I am too negligent a piano player to ever acquire advanced skills, so I am forever and always at a solidly intermediate stage. Anyone listening would rate it roughly at the level of “tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me”.
That said, I have an immense passion for piano and take a considerable amount of joy in playing.
When I’m learning a song, I play daily for an extended amount of time, playing the same bars ten thousand times over.
I decided earlier this week to learn all of Bach’s Inventions. I started at Invention 1 and that’s where I’m still at, and as soon as I am satisfied with my memorization and performance level, I will move to Invention 2 and so on. But I’m definitely in the midst of Invention 1 right now.
My method is first to familiarize myself with the sound of the notes as I memorize them, and next to work on technique, and finally to work on artistic interpretation.
I’m on step two, technique.
In stage one (familiarizing myself with and memorizing the notes), I made up my own fingering and there was a particular part at the end where I had such a satisfying time skipping the fourth finger over the fifth finger a couple times to reach the upper notes as I played across the keys. It was so much fun!
It was my favorite part!
Then came step two: technique.
I started paying attention to the numbered fingering noted in the sheet music.
To my intense horror, it specifically told me three notes before my beloved ‘four skipping over five’ move that I should bring one under two.
This was very logical and easy to do but it PREVENTS FOUR FROM SKIPPING OVER FIVE, as it is no longer required to stretch the hand across that extra note/notes (depending on which time).
It is already taken care of by bringing one under two a few notes earlier (or two notes earlier, the second time). The hand is far enough along already and all is well.
I played it a few times, nodding my head, thinking, “That’s much easier than the other way”. After all, the other way was a bit uncomfortable and this felt more natural to manage.
I played it a few more times. “Easier, yes,” I thought every time I’d get to that part, “but such a shame. It was so much fun before.”
“Such a terrible shame”, I thought, the next few times.
It was no longer my favorite part.
It was instead a reminder of all the good things I’d lost in life.
Finally, my mind made up by my own dissatisfaction, I made a deliberately rude gesture to the sheet music and decided to ignore the indicated fingering method.
I used THREE instead of one (take that!) and then FOUR instead of one (in your face!!) and I skipped four over five both times.
And once again, I was filled with supreme happiness.
(Recommendation:
1-2-1-2-3-4
2-3-1-2-3-4
My way:
1-2-3-4-5-4
2-3-4-5-4-5)
A few more times playing the piece, every time with a light in my soul as I got to the end, and I started to feel smug about it.
“I’m a rebel”, I thought, nodding my head whenever I got to the end part. “I am a rebel of the sheet music. I defy your directions! I make my own choices!!”
After that, every time I played it, so pleased with my rebellion, I started thinking, “Against WHOM am I rebelling?”
And this is probably the difference between me and normal people, because others will be satisfied with the rebellion, but I want to know the exact person against whom I am rebelling, and I will of course go to great lengths to find out.
There were a couple choices: the editor or the composer.
The editor, Dr. Willard A. Palmer, did a very nice job and I’d already read about the method he described for Bach’s pieces in the extensively long foreward (which covered half the length of the book).
Yes, I read the entire foreword before starting to play.
That’s the kind of person I am, always.
It was really interesting and he seemed like a keen and knowledgeable man, about whom I was thinking smug and rude thoughts every time I got to the end of Invention 1 (mental gestures possibly included).
I looked up his bio at alfred.com and learned he’d written 789 published works, was the choir director at a church, and was once a child prodigy who played both piano and accordion and grew up to be a scholar of music and teaching methods.
Probably this was the man against whom I rebelled. Probably.
Great foreword, boring fingering choices for end of Invention 1.
The other choice was Johann Sebastian Bach, dead 267 years, musical genius extraordinaire and creator of some of the most beautifully logical and intentionally methodical pieces I have ever played.
I really hoped I was rebelling against the editor.
I needed to find out.
Where next?
Academics, of course.
I searched scholarly papers on Bach, specifically looking for his fingering techniques and whether he’d recorded any and whether I could see pictures of original scores in his hand.
I read a number of papers before I found one with a relevant fact: We only have about 100 extant bars with fingering marks from Bach’s own hand, none of which were in Inventions.
I was rebelling against the editor!
Almost certainly!!
But that’s not the truly excellent part.
The paper continued:
In spite of the historical importance of these fingerings they remain largely neglected, and the reason given are identical with those which Türk gave almost 200 years ago: they are uncomfortable.
Sol Babitz, “On Using J.S. Bach’s Keyboard Fingerings”
They. Are. UNCOMFORTABLE!!
I thought to myself, WHAT IF the fingering I am playing is the way that Johann Sebastian Bach himself would have played it???
Four over five was uncomfortable and certainly not as easy, but so much fun and I truly enjoyed it.
Pure supposition.
Until I found another paper, where it explained that Bach’s son, C. P. E. Bach (Carl Philipp Emanuel), claimed the fingering notations he transcribed of his father’s work were also based on his father’s methods.
Except apparently most people don’t believe this claim, because they employ different habits than the three works we know were in J. S. Bach’s hand.
The writer, Quentin Faulkner, went on to describe J. S. Bach’s personal method, as he and others observed them in the three pieces we know were personally ascribed with his fingering notations. The very first characteristic listed:
Frequent skipping of fingers, especially the outer ones on both hands, but also others.
Quentin Faulkner, “J. S. Bach’s Keyboard Fingering: New Evidence“
!!!!!! Especially the outer ones!!!!!!
I am taking this as a sign from the academic gods above and below (if there’s such a place, I’m certain many academic gods live in hell) that my four skipping over five is, if not the way J. S. Bach would have done it, something of which he nevertheless would have APPROVED OF greatly.
The scholars are on my side, see??
And so now, when I play the song, I reach the end part with utmost pleasure and filled full of righteousness.
Mine is an intermediate performance but my instinct: that comes from the masters.
Master.
Maybe.
According to two different papers I’ve squashed together and completely suited to my purposes.
Which is GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
