s music with Kalkbrenner’s limited technique. Chopin’s music was a shock in his day. No one hade ever heard anything quite like it. At the time he arrived in Paris the music being played were the compositions by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and people like Clementi, Hummel and Moschelles. The best way to recreate the impact that Chopin’s music created is to spend a month listening ininterruptedly to Hummel and Moschelles piano works. Then when the month is over, listen to one of the Ballades. If it does not blow your mind nothing will.
What eclipsed celebrated pianists of Chopin’s time like Kalkbrenner, Crammer and Moschelles was not so much his piano playing, but his piano music. Not one of them could play it. They did not have the technique for it. And they had no idea on how to go about acquiring it.
Chopin was keenly aware of this, first in a negative way (he must have been lacking in self-esteem) but later embracing fully his own originality. So he did what Czerny did in relation to Beethoven sonatas: He created a series of technical studies that could only be played if you had the correct technique. You see, the Chopin studies are only difficult if you play them the wrong way. If you play the way Chopin played, they become a breeze (well, not a breeze perhaps, but it becomes possible). And there was one pianist who understood that straightaway and that was Franz Lizst (to whom Op. 10 in dedicated).
So the Chopin studies are the gateway to playing any Chopin piece.
So here is the question you must answer: Why do you want to play these studies? Do you want to play them as “studies” or as “pieces” in their own right? Depending on your answer your approach will be different (by the way, there is no correct answer).
And recommends that i practice Liszt technical excersizes every once in a while because they will strengthen my hands and improve my technique.
I can’t say that I care much for Liszt’s technical exercises. As for strength, it is never about strength. If you want to develop (totally unnecessary) finger strength, work in a bakery making bread dough by hand. I doubt it will improve your piano playing though.
This has to be my longest post ever!
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: Tech v Lit [Bob project]