Even if the child is not capable yet of understanding the structure of a musical piece, he or she can certainly feel it and imitate the teacher’s A New Perspective on Piano Phrasing by I[r]
Trang 2Copyright © 2011 PianoCareer.com
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Trang 3F OREWORD
Piano playing doesn’t have to be a continuous struggle It doesn’t have to be boring, lifeless and it certainly doesn’t have to be painful and full of stress
Piano playing has to be a lifestyle A lifestyle that will allow you to create, to express
yourself, to find your balance and your unique place in this world A lifestyle that you will truly enjoy!
There are many things - I call them magic ingredients - that can bring a spark of life and
a sense of fulfillment to your daily practice and your performances One of them is
correct phrasing
Unfortunately, phrasing is often neglected or misinterpreted by most piano beginners and intermediates (and their teachers) However, this little ingredient can make the difference between a mechanical, raw and boring performance and a beautiful, meaningful and captivating one
Piano phrasing is not difficult: things seem difficult only when we lack the proper information Phrasing gets easy and fun once you understand the basics! That’s what I plan to do in this report – reveal the basics of correct phrasing and spice up the recipe with several secrets which will considerably simplify your practice!
For writing this report, I synthesized the phrasing principles used in the Russian piano school for achieving a flowing performance full of awareness, inspiration and musicality; some useful insights from the Western musical tradition; the experience of my wonderful piano teachers - Lia Oxinoit and Ludmila Vaverco; and, of course, all the phrasing tricks and secrets that I learned the hard way during 24 years of studying and playing piano and 7 years of teaching
The report is structured as a step-by-step guide with many examples, metaphors, graphics and exercises I hope that it will give you a new perspective on piano playing, will show you the way towards a new level of piano mastery, and - the most important thing - will help you enjoy the entire process!
Trang 4P HRASE AND P HRASING
UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE
When words leave off, music begins
~Heinrich Heine Have you ever witnessed a 3 year old kid reciting a poem?
Besides being sweet and clumsy, the kid is also saying the words mechanically, without
understanding the meaning of each sentence He or she usually takes breaths between lines or whenever comfortable, not taking into account the beginning and end of a certain idea Have you noticed that the same thing happens with most piano beginners (and even intermediate students)?
Just like poems (or other types of written and spoken text), musical works are composed
from certain thoughts and ideas - musical phrases - that together form a piece: a
Sonata, an Etude, a Prelude, a Fugue, a Nocturne and even a complex Symphony movement
In the realm of music theory, there are many definitions of a musical phrase These
definitions usually sound like this one: A musical phrase is a succession of notes (or even
motifs and figures) that has a complete musical sense
For an easier understanding, we can always compare a musical phrase with a spoken or written sentence A sentence is a thought, an idea that is expressed via our language A musical phrase is also a thought or an idea - the only difference is that it’s expressed via musical language: sound and silence, rhythm and dynamics, and an infinite variation of pitches and timbres However, as many poets, philosophers and musicians noticed throughout history - the music’s power of expression reaches far beyond the possibilities of our verbal language
Trang 5When you’re 3 years old, it’s normal to be unaware of the meaning of a certain sentence
or phrase However, as you get older, you begin to speak with awareness, modeling
your intonation and making logical pauses according to the meaning of the idea you’re
trying to communicate
In musical performance, this is the essence of phrasing - it’s the ability of the performer
(no matter if he or she is a pianist, a violinist, an oboist, a singer or an orchestra
conductor) to express a musical phrase, to shape it, to bring it to life and transform it
into a convincing meaningful message with a clear structure (beginning, middle - or
culminating point - and end) by using the specific technical possibilities of the
instrument
So, in piano playing (and not only), phrasing is also a special technique that allows the
performer to transform the notes written in the score into musical sentences Mastering
this technique (personally, I think that it is more an art than a technique) is usually that
significantquality which separates a piano professional from a beginner or an amateur Phrases are present in all kinds of music, regardless of style and genre: instrumental and vocal, baroque and classical, romantic and impressionist, folklore and pop even the experimental atonal music of the XXth century has its specific phrases!
