On Teaching

Organ Method XIV

This month’s column is a continuation of last month’s discussion of learning to play contrapuntal passages.

In the second movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Sonata in C Minor, Opus 65, No. 2, the left-hand part is mostly in two voices. Any part of that movement makes wonderful material for practicing multiple voices in one hand in the way that we have been discussing. Here are the first several measures of that piece, shown in Example 1.

There are more than thirty measures that are constructed like this. Each of the two left-hand voices (marked Clav. I) is quite intricate by itself, so, in practicing each of them separated into two hands, you will have to take some care with the fingering and a fair amount of time. For using this piece to explore this method of practicing, it is not necessary to work on all of it at once: any few measures will be fruitful.

Example 2 shows another Bach passage with two voices in the right hand. It is from the Sinfonia in D Major, BWV 789, beginning just after the downbeat of m. 5.

In this passage, the two right-hand voices briefly cross, and in one spot, one voice passes through a note that is being held by the other voice. In playing the two voices separately on two keyboards, none of this causes any problems or is particularly noteworthy. Can you use this exercise to make it possible—or more natural—to hear those voices clearly as they cross, when you put them back together?

We now move on to three special issues in manual playing. Two of them are approaches to fingering that apply to certain types of writing that are common in the repertoire. These are 1) the fingering of repeated notes, and 2) substitution. The other is an exercise designed to help with the playing of trills and other passages that call for rapid, light playing. I will describe the trill exercise first, and then move on to the other two, which are in fact closely related to one another. 

This exercise is not written in music notation, and does not involve playing passages of music, but rather only simple pairs of notes. Its purpose is to create an awareness of a feeling of lightness and ease of touch, which can then be carried into the playing of other exercises and passages of music, especially of trills, other rapid ornaments, and rapid passages in general. It is physically easy to do, though it requires a certain kind of focus that can take a while to achieve. It is equally appropriate and helpful for seasoned players, for absolute beginners, and for anyone in between. It goes like this:

1) Choose two fingers on the same hand. (The first time you play this exercise, the fingers should be 4/3 or 3/2, in either hand. Later on it is especially valuable to play it with 5/4, and any two fingers can be suitable, even non-adjacent fingers.)

2) Choose two notes—at first they should be adjacent naturals, but later on it is valuable to include sharps/flats as well. As with some of the exercises from earlier in this series, it is important that you choose notes that lie in the part of the keyboard where your arm and hand are naturally more-or-less straight when you are playing (that is, your wrist not cocked or twisted). This is, of course, normally near the top of the treble clef in the right hand and near the bottom of the bass clef in the left hand. It is a good idea to position the fingers near the ends of the keys, and to let the thumb float in the air in front of the keyboard. (But see below for using this exercise with the thumb.)

3) Once you have chosen the two notes and the two fingers, rest the two fingers on the notes and relax your hand, arm, neck, shoulders, etc. Sit in a comfortable  position, and take a deep breath or two. Then play one of the notes—either one—lightly and smoothly, and hold it. When you feel completely relaxed, then:

4) Play the other note and the original note in succession, as quickly and as lightly as you can: a quick, light two-note gesture. While you are playing these two notes, your hand and wrist should feel more as if they are floating upwards than as if they are bearing down. This two-note gesture will leave you holding the same note that you played first, and it will have created at least a little bit of tension in your hand. Once again you should wait for your hand, arms, etc., to completely relax. Then repeat the two-note gesture, and do this a few times in a row. It is crucial to wait each time for your fingers, hand, arm, shoulders, neck, back, etc., to completely relax. Thus, it is not appropriate to develop a steady rhythm or beat in doing this exercise. If you do, you are probably not allowing yourself to relax thoroughly enough between playing notes.

5) After you have done this a few times with a particular pair of fingers and notes in one order, play it with the same fingers and notes in the opposite order. It is important to stop before it begins to feel “routine” and thus impossible to achieve a combination of concentration and relaxation. Usually it makes sense to play it about 4 to 6 times each (up/down and down/up) and then leave it. This varies from one person to another. It is better to do a little bit of this often than to do a lot of it in one sitting.

6) It is not necessary to segue from this exercise directly into playing a trill or other fast passage. Rather, the point is to remember the feeling of the exercise when you next play a trill or fast passage. If you do a little bit of this exercise most days, spreading it around to several pairs of fingers (not neglecting 5/4), and working with both hands an approximately equal amount, the feeling of it will spill over quite naturally into your playing.

