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.
Showing posts with label piano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label piano. Show all posts
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Names to Fit
On Friday, I did not wake up at 6:30 in the morning to get dressed up and go to school to "learn" and "have fun", really to be tested all the time. Instead, I woke up at 7:40, with butterflies fluttering in my stomach, my fingers waiting anxiously to embrace my piano for the final time before we got in a cab in the rainy, humid morning to take place in a piano contest.
Each grade was assigned a specific piece before hand, ours was a Kuhlau Sonata, and we got to pick another piece, which could be anything at all... as long as it did not exceed three minutes.
We got there a little early, and sat in the cafeteria of the relatively small school. While my mom and I were waiting for my name to be called, students would come and go, some there for the very same competition, with their sheet music in their hands, some with their fathers making them follow him around, some in haste, trying to get copies of the criteria before he/she got called in. And there were some who came with their teachers. This was the last day of the competition, so it was grades 10, 11 and 12 for piano and guitar, and most of these competitors had their valued tutors and "supporting" parents with them. Their tutors were giving them advice, speaking to them with such hurtful ambition and speed, speaking the way a boxing coach speaks to his athlete, telling him how to beat up his opponent so badly that he faints, just before the bell authorizing violence chimes among the halls of gambling, ambition, and money. The parents on the other hand, were a whole new kind. Some sat by, chatting with their children, as my own mother did, actually, she played a game on the iPad while I studied for my French test, while some were worse than the tutors; parents instructing their children, and their children frantically practicing the hard passages of their pieces on the plastic coffee table they sat in. One father was dressed up in a suit, his son also dressed up in a black shirt with black suit pants and black, shiny shoes, lead his son around the cafeteria. The boy didn't look up.
Finally, I was called up, along with fifteen other students, and they took us up a floor, where we continued to wait.
When I had four or five people remaining to go before me, we started talking to each other. I sat next to two very, very different people.
One of them could not afford to but a piano, so she had a keyboard at home on which she would practice the passages and parts of pieces, and then she would play her pieces on the piano at her school every day.
The other one's name was Idil, named after the famous Turkish pianist Idil Biret. Her parents bought her a piano when she was born. She played the piano since she was 4-5 years old; but she hated it. She told us that she did not enjoy it at all and that "she did not have anything to do with it." I had the opportunity to listen to both of my new friends. The first girl played quite well, but you could tell she could use a little bit more practice. The second one, Idil, could not play very well, it was as if she was sight reading the pre-determined repertoire right there, and, it was not that hard to sight read. The jury stopped her at the middle of her first piece, asking her to commence with her second piece which she chose. She came out of the room, happy that it was over, while I went in the room, excited to see the piano, the people, and to cross something off my bucket-list.
And today is mother's day. A day only for the most patient -well, most of the time- , most loving, most encouraging creatures on the face of earth. They are indeed special, all parents are, but when they try to change the course of their children's lives, when they try to make their lives into the life they've always wanted to have but couldn't, they become more ambitious, almost to a degree which could hurt their children... But sometimes, they do help them, some become great pianists, great doctors because of their parents' push, but some always look up to their parents, not in the good way, and to everyone around them, walk with their heads down, always trying to live up to their name, while they fail to realize for their whole lives that it is their names who should fit them, not the other way around.
Each grade was assigned a specific piece before hand, ours was a Kuhlau Sonata, and we got to pick another piece, which could be anything at all... as long as it did not exceed three minutes.
We got there a little early, and sat in the cafeteria of the relatively small school. While my mom and I were waiting for my name to be called, students would come and go, some there for the very same competition, with their sheet music in their hands, some with their fathers making them follow him around, some in haste, trying to get copies of the criteria before he/she got called in. And there were some who came with their teachers. This was the last day of the competition, so it was grades 10, 11 and 12 for piano and guitar, and most of these competitors had their valued tutors and "supporting" parents with them. Their tutors were giving them advice, speaking to them with such hurtful ambition and speed, speaking the way a boxing coach speaks to his athlete, telling him how to beat up his opponent so badly that he faints, just before the bell authorizing violence chimes among the halls of gambling, ambition, and money. The parents on the other hand, were a whole new kind. Some sat by, chatting with their children, as my own mother did, actually, she played a game on the iPad while I studied for my French test, while some were worse than the tutors; parents instructing their children, and their children frantically practicing the hard passages of their pieces on the plastic coffee table they sat in. One father was dressed up in a suit, his son also dressed up in a black shirt with black suit pants and black, shiny shoes, lead his son around the cafeteria. The boy didn't look up.
Finally, I was called up, along with fifteen other students, and they took us up a floor, where we continued to wait.
When I had four or five people remaining to go before me, we started talking to each other. I sat next to two very, very different people.
One of them could not afford to but a piano, so she had a keyboard at home on which she would practice the passages and parts of pieces, and then she would play her pieces on the piano at her school every day.
The other one's name was Idil, named after the famous Turkish pianist Idil Biret. Her parents bought her a piano when she was born. She played the piano since she was 4-5 years old; but she hated it. She told us that she did not enjoy it at all and that "she did not have anything to do with it." I had the opportunity to listen to both of my new friends. The first girl played quite well, but you could tell she could use a little bit more practice. The second one, Idil, could not play very well, it was as if she was sight reading the pre-determined repertoire right there, and, it was not that hard to sight read. The jury stopped her at the middle of her first piece, asking her to commence with her second piece which she chose. She came out of the room, happy that it was over, while I went in the room, excited to see the piano, the people, and to cross something off my bucket-list.
And today is mother's day. A day only for the most patient -well, most of the time- , most loving, most encouraging creatures on the face of earth. They are indeed special, all parents are, but when they try to change the course of their children's lives, when they try to make their lives into the life they've always wanted to have but couldn't, they become more ambitious, almost to a degree which could hurt their children... But sometimes, they do help them, some become great pianists, great doctors because of their parents' push, but some always look up to their parents, not in the good way, and to everyone around them, walk with their heads down, always trying to live up to their name, while they fail to realize for their whole lives that it is their names who should fit them, not the other way around.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)