This Piano Has Got Character
Real pianists know that each piano, as an instrument, has a character: bright, muffled, slow, light, a response probably to how the pianist feels when the key is pushed down, and to the amount of sound coming from the instrument.
But even more than that, what distinguishes a good pianist from the rest is the ability to give music “character” by means of their touch and the instrument’s characteristics.
I often use Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata with a child to demonstrate how a pianist is in the end a story teller, and if they cannot set a mood, they cannot tell the secret, wordless story hidden within each great piece of music.
We use a simplified version of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I prefer the one in E minor as it has as few black keys as possible.
It is a matter of a few minutes for the child to learn to play the right hand part of the opening bars.
It’s only a few notes in a repeating pattern, and is easy to learn, unless the child is very small, in which case I let them play the right hand part with both hands.
Once the child has learned the right hand, we play it together with me playing the left hand part. We play it a few times until I am certain they have the four bar passage memorized. I sing a silly obbligato and make it fun, with a description running quietly along about castles and moonlight.
Then I ask them to play it by themselves, step aside, and announce very professionally through my megaphoned hands that, “Sir Lucas will now attempt the impossible Moonlight Sonata. Stand back!”
I let the child play it and most of the time they hack out the tones loudly, and usually very fast. They have no other idea of it than that. That’s fine for now.
I call their performance the “War Between the Squirrels and the Caveman,” and joke about the mood. I brush them aside and play the piece satirically in a kind of Mahlerian chase music style, full of Sturm und Drang.
Then I change gears and play the piece again for the child, setting again the mood of moonlight and castles. This programmatic approach may not perhaps be appropriate to the nature of Beethoven’s “absolute” music, but it’s suitable and inspiring to a child.
The mood is not loud and fast. It is soft and slow.
How slowly can we play this piece? Ask that question and a witty child will play each note for a minute and a half, grinning at you as they have found your loophole.
But then they try a reasonable, slow speed.
I ask for it to be as soft as possible.
Of course, ask THAT question and they will play so softly that you can barely hear it.
Laugh. It’s a piano game. All you have to do is keep trying, and, as long as they think it’s a game, they will happily apply all their child intelligence and try to do what you want.
In the end you will get even the most heavy handed of children to play with lightness.
You may have to remind them, nicely, comically, every time they play, but at least they have shown themselves they are capable of playing with character, with dynamics.
It’s natural. We speak loud and soft, fast and slow. They know what that means.
And all this happens without reading a note of music.
By John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2000 Walden Pond Press. Visit http://www.pianoiseasy.com to see the fun PIANO BY NUMBER method for kids.
John Aschenbrenner is a leading children’s music educator and book publisher, and the author of numerous fun piano method books in the series PIANO BY NUMBER for kids. You can see the PIANO BY NUMBER series of books at http://www.pianoiseasy.com
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