7) The following “special cases” of the exercise require extra thought: the thumb, sharps and flats, and non-adjacent fingers. In these cases, particular care must be taken about hand position. Make sure that the alignment of the fingers with respect to the notes permits the hand to remain in (or constantly regain) a tension-free state. For example: using 2/1 on adjacent naturals is usually too awkward to be good for this exercise; however, using 2/1 or 3/1 on a natural and a sharp/flat is often very comfortable, and indeed a good thing to practice (thumb on the natural, obviously). Using 4/2 on F# and D (right hand) is usually fine, but using 4/2 on A and F# (right hand) is usually not. Using 3/2 on a natural and a sharp/flat is usually OK if 2 is on the natural, but not if 3 is on the natural. The point is to make sure that the wrist is not cocked or twisted outwards very much (ideally not at all), that the fingers are not so curved that they don’t have good leverage in pushing down the keys, and that it is possible to remain near the ends of the keys. (These are all normal considerations in organ fingering, but this exercise only retains its purpose if the hands are very comfortable, whereas in playing repertoire, the complexity of the music often makes some compromise in comfortable
fingering unavoidable.)

An important note: In 4) above, I use the phrase “as quickly and as lightly as you can.” The most important part of this is “as you can.” Quickness is the point, but it cannot be pushed. If you try to execute this simple gesture faster than you can comfortably do it, you will defeat the purpose of the exercise.

Playing repeated notes

Repeated notes on the organ are often seen as something of a problem—and with some reason. In order to repeat a note on organ, you must release it all the way. This is also true on harpsichord, but not on piano, and not consistently on other instruments. When you combine this need to release a note before you can sound it again with the sustaining quality of organ sound, you get a situation in which repeated notes can stick out: they can sound disconnected from the rest of the sonority, texture, and musical shape of a piece or passage. If a line or passage is being played fully legato, then two notes in a row that are the same will be articulated differently from the non-repeated notes around them. Repeated notes cannot be fully legato. Even in a line or passage that is being played in an overall detached style, repeated notes can stand out, since the way in which they are detached can sound different—more crisp or abrupt. 

It is a reasonable goal to be able to play repeated notes as naturally as possible, that is, to reduce as much as possible the extent to which they stand out or draw attention to themselves. It is also a good thing to be able to control and shape the playing of repeated notes—timing, articulation, sonority—with as much flexibility as possible. This is true of all notes and all playing, but with repeated notes it calls for some extra thought. 

In general, the discovery made by organists over many centuries and through all sorts of different schools of organ composition and organ playing is that it is a good idea, when possible, to play repeated notes with different fingers—to change fingers from one note to the repetition of that same note. This is not always possible to do. Repeated notes that are octaves or that are embedded in chords, especially four- or five-note chords, sometimes must be played using the same fingers. However, the changing of fingers on repeated notes is a practice that is important to learn and to get used to.

If you have just played a note with a given finger and you are still holding it, then in order to repeat it with that finger you must do all of the work of releasing and replaying the note with that finger. You need time to move the finger up off the note, and then bring it back down. This sets a limit on how little time there can be between the release of the first note and the playing of the second. Not only must there be a break between the two (same) notes, but that break must be a certain length. Also, the gesture of moving a finger up and back down is likely to produce tension. The shorter you try to make the break between the two notes, the more at risk you are for introducing tension into the hand. The paradox arises that trying to make the repetition more “legato” actually makes it more abrupt: more of a conspicuous break. 

If you repeat a note with a different finger, then you can be preparing the new finger to play the note before you have released it with the old finger, and you can release the note smoothly. Sometimes it will make sense to release down and towards your body sitting on the bench or off to one side, rather than straight up above the note that you are holding and that you need to play again. The new finger can move in and replace the old finger smoothly. This gesture creates less tension and gives you the greatest possible flexibility in timing and articulation. The repeated note still must be detached, but, if you want, it can be only slightly detached—
almost imperceptibly. 

Start getting used to using different fingers on repeated notes with the simplest possible exercises, such as that shown in Example 3.

You can move this to different notes and use different fingering patterns. (For example, try 2-3-4-3-2-3-4-3, or 2-1-2-1-3-1-3-1.) Remember to keep hands, arms, shoulders, and so on completely relaxed. Release notes smoothly but cleanly: that is, do not inadvertently slip the new finger onto the note prior to releasing it. If you do that, you are in fact practicing substitution—which we come to next—but not playing repeated notes with different fingers. Experiment with different amounts of articulation, and with patterns of differing articulation between the different notes.

Another useful pattern for practicing is illustrated in Example 4. The fingering given is just one set of possibilities. You can devise and try others, preserving the principle of changing fingers on the repeated notes. Try different things with articulation: making the non-repeated notes legato, with different amounts of break at the repeated notes; articulating all of the notes the same; using varied detached articulation for all of the notes, and so on. ν

To be continued.

