{"id":1752,"date":"2015-06-17T21:41:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T04:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/?p=1752"},"modified":"2018-03-01T21:42:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T05:42:52","slug":"chords-hands-and-dynamics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/archives\/1752","title":{"rendered":"Chords, Hands and Dynamics"},"content":{"rendered":"

In playing chords, as you know, we can vary the tone-color by bringing out the soprano, or the bass, or the soprano and the bass; or the inner voices. And we can make a \u201cbanging\u201d sound by playing chords with all voices equally loud. But if we attach our ears to just one or two voices, and shape them (the voices, not our ears) in a \u201csinging\u201d way, we can be confident that the result will not be ugly. From International Keyboard Institute & Festival, NYC.<\/a> (1\u201908\u201d).<\/p>\n

Another interesting thing is that we can hear a voice clearly even when it\u2019s quite a bit softer than another voice. Listen to the first four bars of Schoenberg\u2019s Op. 19, No. 3<\/a> (at 2\u201913\u201d). You\u2019ll note in this passage that attacks in the softer voice usually occur when the louder voice does not have attacks; this is a help to the listening ear. But sometimes the attacks do come at the same time. What helps us then is that the soft voice is in a different pitch range than the louder voice; in this case, a lower range.<\/p>\n

Staying with chords, here\u2019s a question I\u2019ve long wondered about. Sometimes we play a chord near the limit of our hand-stretch. The size of such chords is different for each of us, but every pianist encounters this situation\u2014except Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Richter, Cliburn and a few others\u2014who can reach 12th\u2019s! When the rest of us play such a chord, our palms will be fully opened, and our fingers flat. We have no choice about \u201cfingers curved,\u201d \u201chalf-curved,\u201d or whatever: they MUST be flat. Yet I\u2019ve never heard anyone say that the tone quality was unacceptable, or even that it was different from when the same pianist played smaller chords or passage-work. So what is the meaning of the instructions from pedagogues that the hand must<\/em> be shaped this way or that? If it cannot<\/em> be thus shaped in a given piece, must be give up the idea of performing that piece?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In playing chords, as you know, we can vary the tone-color by bringing out the soprano, or the bass, or the soprano and the bass; or the inner voices. And we can make a \u201cbanging\u201d sound by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1753,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions\/1753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}