Pre-College Piano Development

One of the most valuable pre-college experiences is the senior high school recital which can serve as preparation for both the college entrance audition and the ultimate graduation recital. A typical program might include one or two of the easier preludes and fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a Haydn or Mozart sonata, a group of nineteenth-century works of the level of the Chopin waltzes and nocturnes or Schumann's Fantasy Pieces opus 12, and possibly closing with an impressionistic or twentieth-century group of the difficulty of Debussy's Pour le Piano, Copland's Cat and the Mouse, or Bartok's Allegro Barbaro. Even at this level, though, an effort should be made on the teacher's part to expose the student to as wide a range of musical periods and styles as possible.

A common error in the pre-college training is the assigning of pieces that are overly difficult both technically and musically. The experienced teacher will develop the student's playing gradually so that proper attention may be given to all areas of musicianship.

The prospective piano major should not only have acquired a degree of competency in performance, but should also be well-grounded in technique (scales, chords, arpeggios, etc.), have a thorough knowledge of theory, and have some knowledge of the literature. Supplied with an adequate pre-college background, the student will be well prepared to meet the demands of the college music department as a piano major.

At California State University at Los Angeles, for example, the Bachelor of Music degree is a rigorous curriculum for students who wish to prepare for a professional career in music or for those who wish to reach a professional caliber of music attainment. Within the Bachelor of Music degree program, students may pursue specialized study in vocal, instrumental, or keyboard performance; composition; jazz studies; and music education.

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Piano Technique: Drill and Teaching Pieces

Piano playing involves developing the ability to learn keyboard technique. In the past, this technique evolved only through mechanical drills and technical etudes. These classical exercises are designed to give control of the movements necessary to play, to increase facility in playing the various figurations found in piano music, to develop power and speed, and to establish foundational control for dynamic and rhythmic variety in piano performance.

However, the mere mechanics of playing, without spirit and expression, is not widely accepted as the way to musicianly performance. An extensive literature of teaching pieces has evolved, through which the student can acquire technique while at the same time he studies selections more or less interesting musically. Most teachers now depend largely upon this type of material for the technical development of the student, while others make use of the exercise and etude literature as an integral part of their teaching scheme.

Some teachers have come to feel that technical drill may be entirely abandoned in favor of a progressive list of more varied material. Their reasoning?

1. only a comparatively few teachers have acquired real skill in obtaining the essential technical elements from the pieces and organizing them into a well rounded system of development
2. the teacher is restricted musically in the selection of pieces if it is necessary to depend on this material alone for technical material
3. it is hard to find selections which contain all the necessary material for comprehensive technical training of the student
4. while this procedure has carried many students successfully through certain elementary stages of development, sooner or later there has come a time when progress stops, and the student, lacking training under a comprehensive plan, abandons his pianistic ambitions in the face of difficulty and demands involved in further pianistic advancement.

In the final analysis, though, practice of exacting technique cannot be avoided by a piano student or teacher. A good pianist must have training which includes all the different elements of a well rounded technique. Advanced pianism includes both artistry and expression, and the necessity of playing exacting technique which the pianist uses according to his artistic taste and judgment. It is common for teachers, even the most eminent, to exaggerate certain phases of musicology at the expense of others.

The superb control over technique that results from classical drilling is incomparable. Thus, both classical mechanical drilling and creativity must be included in the course of teaching piano for the student to become an accomplished pianist.

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What Is Reading?

Some of the instruction of little children and the music material prepared for piano instruction is based upon the idea that sight reading is the development of a fluency in deciphering one note after another. It is assumed that if a child can be taught to read one note after another correctly, and kept it up patiently, he will gradually be able to repeat this faster and faster until he becomes a ready music reader.

Studies shows that reading is the ability, first, to recall to mind a previously learned thought by means of recognized symbols; and second, to group familiar symbols into larger and larger units, each group representing its previously learned idea. in other words, fluency in reading does not consist in seeing single notes more rapidly, but in visualizing in larger and larger units the groups of notes.

This process is greatly facilitated where the note groupings on the page correspond to tonal or music units. Where the notes of a phrase skip from staff to staff, the unity of the group is broken and the eye must follow the music from note to note. When teaching reading, look for keyboard sheet music where the music is printed phrasewise, each tonal figure printed to be grasped in one eye span. Where the chords may be seen as units, the melodic line encourages groupwise rather than note-to-note thinking. These considerations are basic to the development of good sight reading skills.

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