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Archive for the ‘Some Common Mistakes and How To Avoid Them’ Category

Some players pick up the peculiarity of making
extraordinary faces during their performance of music.
This is a very absurd fault, but it too often becomes a
habit that is terribly hard to get rid of, because it is
done quite unconsciously as a rule, and is also
instigated by a desire to express the maximum of
emotion, and sometimes provoked by the physical
exertion necessary for the performance of a technical feat. The only remedy for " making faces "
is to have a mirror hung in front of the culprit whenever he is practicing. 

And how about the student who loves his right hand better than his left? He seems to follow
the Bible maxim of not letting his right hand know what his left hand is doing, chiefly because 

his left hand is not doing much at all! By this I mean that it is bad to neglect the left hand,
which is generally the weaker member, anyhow, and not to allow it to develop its fundamental
notes with just as much significance and sonority as the more obvious work of the right hand.
Of course, the left hand should never be permitted to drown the right hand, but it should
sustain and harmoniously support it. 

Young players also err very often by incorrect style in their performance of different kinds
of music. Bach cannot be played with the highly-colored romantic passion which should
pervade renderings of Schumann or Tchaikovsky, nor with the weird ethereal atmosphere
that surrounds the music of the modern French school. Music approached thus in a totally
false appreciation of its spirit becomes merely caricature. Yet I have had Chopin played to
me with all the dryness and precision of the most pedantic classical manner, and Bach
distorted with rubato and unnatural limelight effects. 

It is perhaps disheartening to think that there are so many pitfalls lurking for the pianist in
every direction, but there remains always this consoling reflection, that the man of real
genius, even when he suffers from every one of the faults mentioned here, will not thereby
be prevented from still being a great player. These deficiencies of detail are only grave
hindrances to the commonplace ability which has no divine fire to sustain it. And when all
is said and done, each individual possesses the right to hope that the spark of genius
which palliates so many evils may lie in him too, if only it can be discovered. 

I well remember Leschetitzky, the greatest of pianoforte teachers, finishing up his lessons
to his dejected pupils, after telling them in his most forceful manner of all their heinous
faults, with the following exhortation : " I would say nothing, gentlemen, of the manner in
which you play, if only the result was a satisfying one. You may play with your feet upon
 the keyboard if only it sounds well, but remember they must be talented feet." 

As hurrying and also dragging the tempo are both errors connected somewhat with
faulty rhythm, I will speak of this next as a highly unsatisfactory failing. Rhythm is
no doubt to a great extent instinctive, and is bound up a good deal with individual
temperaments. But it must be carefully developed by teaching and analysis, for too
much emphasis can never be bestowed upon giving every note in music its proper
value, apart from any other rhythmical consideration. For rhythm in piano-playing
is so essential a factor in obtaining a good tone-production, that it is imperative to
cultivate it with great attention to correctness of outline. 

Lack of rhythm, or faulty rhythm, will take all
character from a musical performance, and
will leave an impression of insipidity and
monotony where there is no rhythm, and
of irritation where the rhythm is inexact, as the case may be. 

Close on the heels of bad rhythm comes the weakness of always using the same
kind of tone while performing. Plenty of variation of tone-colour is absolutely
necessary for inspired and interesting playing on the piano, as, indeed, on all
instruments. 

On the piano this is more difficult to arrive at than on the stringed or even the wind
instruments, and needs much study of the technique of touch. For frequently we
cannot understand, after coming out from a concert, why what we appreciated
as a really fine performance of a musical work had not arrested our attention 

more, or aroused keener pleasure. A certain sense of monotony or dullness had
crept over us while listening. 

Such a feeling, or rather want of feeling, is almost always the result of the
performer's failure to grasp the possibilities of his instrument in relation to
tone-colour. Everything he plays is in a similar hue of tone, therefore a
sameness and lack of life and contrast pervades the whole. It is a strange
anomaly that the more beautiful is the touch of the pianist by natural instinct,
the 1 more he is apt to fall into the fault of using it indiscriminately in the
same strength, because he takes so much personal pride and pleasure in it.
It is like the case of singers who are gifted with wonderful top notes, and,
therefore, are always inclined to warble them forth in full but monotonous
volumes of sound. 