It has always struck me as interesting that changing fingers on repeated notes and substitution are so similar to one another in what they actually involve physically. Thus it makes sense to me to use one of them to introduce the other. It is also important to keep them straight: it is extremely common for students to fall into the habit of doing a substitution when they think that they are changing fingers from one note to the repetition of that note.   

This continues without a break from last month’s column.

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. He writes a blog at www.amorningfordreams.com.

A further practice step is to try patterns in which the hand plays more than one note at a time (Examples 1–4). The fingerings given above and below each line are alternates. There are other possibilities, for example, involving pairs such as 1/4 and 2/5. You can adapt these exercises in ways that occur to you, such as using black notes. Once again you should experiment with articulation. You can make non-repeated chords legato, and repeated chords any degree of non-legato; or try to match, as nearly identically as possible, the articulation of each of the motions from one chord to the next; or use a variety of non-legato articulations. Keep the hands light and relaxed, especially while releasing notes. Pay attention to the direction in which you release each finger when another finger is preparing to play that same note: up, down, slightly (or fully) to one side or the other. These logistic possibilities all have their place. They work out differently for players with varying relative finger lengths, and also for varying note patterns. It is your job to pay attention as you work on these exercises and figure out the most comfortable ways.

Repeated notes often occur in the context of ornaments, especially trills. The exercise in Example 5 allows you to practice that, assuming that you start each trill with the upper (auxiliary) note.You can play the opening note with 3 and each of the trills in succession with 4-3, or play the opening note with 2 and each of the trills with 3-2, or perhaps other patterns. You should adapt this exercise to other specific note patterns, including some involving black notes and the left hand. Do not worry about making the trills especially long or fast: the focus of practicing is the repeated note that initiates each trill.

Another ornament-based repeated note exercise, involving mordents, is shown in Example 6. You can play each quarter note with 3 and each mordent with 2-3-2, or other fingering patterns. For the purpose of this exercise it is only necessary that the final note of each mordent be played with a different finger from that which you want to use to play the following quarter note. Again, adapt this exercise to different specific note patterns and to the right hand.

Playing repeated notes with different fingers, in addition to giving the player more control over the timing, articulation, and sound of the repeated note patterns, also gives the player a free chance to re-position the hand. It can actually clarify and simplify fingering patterns for the passage around the repeated notes themselves. The excerpt from Rameau shown in Example 7 (part of the fifth of six variations on a Gavotte in A Minor) is an example of this, so extreme that if Rameau hadn’t written it, anyone discussing the fingering of repeated notes would have had to do so.

For all players except those with the very largest hands, changing fingers on the repeated notes in each group of four sixteenth notes is actually necessary to permit the playing of the other sixteenth notes. The same is true in the left hand sixteenth note pattern in the sixth variation from the same piece (Example 8).

But in being necessary it also guides the shaping of all of the rest of the fingering in such a way that the passages are actually quite natural and straightforward to play. Each decision about what fingers to use on the first and second notes of each pair of repeated notes should be based on where your hand is coming from and where it is going. Example 9 shows one possible fingering for the left hand part of the preceding example.

In Example 10, from the Brahms chorale Mein Jesu, der du mich, there is a moment, at the beginning of the second full measure, where the use of a different finger on a repeated note makes it possible to set up a simple and effective fingering for the succeeding passage. (My suggested fingering is not the only way to do it.)

The musical advantages of using different fingers to play repeated notes can only be heard and felt if the hand is very relaxed and the touch smooth and fluid. Any repeated-note moment (such as the one in this Brahms example) is a good place to remember, recapture, and apply the feeling of lightness gained from the trill exercise described above. 

Substitution

As opposed to changing fingers on repeated notes, the technique known as “substitution” is changing fingers on held notes. While these two techniques serve very different musical and technical purposes, and indeed are most typically associated with different historical periods and repertoire, they have so much in common technically as to be essentially versions of one another. 

There are several things to bear in mind when beginning to work on substitution:

1) A substitution can be either measured—the new finger placed silently on the note at a predetermined time, probably defined in relation to the beat of the passage, or instant—that is, the new finger slides in to replace the original finger as part of the gesture whereby the original finger played the note in the first place. (Whereas the timing of finger change in a repeated-note passage is determined by the timing of that passage’s notes.) A substitution can also be somewhat in-between: that is, not instant, not a one-gesture slide, but not specifically timed to be on a beat or subdivision of a beat. This latter is probably the most common in practice, though all are quite useful.