Musical phrases exist either you have the ability of understanding and expressing them or not
My report is dedicated to the art of bringing these phrases to life in piano playing (or the art of mastering piano phrasing)
Trang 6S HORT I NTRODUCTION :
TWO LEVELS OF MUSICAL PHRASING
The ability of expressing a musical phrase resides simultaneously on two levels - mental
and physical
On the mental level, phrasing is the art of visualization
It is the capacity of seeing ahead of you, of imagining HOW a musical idea (phrase) should sound before actually playing it This is not all: it also means imagining the
outline of the phrase - knowing where exactly it begins, where it leads (its culminating
point) and where it ends
On the physical level, phrasing is the art of making your vision come true It is the knowledge and the skills that allow you to technically transfer the visualized phrase to the instrument, so that what you imagined becomes a reality
If we make a comparison - it means thinking before you speak and then speaking by
using the speed, intonation and attitude that best match your thoughts and your
intentions! This way, you’ll avoid saying something stupid and you’ll make sure that the thought you’re expressing is delivered to the listener in a comprehensible manner that will guarantee its positive reception Simply put, in order to express a thought, you have
to know what to say and how to speak
In time and with enough practice, we learn (or at least we should learn!!!) to do both
things simultaneously, because in the end these skills are the inseparable parts of a whole - our ability to express ourselves The same can be said about music!
Trang 7P IANO P HRASING - STEP 1:
A NALYZING THE P IECE : K NOW Y OUR D ESTINATION !
OR
THE MENTAL LEVEL OF PIANO PHRASING
A Little Story: Avoid Learning a Piece the Hard Way!
Most things in life are much easier than they seem Piano playing is not an exception
However, our human nature has this annoying tendency of doing things the hard way:
we complicate everything and then we complain about lack of time, excessive difficulty and stress
How does this relate to piano phrasing?
Before diving directly into the depths and particularities of phrasing, let me give you an example - a little story that will probably sound extremely familiar:
Imagine that your teacher told you to learn a new piece What do you usually do? You go home (or to a practice room), you sit at the piano, you put the score in front of you and you start reading the piece by taking it one note at a time
Such an approach is similar to hacking your way with a big knife through an unknown jungle without even knowing if you’re heading in the right direction! Yes, eventually you will find a
clearing or even the end of the jungle, but you’ll lose lots of time and effort in the process!
Avoid doing things the hard way! Playing piano is not easy, but we certainly don’t have
to make it more complicated than it is!
For a better understanding, let’s take a closer look at the usual steps of the hard way method,
which is unfortunately ‘practiced’ by many piano students (being sometimes a result of an incorrect approach of their teachers):
Sight reading of the notes (hands separate for beginners, hands together for advanced
players) Please pay attention - I’m not writing ‘sight reading of the text’ - which is a
Trang 8complex term that includes notes, rhythm, durations, pauses, fingering, dynamics,
character, pedal I’m saying ‘sight reading of the notes’ - which means figuring out
where the notes are on the keyboard and pressing them without thinking about all the other elements of the text
Learning the text approximately, without thinking about its meaning, according to what you ‘deciphered’ during your sight reading
Going to class, where the teacher has to correct all your mistakes - many wrong notes, inexact fingering, inaccurate durations etc not to mention inexistent dynamics!!!
Going home and trying to correct these mistakes which is not an easy process, because your fingers have already memorized everything the wrong way!
Fighting with your tendency of playing the wrong notes and durations mechanically remembering to take a look at the score from time to time, where your teacher marked with fat pencil circles all your mistakes
Getting tired of this frustrating process - especially when you have several such pieces
to prepare for your next exam - and taking a break which can last for several days (after all, you’re so busy!)
You lose several weeks or even months in the process of figuring out the text and (hopefully) the dynamics When you take a look at the calendar, you see that your exam is in two weeks!!! Panicked, you start to push your way through the text harder, trying to memorize it as fast as possible so you’ll be able to play it without mistakes at the exam
The result is not hard to imagine: frustration, anxiety, headaches, hand injuries related to incorrect practice and the list can go on!
