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Posts Tagged ‘pedal’

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!