Skip to main content

Chopin and The Magic Cord

So there is a magic, invisible cord in my body. Two cords, actually. They're relatively sturdy, they lead from my brain to my fingertips, and there's enough cord for some slack. If you loosen the cord, the body can put more weight into the keys. If you tighten it, the fingers "pull away" and play more lightly.

So that's what I imagine. The weight in the fingers comes from the body, from the core--not from the hands. When it's time to lighten up, the hands shouldn't tense; the core should control how much weight is used to strike the keys.

So last night I worked on a measure of the Chopin that, in all the years I've played this, I've never given much attention to: measure 83.


Here's what it sounds like, without the dynamics.

In this measure, you have an accelerando in the first half, and then a diminuendo in the second half. The measure starts at something like fortissimo. So there is this rushing that is simultaneous with a dying away. The hard part is that, my brain seems to have married loud with fast, and soft with slow. When I play louder, my hands want to speed up. When I play softer, the hands slow down.

So I worked on this last night. First, I focused on simply getting softer: concentrating on making each note-pair a little softer than the one before, pulling the cord back, thinking about just how loud I needed to be at the beginning in order to reach the goal softness at the start of the next measure. This took some slow playing, and some eyes closed in concentration.

Once I felt like I was getting the hang of it, I worked on the accelerando--on not yielding to the temptation to crescendo as I sped up. It wasn't easy. It wasn't intuitive. But I think I got some good work done. And visualizing the magic cord really helped. As I sped up, I just imagined the chord pulling my hands away, ever so slightly, and the sound got softer. And it sounded nice!

Oh, and I also had to practice the fingering. I belatedly realized that I'm not being consistent with the fingering, and I don't know if I've ever been. Call it laziness, or maybe it's that I'm not as enamored of the end of this piece as I am with the rest of it. Yeah, it's probably just laziness. Anyway, this measure needs attention, and I'm planning to give it more over the weekend.

Another thing: The reason I stumbled upon this measure last night is that I decided to try to play the piece starting with the last measure, and then the last two measures, and then the last three measures, etc. And guess what. It was a disaster. I couldn't play it! It felt like a brand-new piece.

So this nocturne, which I've played forever, is not as snugly in my brain and my fingers as I thought it was. I don't think it will take long to get it there. It's just going to take a few super-concentrated practice sessions.

For now, I'm having to put the magic cord away and go to work.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to  IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ode to Joy Day 3: Patterns, Shapes, and Short Breaks

As I work through Rebecca Bogart's Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge , I'll be posting more extended updates here on my blog. Days 1–3 Day 1 was analysis, listening, and generally scoping out the territory of the music . The road trip to Florida last week turned out to be Day 1, even if I didn't label it that way at the time. Day 2 was fingering and the start of my first "batch": measures 0-7 (intro), 8-15 (Section A), and 16-23 (Section A'). Day 3 (today) was about recognizing patterns and continuing work on Batch 1. Batch 1: Intro, A, A' The intro isn't difficult, and it will likely be one of the two easiest sections in this piece. Still, the syncopation is a little tricky, so I took some extra time with it. I've already memorized it, as the chord progression is pretty straightforward and the melody is just a single line (no harmony notes). There is one big augmented chord at the end that required some focused work. Sections A and A' ar...
Post a Comment
Read more