2) In any substitution there is likely to be something to observe about the specific direction in which the original finger departs and the direction from which the new finger arrives. It may make sense to get the original finger out of the way by lifting it up, moving it sideways, allowing it to curve downward, or something else, or some combination. The new finger can slide in under the old, or from above it, or from one side or the other. All of this affects or is affected by hand position and by the relative lengths of the fingers. It is not—since the substitution is silent in any case—something that affects the musical results. It is about comfort and reliability. 

3) Substitution is generally associated with legato. The usual reason for introducing an extra gesture into the act of playing is to permit the hand to be in a position to play the next note or notes without having to release the existing note(s) in a way that creates an unwanted break. Sometimes, however, substitution simply seems to make a passage easier. Different players develop different degrees of comfort with substitution and use it to differing extents. 

4) Substitution is more likely to be necessary or to provide an appropriate solution for creating true legato in situations in which a hand is playing more than one note: counterpoint or chords. In single line textures, substitution is rarely necessary to effect a particular musical result. (When it is necessary, that is usually a result of something having to do with very wide intervals.) That is not to say that it is not often comfortable or convenient. Sometimes it can serve the same function as changing fingers on repeated notes in that it can allow the hand to reposition itself efficiently.

5) Substitution—unlike most of what most performing musicians do while playing—creates physical gestures that do not correspond to anything that the player or the listener actually hears. This can break or weaken or generally interfere with the player’s ability to experience the rhythmic vitality of the music through the kinesthetic experience of playing. For some players this sense—almost of dancing to the music while playing, but doing so with the playing gestures themselves rather than by literal dancing—is a real and valuable aid to vivid and convincing performance. If the feeling that the hands (and perhaps feet) are doing things that aren’t part of the rhythmic flow of the music seems, to a particular player, like a problem, then that player might well be inclined to use substitution less than other players. There are also ways of counteracting or compensating for that effect. At an early stage of learning organ, and of becoming comfortable with substitution, this is something to file away at the back of the mind, in case it seems like an issue to be dealt with later.

6) Sometimes a tendency to rely on substitution as an all-purpose way of finding notes (scrambling for notes, in effect) can lead a player—whether a student or otherwise—to cut short the process of working out good, efficient fingerings and then practicing those fingerings with enough focus and dedication to learn them. In this way, a heavy reliance on substitution—especially by a beginning or “intermediate” student—can actually damage the learning process, sometimes seriously. This is far from being a reason not to learn and work on substitution, since it is a valuable tool, and for some purposes a necessary one. It is simply something to watch out for.

The second exercise given above for changing fingers on repeated notes can be adapted as a good beginning point for practicing substitution, simply by tying the repeated notes, and keeping the fingering the same (Example 11).

And this same note pattern can be used with an extremely wide variety of fingerings, since in principle any substitution is possible and is worth practicing. For example, the right hand fingering could be 3-4-5(1)-2-3-2-1(5)-4-3(5) (The parenthesis indicates substitution. In this fingering, the tied g’ going from the second to the third measure does not have a substitution.) Another possibility would be 1-2-3(1)-2-3(1)-4-3(1)-3-2(1). These fingerings are musically random: their purpose is to help you get the feeling of different substitution patterns.

The two-note chord exercises above can also be adapted as substitution exercises (Example 12). With the same-note chords tied, the fingerings would be carried out as substitutions rather than as changes of fingering on newly played notes. This can be tried with other specific fingerings, and other similar note patterns, and of course also in the left hand.

In carrying out substitutions with multiple notes, it is important to do the individual substitutions in the correct order. The correct order is the one that is the most comfortable and natural physically. (Again, since the substitutions are silent, this is about physical comfort and reliability rather than any audible result.) Usually that means the order that keeps the hand small: that doesn’t stretch the hand out any more than necessary. So, in the example above, the substitutions on the lower notes of the two note chords should be done first. It is always possible to figure out by trial and error which way is best. Sometimes it is also possible to figure it out in advance by analysis of hand position. Performing multiple substitutions in the correct order also has the effect of allowing the whole hand to move in one gesture towards the next note or notes or towards its next position. It is extremely important to get this right. That can make the difference between a substitution’s being easy and natural and its being both difficult and a potential source of strain or even of real injury.

Next month’s column will continue with more exercises for substitution and examples drawn from the repertoire.

