moonlight sonata technical difficulty

[dangerousd]

I have great difficulty playing the 7th and 8th bars evenly at any sort of speed, could anyone offer me any advice as to how this could be improved.  

This is really the only problem I have with this piece and it pisses me off a bit.....

[Lilo]

well if you got troubles with the first bars...

beethoven's moonlight sonata is one of his easiest pieces... so if you have difficulties, you really need some more practising*. All you have to do is daily exercices, and when you feel comfortable with them, go back to your sonata.

* I think lessons would be helpful, before you begin teaching yourself pieces like this. You probably had some, but not enough.

[steveolongfingers]

Easyiest, i dont want to get on a rant here....but oh well....

This peice in its entirty, is as hard as hell.  Sure it might not be comparable to say the hammerklavier, whichs length makes tough.  Moonlight when played properly and flawsy is a very tough task.  The speed and fury of this peice makes it very agitated, as the name PRESTO AGITATO indicates

Moonlight is ground breaking as it broke as sorts of rules of piano sonatas at the time.  Normal piano sonata format fast - slow - fast, this is slow faster, fastest.  Like the 5th Sympony this sonata put most of the wieght on the last movement. (Beethoven adds a contrabasson, 3 trombones, and a piccilo in the last movement.)



As to respond to this fellows question, there are a number of ways to tackle this issue, first you must take the metedome and throw it on like 30 bbm, pratice it in quaters, and work up to speed, it may take a little while but after many repitions it starts to flow.  If you cant get the arpegio to sound fluent, you might want to pedal (I know some people are going to strangle me for saying that) a LITTLE, just at the time where your fingers in you right hand flip from 5 to 1.  

Follow the fingerings in this piece it is very nessisary.  

By the way if you dont do this already play it so that the first C sharp is hit with your pinky and the second with your thumb.



   

[faulty_damper]

7th and 8th bars?  You mean first movement?  of the characteristic ding... din-ding?

I use the 5, 4, 5 for those three repetitions.  That allows you to play those notes with a swith of the fingers which allows clear playing.



And what's wrong with using the damper?  He composed it on a different, archaic, piano that had different sound characteristics than the modern piano.  Sure, the directions say to never use the damper but that's very difficult as there will be noticeable interuptions which sounds "choppy".

[thomas_williams]

I believe there is some confusion here about the movements-- the first movement is MUCH easier than the third!

[faulty_damper]

Yeah, You definitely meant last movement.

You are refering to the skips, are you not?

Try this:  play it as a chord.  Notice the hand position.  Now play the notes without moving the hand.  Then skip so to the next arpegio.  Notice how much forearm movement is required?

This is not a very effective way of doing it.

Instead, you'll have to move your hand.  Try this:  play the first note with your thumb (1), then play the last note with your 5, then skip to 1 to 5, 1 to 5.

So it starts with the C# note.  Play this note, then the next C#, then from your 5 play the same note with your one.  This time, you must start to move your thumb over even before your 5 leaves the C# note.  Your hand should twist a bit.  Practice this a bit to get used to the movement.

Then after you've practiced this, try the entire arpeggio, noticing that your wrist must twist to allow your thumb to pass over to that last note.

[dangerousd]

Sorry I meant the last movement.


Thanks for the comments people.