Does this scenario sound familiar? Or, if you’re a teacher, are most of your students
experiencing this ‘piano condition’?
Of course, in such circumstances it’s hard to talk about the quality of the sound, about
expressing musical messages and learning the art of phrasing
Now, let’s make things easier!
Fortunately, there is an easy way of avoiding this incorrect method of learning a piano
piece I will give this method a simple name - “Before going to the jungle, find yourself (or draw) a map!”
Trang 9Usually, it is even easier than that: the composer already did this job for you! Each musical score (especially if it’s written by a great composer) is a well-structured map –
all you have to do is open your eyes (initially - with the help of your teacher) and learn
how to follow its directions! Guess what – if you do this before diving head-first into
reading the notes, you’re making your life much easier!
Here’s what I mean:
If you’re a teacher, don’t tell your student to read an unknown piece without playing it
for him/her first Even before playing, analyze the piece together: you have to explain a
few things about the epoch, the composer and his style, about the message and images
of this particular piece, about its character and structure Before sending the student
home to practice, show him/her HOW to read the piece It’s even better to begin reading the work during the class and allow the student to continue reading it at home
In other words - draw a map of the musical piece!
If you’re a student or you’re learning to play piano by yourself, don’t start reading a
piece without at least looking at it from the beginning till the end and trying to
understand the main elements: message, character, rhythm, tempo, dynamics and
structure! Listening to a recording while looking at the score is even better (especially
for beginners) - this way you’ll learn to make direct associations between what is
written and how it sounds After listening to a recording or to your teacher, you’ll know
how this piece should sound like even before playing the first note! This will dramatically increase your learning speed, allowing you to concentrate on important
things like sound and phrasing!
In case of small children, this process has to be focused on intuitive feelings rather than
on rational understanding Even if the child is not capable (yet) of understanding the structure of a musical piece, he or she can certainly feel it and imitate the teacher’s
Trang 10playing The teacher has to focus on developing the little pianist’s imagination by making constant associations between musical ideas and the child’s environment: weather phenomena (sunshine, rain, thunder), animals, people and so on Imagining a
story that will explain and justify the piece’s structure and its dramatic ‘unfolding’ is a
great approach!
Analyzing a piece and understanding its message and structure is the first step toward
quality phrasing!
Vertical Thinking Vs Horizontal Thinking
Are you familiar with the concepts of vertical thinking and horizontal thinking? These
two different methods of approaching and solving problems can be applied to all areas
of human life, including piano playing
In music in general and piano playing in particular, it’s especially important to be aware
of the difference between horizontal and vertical thinking
Both methods have their benefits in piano practice and a good pianist has to know how
to use them according to his/her needs However, when we talk about correct
phrasing, horizontal thinking should be our priority
When I was still studying, my piano and ensemble professors used to tell me: don’t think
vertically - think horizontally! In the traditions of the Russian piano school, horizontal thinking has a special place It is another important skill that separates those who
achieved some levels of mastery from those who are still taking the first steps in their
‘piano quest’
Let’s dive a little deeper:
Thinking vertically means being ‘in the moment’ and seeking solutions according to your
present knowledge and resources
Trang 11In playing a certain piece, this can be a positive skill (taking a certain difficult musical fragment or passage and practicing it until it sounds perfect) and also a big impediment
(playing each note or each bar without seeing where the phrase is heading and without understanding its meaning and structure)
glass and learn all its details!’), it is detrimental when it comes to phrasing - it means
playing blindly, statically, hitting each note and chord as they appear in the score
without connecting them in a bigger phrase, without using your inner hearing or feeling how the phrase unfolds and develops It can be compared to walking (or even driving!)
without seeing the road in front of you!
Thinking horizontally means going beyond what you know or what you see, reaching
with your mind new horizons, seeing things in perspective, understanding deeper
meanings, building a bridge between the present and the future It is also the capacity
of seeing the bigger picture in spite of all the difficult details that tend to catch and monopolize our attention
In piano playing, it means imagining and hearing the entire phrase before playing it It
also means being aware that each phrase has a certain point of arrival towards which
you have to create an uninterrupted musical flow (or at least create this illusion!)