Hand Distribution II

I have suggested that beginning in the middle of measure 19 and going on for a while, it is best to take the upper voice—a somewhat wide-ranging eighth-note pattern—by itself in the right hand, and to group the other two voices—both of them slower, and occupying places in the keyboard compass very close to each other—in the left hand. This is logical and satisfies the various points that I listed last month. It also predisposes the important “hidden” repeated note at the beginning of measure 22 to work out to best advantage, with the left hand playing and discreetly releasing the on-the-beat quarter-note d′, and the right hand coming in to play the following eighth note. 

If, by any chance, it is important to the student/player to make all of the half notes and quarter notes of the lower two voices fully legato, then keeping those two voices together in the left hand throughout will require a substantial amount of substitution, which by definition makes the fingering more complex. This could to some extent undermine the gain in simplicity that comes from letting the right hand track the active upper voice unencumbered. It would be simplest to keep the lowest and middle voices in the left hand. (Also, a player whose performing style suggests keeping this passage strictly legato is probably a player who is quite adept at substitution—someone for whom it does not add much difficulty, if any.)

Example 2: Finding the middle voice

The next section is quite different. Example 2 shows that the three manual voices are for the most part doing similar things to one another.

The measure-long passage beginning at the second quarter note of measure 25 is an exception to this and has the same texture as the passage discussed above. It would be physically possible in this measure to take the middle-voice notes with either hand, but it seems clear that taking those notes in the left hand will make the playing of that measure much easier.

Throughout this passage—with no exception—both hands can reach the notes of the middle voice. The middle voice is somewhat more active than the other two—just for the record, thirty-two notes in the excerpt as it appears in the example, compared to twenty-seven for the upper voice and twenty-five for the lower. This is not enough to make a difference on its own. Active or not, it is the middle voice that can be, and perhaps should be, shared between the hands. It can’t be isolated. 

One way to approach a passage like this is to try it both ways: play the top two voices all in the right hand—probably two or three times, just to get used to the feeling; and then play the lower two voices together in the left hand, also a few times. The point of this is not to choose between those two absolutes, but to look for moments of tension. Where, in playing two voices in one hand, do you feel that it becomes awkward or difficult? If you are lucky, those spots will be complementary: places that are awkward in the right hand will seem natural in the left hand and vice versa. If this is the case, then you are very close to having found a pattern of hand distribution that will work and that will maximize comfort in playing. You can sketch out that pattern, create the specifics of the fingering, and begin to practice. You might want to change something as you go along—I will come back to that important concern below. 

In carrying out this procedure, I make a few discoveries for myself. I find it slightly awkward to reach the f#′ and the e′ in measure 24 with the right hand. I find it somewhat awkward to track the middle-voice notes beginning with the last quarter note of measure 27 and going on for about two measures with the left hand. However, I find it easier to get the c#′ at the end of measure 29 with the left hand than with the right. There are various other details. Again, this is all empirical, and it is just about me: no one else will necessarily experience the passage that way. (For one thing, my feeling for hands and fingers here inevitably bears the traces of my having played the piece for more than forty years, and of my initial encounters with the piece when I was very much a beginner, and tried to read through it and learn it without the guidance of a teacher!) However, anyone can discover a fair amount about what will work best by trying it out this way.

Here are a few more analytical or specific things to say about the passage:

1) If you take the a′ on the second quarter note of measure 23 in the right hand, expecting also to take the b′ immediately following it in the right hand, then that gesture—going from a′ to b′—involves contracting the hand. This is, all else being equal, relaxing and natural.

2) Measure 24 is perhaps an especially good place to alternate hands in the middle voice. If you play the d′ with 4 in the left hand, then the left hand can easily play the f#′ with 2, then the c#′ with 5 and the e′ with 3.

3) If you alternate in this way, then you can play from the beginning of measure 23 through the downbeat of measure 25 without changing the right hand’s position.

4) The g#′ in measure 26 will be easier for most players to take in the left hand. This is because it is far enough from the f#′′ in the right hand that the right hand must execute an uncomfortable stretch or assume an uncomfortable hand position in order to reach it.

Answers to questions about what hand distribution is the most comfortable— particularly in a case like this, where any number of things are possible—may depend in part on interpretive choices. Certainly in this passage, as I mentioned above concerning the earlier part of this section of the piece, if the player wants to make the lines truly legato, that choice will have implications for hand distribution that are different from what might apply if the notes are by and large detached. Full-fledged legato will tend to require more substitution and might in general lead to a need for more even sharing of the voices. It will be easier to finger the outer voices legato if neither hand has to track the middle voice for very long at once. (More substitution and a more even sharing of the middle voice might be alternatives to each other.) If the player wishes to keep the lines detached, a wider variety of hand distribution choices will work fluently and well. In effect, more fingers are available, since fingers that are already holding notes are nonetheless available to play the immediately following notes. Since interpretive choices can—and should—change as someone gets to know a piece better, and also just over the course of a player’s career, fingering choices and hand distribution choices have to be revisited from time to time. Even in the first stages of learning a piece, hand distribution choices might have to be revisited as the specifics of the fingering develop. This is sort of a paradox: you literally can’t create fingerings until you know which hand is going to play which notes, but you might want to make changes in your template as to which hand will play which notes based on the way the fingering works out in practice. (This is only a concern with passages like the one we are looking at now where the hand distribution choices are rather open.) There is no way around this: it is part of the process.

