Scarlatti Sonatas @ Amazon.com
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Early piano fingering systems were strikingly dissimilar than today. For one, the thumb was seldom employed as a pivot over which the fingers could pass either up or down the scale-and then almost only in the left hand. Lateral motion of the hands was most often times achieved by passing one of the middle fingers (usually the long 3rd) over one of it is neighbors. Thus, in the right hand the 3rd finger would be slipped over the 4th when ascending, and over the 2nd when descending; and in the left hand vice versa. Hence, the thumb and fifth finger were used far less than today, and the middle three fingers far more. Today, the majority of players would find it out of the question to follow the respective older systems. The basic principles of modern fingering firstborn became widely known through C.P.E. Bach’s Versuch of 1753. Originally it contained a supplement of six completely fingered sonatas showing how the rules for fingering were employed in practice. His son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, wrote
My deceased father told me that in his youth he employed to listen great men who used their thumbs only when huge stretchings made it necessary. Because he lived at a time when a gradual but striking alter in musical taste was taking place, he was obliged to devise a far more comprehensive fingering and in particular to enlarge the role of the thumb. Important features in C.P.E. Bach’s innovative fingering system were:
Fingering for all the major and minor scales were given, now and then with two or three alternatives. The fingering nearest the notes in either hand is the most usual, according to Bach, altho a player of today would not always agree with him. For broken-chord figuration he recommends the fingering that would be employed for the chords in their unbroken form. Scarlatti will have to have used a far more progressed type of fingering than most of his contemporaries, other than as supposed or expected a good deal of of his Sonatas would have been unplayable. The MS origins comprise interesting indications that mean “change the fingers” and “with one finger” (i.e. glissando). In Haydn’s Fantasie in C the right hand demi-semiquaver octaves towards the end of the piece were almost surely intended as glissandos, for they could hardly have been played other than as supposed or expected at the conveyed tempo. There may be no doubt that octave glissandos in each hand were intended in the Prestissimo coda of the last motion of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, for his student Czerny recorded the fact. Octave glissandos of this kind would have been perchance on the early fortepiano, with it is light and shoal touch. But on a innovative piano they are so difficult that it is wiser, whenever possible, to divide them (fingered) amongst the two hands. Both Chopin and Liszt reverted at times to the exercise of slipping the long 3rd finger over the 4th or 5th, exceptionally when the thumb was other than as supposed or expected occupied and the 3rd finger could play a black note. Chopin’s Etude in A minor, Op. 10/2, is based completely on this fingering. Though Brahms never included fingering in his piano works, other than arrangements and exercises, the music itself shows that he must have fingered wide-ranging arpeggios in an person way. This consisted in dividing the arpeggio into finish handfuls, rather of part-handfuls, and relying on the pedal to mask the break in legato that occurred when jumping from the thumb to the 5th finger, or vice versa. Choosing Fingering When learning one of the important aims of good fingering in piano classes is to keep away from unnecessary hand movement. Hence it is often times helpful to see how a heap of notes of a phrase may be played legato without any hand-shift. If the whole phrase may be included, the player will have to then determine whether this fingering will best formulate the articulation he requires, or whether it would be clearer with a less static hand position. In each instance, the respective number of things from which only one can be chosen will have to be weighed and tried, to see which will best manufacture the desired musical effect. When shifts are necessary, they ought to if possible be made to underline the phrasing rather than contradict it; thence it is always an vantage if hand-shifts may be made to coincide with breaks in a phrase. In passage-work, the player ought to be continually on the look-out for patterns in the music-particularly the less evident ones that start out off the beat-and will have to undertake to match them with fingering patterns. In passages founded on broken chords, it is always helpful to reduce the chords to their unbroken form, as this suggests where the most natural hand-shifts occur. A change of finger on a single note may be employed for two opposite effects: When the elaborated fingering of a passage has been worked out, it is necessary features ought to be written into the copy; but everything that is evident or may be taken for granted will have to be omitted. Changes of hand position are important, and may in general be made clear for the right hand by marking the thumbs in ascending passages, and the third and fourth fingers in descending ones; and vice versa for the left hand. Any unexpected or irregular fingerings must likewise be marked, preferably only by means of the key finger involved. Otherwise the player’s aim must be to reduce the fingering in his copy to the minimum consistent with clarity, for the less the marks the having little impact they are to read. |