Moreover, it is also the ability of thinking ahead even while you’re playing, so that your
fingers always follow the mental image (and not the other way around!)
In your imagination, you have to be one step (or even several steps!) ahead of your fingers! Don’t allow them to take over - this usually ends up badly!
On a side note: Comparisons, mental associations and examples are very useful in teaching and
playing piano Here’s a comparison that (I hope) will give you a better understanding of this subject:
Trang 12If we compare music with water, then vertical thinking (and vertical playing - because usually a
person who’s playing vertically is not actually thinking!) is a pond with stale water; horizontal
thinking (and playing), on the other hand, is a river that flows freely; the river doesn’t skip or
miss any details in its journey; at the same time, it knows that the ocean awaits ahead
How to Build a Mental Image of a New Piano Piece?
It’s not possible to ‘shape’ a phrase on the piano without building a mental image of the piece first
1 Listen to one or several good recordings (and please don’t listen to amateur
recordings from YouTube if your purpose is to learn - life is too short for that! Learn only
from the best - from great professional pianists! Fortunately, you can find on YouTube (and not only) very good recordings as well) Also, ask your teacher to play the entire
piece or separate fragments each time you need to refresh your memory about how it
should sound
2 Analyze the ‘dramaturgy’* of the piece and its message: What do you think the
composer wanted to express in this piece? What are the main images/ideas/emotions? How are they evolving? What feelings should this piece suggest to its listeners? Is there
a main idea or a conclusion? Or maybe a deeper philosophical motivation?
For example, pre-classical composers (especially Bach) express transcendental values in
their works: God, the universal balance, wisdom, enlightenment, morality, compassion
and serenity; classical composers (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven) are gradually ‘refocusing’
their attention towards the human mind, its rational capacities and its symmetry; the
romantic era (Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt) explores the depths and antagonisms
of the human heart - conflicting feelings, intense emotions, unattainable ideals; the
impressionists capture ‘frozen’ moments in time - an image from nature, a human
temperament or a character from mythology (little exercise - can you identify such images in Debussy’s or Ravel’s works?) This list can go on towards post-romanticism,
Trang 13expressionism and so on, and I’m sure that each of you can think about some other interesting examples!
*A little explanation: In the Russian piano school, we use words such as dramaturgy or dramatic
unfolding for describing the structure of the ‘story’ behind a certain piece: the different musical
images/characters, their conflicts, their evolution, the culminations, the conclusions etc
3 Identify each phrase After having a clear image of the piece as a whole, it’s time to
go a little deeper If the piece is short (1 or 2 pages), you can simply identify each phrase (first, with the help of your teacher, who’ll also explain how to identify a phrase; in the
near future I will record some videos on this subject) If the piece is more complex (a sonata, a polyphonic piece or even a longer virtuosity piece) then you need to proceed from big fragments to smaller ones until you identify each phrase Don’t forget that phrases, in their turn, can be made up of smaller motifs
4 Analyze each phrase, starting from the beginning of the piece and working your way
to the end (now that you have a clear image of the general structure, you can concentrate on smaller details) Even the shortest phrases (1 or 2 bars) have a certain
‘topography’, ‘relief’ or ‘outline’ Make sure you understand where the phrase begins, where its culminating point (you can also call it point of arrival or destination) is and where it ends You should also get a clear feeling of the flow of the phrase
Because it is rather difficult to explain this term - the flow of a phrase - in written words, I will
make another comparison that will help you understand what I mean
Again, let’s learn from water A river flows inevitably, implacably, it never stops and it never
rests - not until it reaches the sea When we’re watching a river, we have this feeling of motion,
of a constant tendency toward something In playing a phrase, we should have the same feeling
- a constant tendency toward the culminating point, a perpetual sense of inner motion (even if
the tempo is slow), a feeling that our hearing and our arms are being attracted by a certain
form of gravity towards the end of the phrase In the next subchapter of my report I will tell you how exactly you can transfer this inner feeling, this product of your imagination to the instrument
Trang 14(again, with metaphors)
A new piece is like an unexplored jungle When you’re lost in the middle of an
unknown territory without a clear sense of destination, you stumble on each tree stump while blindly searching for a way out If you can’t read your map (the piano score)
properly or at least find a higher hill, if you don’t have a view from above and a sense of
perspective, nothing really makes sense - it’s just a bunch of trees, bushes and
dangerous creatures You can’t see the forest for the trees!