Example 3: Dividing the work

The next brief section of the piece is similar in principle to the opening several measures: there is an active outer voice, so if possible it is likely to be most suitable to group the other two voices in the other (in this case right) hand, as shown in Example 3.

This is true even though the two upper voices are quite spread out from one another for much of the time.  The b′ in the middle voice at the beginning of measure 34, for example, is much closer to the lower voice (left hand) notes than it is to the upper voice notes. However, it is very likely that most players would find it hard—or at least unnecessarily harder—to grab that note in the left hand, since doing so would tend to disrupt the flow of the playing of the eighth-note line. Also, of course, there are more of those “hidden” repeated notes, the playing of which can be especially effective if they are split between the hands.

Example 4: Room for questions

The next short section, shown in Example 4, is interesting. The middle voice is the active one, and here it is doing the most active thing that is represented in this Alla Breve section: outlining the chords in eighth notes, like those seen in the upper voice around measure 20 and elsewhere and in the lower voice around measure 32 and elsewhere. As in the passage found in Example 2, the middle voice is the most active, but here it is a lot more active than the outer voices. This raises several questions: which notes of that middle voice are closer to each of the outer voices? For which hand is it easier to play any given note? Is there a musical advantage to letting one hand track (so to speak) an intricate moving line, or this line in particular? Or is there a musical gain from the ease that might be created by splitting that line up? If so, how is it best to practice a fast or intricate line that moves from one hand to another? Is this an issue of its own, or is it essentially just a subset of practicing the notes as such?

Example 5: Xs and Ys

In this particular case, as shown in Example 5, clearly only the notes marked below with “x” can be reached easily by the left hand, though those marked with “y” can probably also be reached by the left hand, though less easily, for most players.

I would probably find it easiest to take the “x” notes in the left hand (possibly not the first one, f# ′) and all of the other middle-voice notes in the right hand. At each of the “x” spots, I would play the two left-hand notes with 3/1. This is predicated in part on my wanting to play the lowest line somewhat detached, and, for me at least, it clarifies and simplifies the right hand fingering quite a lot. I would also expect to play the upper voice detached, but less so. I want the freedom to close those gaps down quite a bit in response to the harmonic tension of the line. A player who wanted to make that line quite detached could more readily play all of the middle-voice eighth notes in the right hand, if that seemed desirable.

Example 6: A simple choice

The next section, shown in Example 6, is a classic case of the most active material being in an outer voice—the upper voice—and the other two voices having slower, simpler material, the notes of which are close to one another on the keyboard. There is little or no reason not to join the lower voices in the left hand throughout this example (after the first note printed here, which the left hand can’t reach).

Example 7: Upper vs. lower voice

The next several measures, as seen in Example 7, present a number of interesting questions, which can be answered a number of different ways. 

As in Example 5, the middle voice is the active and intricate one. The right hand can certainly reach all of the middle voice notes, and the left hand can reach most but not all of the measure. The difference, for purposes of thinking about hand distribution, is that the upper voice is all repeated notes. If the player wants (as I myself would) to change fingers on those notes in order to gain more control over the timing and articulation of the repetitions, then that might suggest taking some substantial number of the middle-voice notes in the left hand—though it might not make it necessary, depending on the player’s hand size and relative finger lengths. If the player does not care about changing fingers on the repeated notes or would positively prefer not to do so, then with (most likely) 5 playing all of those c′′ sharps, the remainder of the right hand is available to play the eighth-note line. This might in turn mean that on balance it makes the passage easier to free the left hand of the need to catch any of those notes and to allow it to track the quarter-note lowest voice, with its couple of fairly substantial jumps. That might in turn depend on articulation choices for the lower voice.

Next month I will continue this discussion and turn to discussing hand distribution choices in other textures. I will also discuss practice techniques for hand distribution choices that are technically sound, but musically counterintuitive. 