Hurrying the tempo is nearly as bad, and is
sometimes caused by nervousness, though
indifference, want of confidence, and the
very general mistake of looking upon a
crescendo as an accellerando also give
rise to it. People who are inclined to be
nervous when playing before others often get a queer kind of defiant sensation
when technically difficult passages hover in sight ; the " let's get it over and be
done with it "sort of feeling, which makes them hurry in an extraordinary manner. 

Of course, hurrying may just as well arise from a lack of instinct for rhythm in the
student. Where this is the case, it is rather a hopeless look-out, as it is so hard to
inculcate a real feeling for rhythm into someone who is not naturally endowed with it.
But it has often been my experience to listen to students who were gifted with a
most highly-developed sense of rhythm, and yet who hurried, especially over their
technically difficult passages, until I began to get positively breathless. This kind of
increasing the speed was, of course, due to want of nervous control. 

Now comes along the temperamental student, burning with ardour ardour
for the beauty of the music, longing to make the noble chords of some fine
melody speak out its message! What special pitfall lies ready to entrap his
zealous endeavors? Why, in his enthusiasm that the melody in both hands
should be properly brought out, he gets one hand playing after the other!

For Example is the Prelude in C Sharp minor.
by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Op. 3, No. 2. an
excerpt from the Prelude in C sharp minor of
Rachmaninoff, as written by the composer,
and (below) as often played by enthusiasts
with the right hand striking each note in the first two bars a fraction after
the left. In the third bar of the lower example the chords will be seen
arpeggioed instead of together, and again the right hand coming in after
the left in the last two chords. Another example is the Prelude in C Sharp
minor. by S. Rachmaninoff, Op. 3, No. 2.  

Only a fraction of a second after the left hand does the right hand strike,
but in that loss of simultaneousness of sound the whole grandeur after which
the performer is striving will be dispelled in the irritating effect of one part of
the harmony always reaching the ear at a slight interval after the other. This is
a most frequent failing amongst very musical people who enjoy tremendously
what they are playing; and especially does it occur with them in slow
movements, when they will arpeggio the chords between the two hands so
much that it sounds to me like drawling in speech, or even like stuttering.
These enthusiasts lose their sense of the symmetry of the sound in their
intense pleasure over its component parts, and it is hard that the very virtue
that lies in their love of the music can thus lead them into danger. 

Dragging the time, another tiresome error of judgment, proceeds generally
from the same cause of over-fervour. The player who suffers from this blemish
mostly owes it to lack of sense of proportion and taste, and to a certain want
artistic perception of the guiding line between true sentiment and
sentimentality!? 

To begin with, there is no more usual failing, or one more damaging to good piano-playing,
than too much use of the pedal, and its application in the wrong places. The pedal is really a
very dangerous attraction to the inexperienced and yet enthusiastic performer. It is such an
alluring temptation to hear the notes welling into one another, also the blur of sound
produced by much pedalling covers up so man deficiencies of execution. 

There is no doubt that the pedal carries with it a sort of special glamour of its own, so that
even children when they first start learning the piano are always clamouring to be allowed
to play with the pedal. It is their greatest ambition. Yet bad use of the pedal is quite capable
of completely marring the effect of what might otherwise be a fine rendering of a piece of
music. The pedal should be used to enhance, but never to cover up, and should be
regarded as a means for producing certain definite tone-effects and variations of tone-colour
at precise moments, and not as a sort of general mist of hot vapour or steam by which each
note, passage and chord becomes enveloped. 

Misuse of the pedal is a horrible fault, and can affect great and small alike; it should be
carefully guarded against. Indeed, the state it produces on the mind of the listerner is similar
to that which overheatedair creates in the lungs, namely, fatigue, nausea, lassitude, and even
alas, drowsiness!