How to emphasize inner voices

[omccreary]

I'm working on the Messian prelude 2 (Chants d'extase dans une paysage triste).

In measures 12-15 is a passage with four-note chords, where an inner voice (second from the top) is marked en dehors. The outer three notes of each chord are marked pp, while the inner voice is marked mf.

Attached is an image.

Any suggestions on how to bring out an inner voice in a passage like this?

[iansinclair]

In the Messiaen on a piano you really have to get your finger independence going (an organist would play that on a different manual with a different registration -- makes life much easier!).  You need to get a good, comfortable fingering for it -- then work on getting the en dehors line to have more emphasis.

It can be done!

[omccreary]

I could manage it if it were an outer line, either upper or lower. It's quite common to emphasize the upper line (melody) of a right-hand chord passage. But emphasizing an inner voice is something I haven't yet managed.

I tried to do it by playing the outer chord with the left hand and the en dehors line with the right hand. (Some might consider it cheating, I suppose.) But it's not possible to do it and also play the simultaneous upper chords.

[iansinclair]

Well... I think that it is time you started playing Bach.  A lot of Bach.  And getting to the point where you don't think in terms of "the upper line (melody) of...".  In much of Messian -- and a lot of other modern music -- as well as Bach and Baroque, the music is really contrapuntal, with several voices weaving amongst each other, rather than chords.

You need to be able to bring out any of the voices at will, whatever its position in the harmonic structure of the moment -- top, middle, bottom, wherever.

A heavy dose of Bach is strongly recommended.

[visitor]

+1 to above, it will  help to to simply break out old chorales, hymn book, inventions, etc. polyphonic writing has particular important for OM in spots, his faith was central in  his life and affected his composing, one only needs to listen to palestrina then something like this to get a feel for where he was coming from. 

[jimroof]

I am totally new here, but your question interests me.  While practicing 4 part chorales and such is excellent practice that is easy to implement as far as the reading goes, there still has to be some awareness of technique that produces results. 

Just for kicks, I developed a VERY simple exercise to help with your problem.  With the RH, play a CM7 chord, then a Dm7, alternating.  For the first time this sequence is played, bring out the root, next time accentuate the third, then the 5th, then the 7th.  You end up with a major scale being played within just these two chords.  For me, the 'feel' of this is more weight on the stronger notes, but the goal is to avoid these notes from speaking first.  Listen very carefully that nothing in the 4 note chords is late or early, then work on getting the voice to stand out as you move up the scale.

Speed this up to taste and according to ability.  It is not a hard thing, but I think it is an oft-overlooked thing.  You can then have some fun by playing simple tunes within these two chords, such as 'Shortnin' Bread' and perhaps others.  Once the white keys are comfortable, do the same thing in all kinds of keys.  Again, for me, the goal is achieved through more weight into the finger that needs to speak louder and this is often achieved through the slightest change of wrist position.

Hope this helps.

[rmbarbosa]

You may wish to stretch the finger that plays the principal voice and to apply in it the weight of the arm while the other fingers rest more relaxed.
One possible way to achieve this shall be to play for example the chord C-E-G-C a lot of times playing first all the chord and then only C-E-C with your 3º finger (stretched) fixed on G:

c-e-G-c  ....  with G fixed, c-e-c lighter-c-e-c-c-e-c-c-e-c-.... c-e-G-c--- and so on...

When and if you may use the right pedal with the chord, you may use it when you play the chord and then lift the other fingers but not the finger that plays the voice.

I must apologize my English...

Best wishes

Rui

[brogers70]

Not sure if this will help, but for me, I find it helpful simply to listen for the inner voices myself. If I concentrate on hearing them, then I more or less automatically adjust finger pressure, arm weight, and all that to bring them out.

[richard black]

Percy Grainger used to advocate lifting the hand clear of the keys and then bringing it down with the finger for the note you want to emphasise slightly ahead of the others. Sounds rather obvious and actually works quite well. Not the only way to do it, of course, but a useful trick to have up one's sleeve.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

You can try playing the note to be brought out with a slightly greater attack speed in the finger (start with the individual finger slightly elevated, so that it descends more rapidly but reaches the keyboard simultaneously with the other fingers). This is usually easier in external parts because it can be done readily via a very slight element of wrist notation. In this case, you could try playing the note in question with a tenuto touch and the other notes with a more staccato touch. If he's allowing you to use pedal in this passage, that should be effective.