Hand Distribution III

Continuing our trek through the Alla Breve section of Bach’s D Major Prelude and Fugue, BWV 532—looking closely at issues involving hand distribution—we come to a brief section that is influenced by something other than the music itself:

Example 1 shows that if there were nothing else to think about, clearly there is reason not to distribute the two voices between the two hands. That is the first principle of hand distribution, after all. However, in most editions of this piece, there is a page turn right about here. Therefore, the player can gain a bit of ease with that page turn by taking all of these notes in one hand (most likely the right hand). It is entirely possible that the various editors have chosen to position these measures at a page turn in order to help out in this way. Of course, for a player who memorizes the piece this won’t matter in the long run, but it might still help during the learning process. 

This is a special case—sort of a diversion. In fact, analyzing it like this is a useful way to help a student to relax: talking about something practical and not artistically intense, but relevant. However, it is not an unreal concern, and there are other reasons for taking clusters of notes in one hand in order to deal with something else while playing. The main one is probably the act of changing stops. Even something as simple as grabbing all of the notes of the final chord of each verse of a hymn in one hand to change stops with the other is a branch of decision-making about hand distribution.

The rest of this Alla Breve section mainly presents the same issues that we have already seen, with perhaps a few twists. I will go through it all, but concisely, since it is more or less “review”. 

The next short passage (Example 2, measures 48–49) has an outer voice that is more active than the other voices. Therefore it will make sense to keep that voice by itself in one hand, for the most part. Some players may want to break up the middle voice by taking the d′ at the end of measure 48 in the right hand. There may be other modifications that could make sense, but tracking the entire middle voice in the right hand would significantly increase the difficulty of the passage.

Example 3 (measures 50–51) shows the next measure, which has an intricate middle voice. All of the notes of that voice can be reached by the right hand; however, it might make sense to take some or all of those notes that can also be reached by the left hand, to break up the physical act of combining that line with another. The candidate notes are probably the opening c#′, and the b and the a in measure 50.

The next, which is fairly lengthy, has the fast-moving figures in the upper voice. However, the two slower voices are not close enough to one another to be taken in the left hand, clearing the right hand just to track the intricate line (see Example 4, measures 52–59).

For most players, the easiest and most natural way to finger the passage will involve taking in the left hand all of the middle-voice notes that the left hand can actually reach, and taking the notes that the left hand cannot reach in the right hand. On the second quarter note of each of the odd-numbered measures, where the two higher voices come together, there is a special issue to think about. Which hand can best project to the listener the illusion that this is two notes, one of which moves away as part of the upper eighth-note line and one of which is part of the middle-voice quarter-note line? It is actually a trap in a spot like this to try to play the note with two fingers at once, one from each hand. (No one would suggest this on purpose, but students will indeed fall into doing it, probably through indecision.) The choice of hand (and finger) should be made clearly, even though it can be made either way.

For most of the next nine measures, there are no real questions to think about, either because the (manual) writing is in only two voices or because the balance of more intricate and simpler writing makes it clear. 

At measure 65 (Example 5) there is an interesting subtlety to examine. The middle voice takes over the note being held—presumably in the left hand—by the lower voice. Which hand should play the note? The left hand is right there, but with the “wrong” finger—since whatever finger is holding the note, the hidden repeated note will sound better if it is played with a different finger. This is not hard to manage. The articulation and timing of the move from the c#′ to the a in the middle voice might seem to be under more natural control if both those notes are played in the same hand. However, it is entirely possible to practice towards making that gesture effective across the two hands, as I will discuss below. It might seem better to take that eighth- note a with the left hand to give the right hand more time to get up to the c#′′ on the second quarter note of the measure. However, to me that “leap”—the tenth from the a to the c#′′ over the time-span of an eighth note—is the main reason to take the a in the right hand. The physical gesture of moving the right hand up the distance of that tenth will—like a bowing gesture in string writing—give the player the best chance of shaping the articulation and timing of the musical gesture in an effective and natural way.

At measure 69 (in Example 6) there is a brief passage in which any and all of the notes of the middle voice could be taken by either hand.

This is a good spot at which to remember once again that it doesn’t matter on which staff the notes are printed. The decision about which middle-voice notes to take in which hand should be based on comfort and logistics. This is not a bad time to mention that this will vary with the particular hand shapes of different players. For example, it is quite likely that a player with relatively short thumbs will gain more comfort from taking the d′ in measure 70 with the left hand than a player with relatively long thumbs will. 

Measures 71 through 78 display a texture in which the upper voice is mostly holding long notes, while the other two voices are fairly active. A sample of that passage is shown in Example 7.

It makes sense to take the eighth-note middle voice in the right hand, just accepting that one finger (the fifth finger) of that hand is unavailable since it has to hold long sustained notes. 

