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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.
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