[omccreary]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

brogers70: I don't understand how this would work. If one finger is slightly ahead of the others, doesn't that mean that the notes of the chord won't sound at the same time?

[indianajo]

brogers70: I don't understand how this would work. If one finger is slightly ahead of the others, doesn't that mean that the notes of the chord won't sound at the same time?

Piano is a velocity->loudness instrument.  If you're going to make an inner voice stand out, you have to both make that finger faster, and start it a little late.  My teacher never explained to me how to do this.  She just said "make the (arbitrary) line louder".  Then I did it.  Once you attain finger independence, you can do the same. Louder, and the notes hitting  all at the same time on the beat, are correct music: unless a ripple effect is written on the page with one of those wiggly lines.  
I achieved finger independence, and balanced the strength of the fingers, in my first year with the Schmitt exercises.  I played these towards the end of the week, without thinking about them: ie from the inner brain.  I read novels with my cortex while playing these correctly.  
I do Beethoven Moonlight Sonata mvt 3 with a different voice emphasized every pass through a certain passage. It is repeated 6 or 8 times.   Most artists on record emphasize the top line every time.   

[rmbarbosa]

Schmitt exercises, like Hanon exercises, are not usefull. They are a lost of time.
To achieve finger independence we have Bach.

[richard black]

If one finger is slightly ahead of the others, doesn't that mean that the notes of the chord won't sound at the same time?

Yup.

[omccreary]

richard black:

I don't understand your (or Percy Granger's) point.

What we're trying to accomplish is to play a sequence of chords as chords (i.e., all notes at the same time) but with one note of each chord louder than the others. If one note of the chord is played earlier than the others, then that doesn't accomplish the goal.

What am I missing??

[lostinidlewonder]

I imagine the finger that needs to be drawn out occurs first before the other chords notes. The note might come micro seconds earlier so minuscule it's very hard to tell. I also tend to curl a little more the finger that needs to be drawn out, a tendency to lean the palm slightly towards the emphasised note and feel slightly more tension in the emphasised finger, for me this helps bring out whatever I need.

[starlady]

I wish I found it hard to bring out the inner voices; my problem is to soften them down!    My my thumb-second-third fingers are a lot stronger than the 4th and 5th and if I get neglectful they tend come crashing down on the keys and drown out the top and bottom.   Everyone has their own path I suppose--s.

[indianajo]

Schmitt exercises, like Hanon exercises, are not usefull. They are a lost of time.
To achieve finger independence we have Bach.

JS Bach has moveable hand position, finger crossovers, two hands at once.  These are all skills that should be learned in the second or third  month or year of training.  Schmitt gives finger independence and builds muscle strength of fingers four five  with a fixed hand position, one hand alone. Schmitt can be done by any beginner. The other skills can come after all fingers work evenly.   

[richard black]

What we're trying to accomplish is to play a sequence of chords as chords (i.e., all notes at the same time) but with one note of each chord louder than the others. If one note of the chord is played earlier than the others, then that doesn't accomplish the goal.

What am I missing??

Try it!

[xdjuicebox]

I do this a lot in the "music" (I try to refrain from calling it that, since I don't think it's worthy of the title of "music") that I compose, so I'll tell you how I went about it.

If you want the notes to stand out, it's almost objective that they need to be louder, especially so since it is an inner voice. The best way to achieve this effect is to think about what must physically occur at the piano; anything else is either a lucky guess or wrong.

So the only thing that controls volume is the velocity of the hammer as it strikes the string. [If you don't count pedals]. But you must also have all of the hammers strike simultaneously. We must also account for the fact that if one finger is traveling faster, then once it reaches the keys (and the keys absorb the kinetic energy transferred through our fingers), the one that is traveling faster will almost inevitably land early. Now I know that this may seem like a lot, but you won't have to think about any of this after the first 5 minutes...

So you can find your own solution to that problem, but I'll tell you what worked for me. Taking advantage of the ppp marking, I let my hand "drop" into the keys playing the non-voiced notes, and then just before the hammers are struck, activate the finger for the voiced note, and they should land at the same time if you did it right. It takes a couple minutes to figure it out, but once you do, it's really easy.

You could also try just putting more weight on that finger, but that's too unpredictable for me. Maybe I just suck at that though lol good luck!