Scientist's View of Piano Touch

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23269, 11 February 1939, Page 16 (Supplement)

Scientist's View of Piano Touch

"SUBJECTIVE FALLACY" [FROM OCR OWN correspondent] LONDON, Jan. 26 At the annual conference of Educational Associations, held at University College, London, Sir James Jeans gave the scientist's view of the problem of pianoforte touch. Sir James said the common idea that a pianist could put any emotion he pleased into a note by the way he struck the key seemed to be "a purely subjective fallacy." Three American men of science—Hart, Fuller and Lusley, of the University of Pennsylvania—had taken photographs of the sound waves produced by eminent pianists striking the keys, and found that these could be exactly matched, to the minutest detail, by dropping heights on the keys. The moral for the piano teacher was that it did not matter how a pupil struck the key so long as he did so with the requisite degree of force; if that was right the tone quality would be the s-ame whether he struck it with his finger or even with the end of his umbrella.

Science and Emotion With a succession of notes the onse was different, but ouly because the player wanted his hand to be in such a position that he could strike the next note at the right instant and with the right force. "So far as the scientist can see, this is all there is in the much-debated problem of piano-touch," he added.* From such a scientific analysis of music, Sir James Jeans concluded, it would seem that music teaching might be rather more realistic and practical if the music teacher could draw a clear distinction between things which have a scientific basis and things which have an emotional basis. Pianists' Reply To the Daily Telegraph Mr. Mark Hambourg and Mr. Benno Moiseiwitsch expressed their opinions. The former said: "Sir James' statement is absolute nonsense, and we have heard it all before. He is a very eminent scientist —let him stick to his science. This is a matter of art. Delicacy of touch is all a matter of muscular control, in which the fingers, hands, wrists, arms and the whole body play a part. It is impossible to get this delicacy of touch other than through the fingers." The latter: "In direct antithesis to what Sir James says, I maintain that everything depends on the way the key is struck. It is a matter of 'approach,' of delicacy and refinement of touch—the way in which the key is pressed after the finger has touched it. On this depends the 'colour' of the note."