Monday, April 19, 2010

English School

This chapter emphasized on English school, Matthey's Act of Touches. On page 374 shows the entire structure of the Matthey's system. His system includes intellectual and emotional perception, controlling key treatment and physical executions.

 

The chart for theoretical intensity of the partial tones of strings is really interesting to me (on page 377). Although we always mentioned the tone, no one really formulate it to the accurate statistics before Helmholtz. Of course, no one would recall these statistics in this chart when we need a kind of tone. But it helps us more understand the tone color if someone investigates and explains the length of time piano hammers remained in contact with strings which determines the nature of tone quality. In a sense, Matthey likes a physicist who attempts to investigate the nature of musical sound and the structure of piano itself.

 

Hand position is an anther important part in the Matthey's system. Matthey mentioned two opposing finger attitude, the thrusting finger attitude and the flat finger attitude. I don't both of these two finger attitude should be put in an opposing position. In my opinion, both of them are acceptable. Which finger attitude should be used totally depends on what kind of the tone you want and what kind of piano you play. I think the flat finger attitude only works well on a more sensitive piano. And flat finger attitude should employ with weigh touch by lapse arm support. To me, I prefer natural hand finger attitude, an attitude between thrusting finger attitude and flat finger attitude.

 

I think arm rotation is very important. If I am not able to employ front arm and rotate it when I play the piano, it must cause lots of stiffness and makes some hand motion on the piano hard to do. Arm rotation helps us to have good muscle coordination and relaxation. But I couldn't understand how to have an invisible rotation in fast movements. It is impossible to feel the arm rotation when I play a fast finger passage.



更多热辣资讯尽在新版MSN首页! 立刻访问!

1 comment:

  1. I really agree with that arm rotation is very important to play the piano. We could play more easily and make a beatiful sound if we use arm rotation well. However, we have to also be careful about aggressive arm rotation. Sometimes, it disturbs playing the piano and it looks like little awkward.

    ReplyDelete