Tears and Moonlight

When I first encountered Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 27, No. 2, quasi una Fantasia—famously known as the “Moonlight”—I was heartened by the fact that I could play the first few bars and that they sounded like something. Never mind that the beginning of the Adagio sostenuto is just a single repeated broken chord; I was a teenager and sincerely wanted to express drama, misery, mystery. Not to mention seeming to be a better piano player than I really was.

Mrs. Pack, my teacher, coolly informed me that the sonata had three movements and that I might want to get acquainted with the other two. Undaunted, I practiced the Adagio—the easy movement--for hours (or at least half-hours) on end and achieved my goal when I played it for my friend Audrey and she cried.

Since that time, I have probably taught the slow movement of the “Moonlight” several hundred times, the middle movement two or three times, and the third movement not even once. “Try to remember that it is their first encounter with this music,” Mr. Sheldon reminded me when I complained about always having to teach Beethoven’s “Für Elise”, Mozart’s C Major, the “Moonlight” and Debussy’s Clair de Lune. “Remember how you felt when you first heard it.”

There is power in the Adagio of Beethoven’s Op. 27, No. 2. How else can I explain the lengths to which some students will go to try to play it? One student, barely in Level Two, taught himself the first page using diagrams of the keyboard with the hands drawn in.

Terry, whom I encountered at the grocery store yesterday, lettered every single note of the Adagio and triumphantly played the last chord after three months of diligent practice. He refused, however, to play it in the annual student recital. The piece was already on the printed program, so I announced that I would play it in Terry’s place.

As I played, I noticed stirring and tittering from the audience at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the seaside concert hall where we used to hold our recitals. I was well into the Adagio when I saw the reason.

Terry’s wife, Cynthia, had cut out a cardboard moon and, using a rod and reel, was lowering the moon on a line from the balcony until it swung right over the big Steinway.

Lesson Four: Getting Physical

"Weight is our enemy."

When after years of piano lessons I finally found my True Teacher, Robert Sheldon, we spent an hour on this concept and I played exactly one note: D.

Mr. Sheldon was not talking about dieting. His point was that it is the speed with which the piano key descends which produces loudness or softness. If the key goes down slowly, the resulting sound is soft. If rapidly, the sound is loud.

Most piano teachers teach the way they were taught, and Mr. Sheldon was carrying on the lessons of his own teacher, the great Egon Petri (see http://www.pianoeu.com/petri.html.) Weight on the keys is largely expended after the key has reached bottom or keybed. Petri and Sheldon spoke of "taking" the key, rather than pushing or striking the key. Applying weight or force to the key produces very little besides a percussive sound.

What this means for you is that you use a grasping motion on the keys. This may sound simple, but it is so different from most piano methods that a description of it on line put me in touch with a teacher in Finland who proved to have the same second-generation Petri lessons I had.

Your position at the piano should be comfortable and far enough away from the keyboard that you have a straight line from your elbow to the knuckles of your hand. You need to adjust this position to accommodate the sheet music you are looking at, your own height, and the height of the bench you are using. The part of the finger which takes the key is the fleshy pad where your fingerprint resides, not the tips of your fingers.

Vocabulary, Lessons Three and Four

Interval: The distance between notes or keys

Do-re-me-fa-so: Note names used in some cultures. In "fixed do", Do is always C. In "Movable Do", the tonic or beginning of any scale is called Do.

Percussive: A struck sound, like a drum.

Keybed: The wooden platform below each piano key.