Phrasing is about seeing the forest, not the trees! If we go deeper, it’s about being
aware of the fact that each individual tree belongs to a bigger structure - the forest In
music, it’s about being aware that each individual note, chord or motif is an indissoluble part of the bigger structure - the phrase Each phrase, in its turn, is also an indissoluble part of a whole - the piano piece
Trang 15P IANO P HRASING - STEP 2:
T ECHNICAL H OW -T O G UIDE : B RINGING P HRASES TO L IFE !
OR
THE PHYSICAL LEVEL OF PIANO PHRASING
A Few Words on Intuition, Knowledge and Skills
Genial performers (small children included) are usually phrasing intuitively, without
totally understanding HOW exactly they’re doing it
Developing our intuition (you can also call it inspiration, revelation, creativity or give it
another name that makes you comfortable) is a wonderful thing, of course Without it, art as we know it could not exist - it would be only a form of boring, lifeless science The
spark of creativity and inspiration is another magical ingredient that separates real art
from simple crafts or from kitsch
However, in order to be professional musicians, we cannot count on our intuition alone
We have to know how to transfer and adapt the mental image of a piece (or a phrase)
to the particularities of our specific instrument - the piano Knowing, however, is also
not enough We should have the necessary technical skills that can be developed only
by regular, perseverant and tenacious practice
Let’s take it one step at a time:
Trang 161 Know Your Instrument (Yes, I’m serious!)
In order to create a phrase on the piano, you have to take into consideration a unique
particularity of this instrument (I almost wrote “You have to think like a piano”): the fact
that after being produced, each sound inevitably fades away
For this reason, the art of piano phrasing involves a unique technique - the ability to
create the illusion that the sound is maintained on the same level longer than allowed
by the physical construction of the instrument
As an example, let’s make a comparison with the violin The intensity of the violin sound can be controlled by the player (the sound can be maintained on the same level or it can grow depending on how much pressure is applied on the bow)
The piano, however, is the ONLY instrument (except for percussion instruments) where
the performer cannot control the sound AFTER producing it: after pressing the key, the
sound will inevitably fade
There is no way of making a crescendo on the existing sound or at least maintaining it
on the same level Even if you press the pedal, the sound cannot maintain its initial
intensity (volume) - it will only take longer to fade That’s why piano phrasing is much
more complicated than vocal, string or wind phrasing
In the end, phrasing (on the technical level) means creating a connection between the notes, making them sound as if there are no audible gaps between them - at least if the
phrase has to be played legato A phrase which has to be performed non legato (portamento) or staccato is even more complicated to shape But, again, let’s take it one
step at a time
Trang 172 Learn to Control the Quality of the Sound
Musical instruments mirror our attitude towards them The piano is not an exception
If you hit a key carelessly, in a hammer-like manner, the piano will respond to you in the
same rude, brutal manner The resulting sound will be sharp, tensed, unpleasant to our hearing (though such a sound can be used for creating different sound effects, especially
in contemporary music or in film soundtracks) But if you play a Nocturne by Chopin (for
example), such a sound will be totally inappropriate!
On the other hand, if you have a correct posture, if your arms and wrists are relaxed
and you press the key with a proper intensity (more on HOW to control the sound in my
future articles and videos), the piano will appreciate your attitude by creating a deep,
velvety, flowing and expressive sound
Such a sound is the proper material for building or shaping a phrase It’s not possible to
play a convincing phrase if your wrists are tensed, your key attack is random (“I have no
idea how the key will respond to my touch”) and you cannot control the quality of your