Why do we choose to learn a particular piece of music? It’s often because we’ve heard it and want to recreate the sound for ourselves. It was György Cziffra’s recording of Chopin’s ‘Military’ Polonaise (Op 40, No. 1 in A major) that made me want to learn to play the piano when I was little; to this day, I’ve never studied this piece, but there is still time! I’m currently working my way through Book 2 of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and didn’t want to learn each Prelude and Fugue in order even though I did start at the beginning with the C major. At the end of February I began to learn the notes of the F sharp major Prelude, trying to revert to my original approach of memorising one line at a time, hands separately and then together, to get the music into my head and fingers.
I had heard the F sharp major P&F before I began to learn the notes but had never really listened to it; a stranger, then, yet to become a friend – the type who doesn’t make it easy for you, with its key signature of six sharps. That means playing all the black keys, and remembering that E sharp is on the (white) key F. Perhaps it’s time to introduce the circle of 5ths and attempt to explain some music theory. As you can see from the diagram below, F sharp (and its enharmonic equivalent G flat) is at the bottom of the circle, at the 6 o’clock position, 12 keys matching the 12 hours of the day. (I’m not thinking of the 24-hour clock here!)
The C major scale is played entirely on the white notes of the keyboard, hence no sharps or flats for the key at the 12 o’clock position. The major scale is a ladder of tones and semitones: the ‘rung’ between 3rd and 4th notes, and 7th and 8th (1st) is half the distance of that between 1st and 2nd, 2nd and 3rd etc. As we move in a clockwise direction, the 7th (or leading) note of each scale must be sharpened to preserve the semitone between the leading note (7th) and tonic (keynote) of the major scale. G is a 5th higher than C, and the first sharp is F, its leading note; D major keeps the F sharp and adds a C, and so on, until F sharp major, which can be enharmonically written as G flat major. Thereafter, it’s easier to reduce a flat as we continue from the 7 o’clock position – but Bach chooses not to do this.
The first B sharp, the 7th of C sharp major (the dominant key [the 5th note of the scale] of F sharp major) appears in bar 6, cancelled immediately in the next bar. In bar 9, having run out of sharps, he has to introduce a double sharp x in front of an F (i.e. play a G) to indicate G sharp major – there isn’t a key signature for this! – as the music moves round the circle in a clockwise direction. By bar 33 the music lands in A sharp major, which feels and looks like B flat major on the keyboard – just two flats to worry about – but that would be too easy! He approaches this mini cadence by an Fx leading to a trill on Gx and then the right hand plays a Cx as the third of the A sharp chord – enharmonically speaking, a D as the third of the much simpler B flat! Do you see the problem? And understand why it can be easier to memorise the music and forget about the knots you can tie yourself into, working out which notes to play!
The pitch of the notes is only one of the considerations when learning a new piece. The prelude is written in 3/4 time, with dotted notes featuring from the beginning. In Baroque performance practice, the dotted notes are often lengthened to achieve a double dotted effect, but here the rhythms in both hands indicate that they should be played as written. Even so, there are decisions to be made with the placing of demisemiquavers after dots: did Bach intend the semiquaver in the LH to be played with the second of the three, or the first? Apart from this, the most difficult bar, rhythmically, is the third from the end.
It’s the third beat that presents the challenge: playing the two hemidemisemiquavers after the dotted semiquaver (sixteenth note) at twice the speed of the four demisemiquavers that follow. And giving the correct value to the dotted semiquaver. I practised the whole bar keeping a semiquaver pulse going in my brain, and listening like mad. It’s a final flourish, but I need to understand exactly how it works even if the execution can be freer.
Then there is the tempo, or speed of the piece. Bach hardly ever gives any tempo indications, and it is left to the performer to discover what works best. For me, the music usually finds its own speed; I experiment with different tempi, but can’t force a faster or slower pace than it wants to go. But this is my interpretation, that develops and changes while I’m working at the piece. Nothing is set in stone in the early days, weeks or even months of learning something new. And other pianists have their own ideas of the correct tempo, which can be a revelation or a shock when I hear them!
One decision that should be made early on, is the fingering. Again, some passages fall naturally under the hand and it’s obvious which fingers to use, but at other times I find it difficult to work out the best solution. My first piano teacher used to write all the finger numbers on the score, in red pen (I blamed this for my inability to sight-read!) until I’d been learning for a couple of years, when I had to do it for myself. I have a distinct memory of the afternoon I could have been playing outside in the sunshine but instead, spent indoors filling in the finger numbers that he’d not done for me. I was nine years old.
Note the contrast between the teacher’s scrawl and the child’s neat figures! (My writing no longer looks like this.) I went to a new teacher when I was eleven, and she didn’t make me, or even expect me to write fingering on the music. Despite this kindness, I don’t think she liked me very much; sadly, my sight-reading didn’t miraculously improve either.
Some editions of printed music come with a few finger numbers written in, but this also presents problems: everyone’s hand is different, with longer or shorter fingers and more or less flexibility, and there can’t be a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Unfortunately, my scores give me the notes and that’s it – I have to make all the choices and it’s not easy! These days I do write in the fingering that isn’t immediately obvious, but it frequently changes while I’m practising the piece, and often when I return to the music I change my mind. It’s work in progress.
As I’m writing this, I have memorised the Prelude and am now beginning to learn the Fugue. I’m having more fun at this stage, but will write about it in my next post, as this one is already too long. And I need to get back to the piano!
If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading!