The Left Hand

In one of his poems, the Turkish poet Orhan Veli said:

"I got drunk,

And I remembered you again;

My left hand,

My unpracticed hand,

My poor hand!"

Although this poem may seem to be written on a whim and not tell of much, it tells the truth.

Today, I tried playing the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. Towards the middle of this movement, the right and left hands change place; so instead of the usual left hand accompaniment and the right hand singing the melody, now the right hand  sets off with the sixteenth alberti bass accompaniment, and the left hand takes the lead!

Only, it wasn't that easy.

It is expected that people who play the piano and are right-handed to somehow have better use of their left hands compared to other people. Well, that is not entirely true. The piano is actually set for the weakness of the left hand and the strength of the other one (well, except some of Chopin's pieces, maybe). So the pianists actually need to put their left hand in the background, and whether that requires more muscle control or less, is up for discussion.

So we boast about being the "superior species", but we can't even use one of our hands when a cheetah has no preference over whether it should kill with its left or right claw.

I think the reason why Beethoven and Chopin have included the left hand dominantly in their pieces is, first of all, they are composers from the romantic era, so they could do almost anything and get away with it (I mean, the man put a choir into a symphony!), but most importantly, that they wanted to do something different. When you want to play a Chopin piece, a waltz, a mazurka, or a nocturne, you need to practice the left hand separately, get it set, and then add the beautiful right hand melody and embellishments.

Our left hand seems useless sometimes. We may regard it as a vulnerability against other animals or creatures, or we may simply see it as a weak limb, liability. However, when it comes to real life, we definitely  need it and we actually use it more than we think. If we took out the left hand from any piano piece, the melody and the chords would still be there, yes, but it just would not sound right. Our left hand is like the double bass in an orchestra or a bass guitar in a band; you don't notice it when it is there, but when it is gone, you miss it and the music feels empty.

That is, if you are right-handed. If you are a leftie, well, that's a whole other story.