At measure 79 there is another opportunity to use hand distribution to make the playing of repeated notes sound natural, and to avoid letting those repeated notes disrupt the flow of the voices. My suggestions are indicated by letters, and are shown in Example 8.

The next complicated or involved spot begins at measure 89 (Example 9). This is a longer example of the sort of writing found at measure 36 and discussed in last month’s column. In this case, however, the eighth notes in the middle voice can all be reached by either hand. The player has a free choice as to which hand should play any of these notes and therefore what pattern to follow through the passage. The teacher’s role is mostly to point this out to the student, and to help the student notice the implications of different choices for hand position and articulation (and of course the implications of articulation preferences for hand distribution choices: the more interested a student is in playing the upper half-note line legato, for example, the more middle-voice notes the student will want to take in the left hand). I myself would probably take the third eighth note of each beat in the left hand—those that are a third higher than the lower voice left-hand notes, closest to them—and the others in the right hand. There are other ways to do it.

The next few measures (Example 10 measures 94–96) end the section of the piece that we are analyzing. Again, either hand can reach the middle-voice notes. Choices can be made based on the usual factors: closeness of notes to one another, hand position, and so on. However, this passage also has a special feature. A player might find that the shaping of the timing and articulation of the syncopations/suspensions in the upper voice feels more natural either 1) with those notes isolated on their own in the right hand, or 2) played with the middle-voice notes in the right hand, using a kind of rocking motion to reinforce the feeling of the pacing and articulation of those notes. This is an individual thing: I can easily imagine doing it either way.

When a student (or any player) has made all of the decisions about which hand should take which notes of a (middle) contrapuntal voice, and worked out the actual fingering, then the next step is to practice the passage in such a way that that voice sounds the way that the player wants it to sound. If the hand distribution and fingering are right (comfortable) then this should not be categorically different from practicing any other sort of passage. 

However, there is one concern. It is undeniably a little bit more difficult—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say “less intuitive”—to shape the timing and articulation of the transitions from one note to the next in a contrapuntal voice when those notes are in different hands than when they are in the same hand. It is very important not to let this fact lead a player into making awkward hand distribution choices. (Sometimes it can and should influence those choices when other factors are fairly evenly split). But it should be kept in mind and addressed in practicing. 

The main way to address it is to practice that voice by itself, but split between the hands with the correct, worked-out fingering. This is partly physical practice, but even more it is listening practice. It is easiest to attune the ears to the flow of the line when the line is not covered by other notes, and this will make it easier to hear and follow the line in the context of the full texture. It is always straightforward to extract the line once the fingering process has been accomplished. It can be a good exercise for a student to write out—or type out—the line by itself, add the chosen fingerings, and practice it from that. However this is probably not necessary. 

For the bulk of this practicing it is important not to change the chosen fingering—and it is crucial not to do so accidentally or at random. (It is always OK to rethink fingering consciously, if there is a reason to do so.) It is also important to listen carefully during this practice to the transition moments, where the voice crosses from one hand to the other. It is possible, especially with a line that is physically not hard to play, to play short sections of the line in one hand at this stage to listen for the continuity, and then put it back into the correct (two-hand) fingering, trying to match the one-handed effect. It is probably a good idea not to do very much of this: just once or twice through a given short section of the line being practiced. If a student finds this to be disruptive (that is, if it is hard to go back to the fingering that is really being practiced after visiting the one-hand fingering) then he or she should not do it. 

When a student has practiced a line this way and is ready to put the whole texture back together, he or she should try at first to listen only to the line that passes between the hands and to pay no attention to the voices around it. (Unfortunately, it is impossible by definition to solo out this line, since in all of the passages of the kind that we have been studying both hands and all the voices are—and have to be—on one keyboard.) This is an exercise in focusing, and of course it can’t be achieved literally. You will always hear the other notes, but you should try to focus on the line that passes between the hands, to be conscious of that line and the sonority of all of its notes.

It can be a good exercise to take any line of music—say the top line of a hymn, or one voice of a two-part Invention, or a cantabile melody from the slow movement of a Mendelssohn sonata—assign it an arbitrary fingering that shifts back and forth between the hands, and practice that fingering. (The fingering can be worked out arbitrarily, but should be written in and not changed at random.) This is not to end up playing that line that way regularly, but as training in listening to and executing the transitions from one hand to the other.

Often the issue is not that of passing a line between the hands. In non-contrapuntal music, the question of how to divide the notes between the hands (assuming, as always in this context, that the whole texture is meant to be played on one keyboard) should usually be determined as simply as possible by trying out the physical comfort, simplicity, and convenience of any of the various possibilities. In fact, very often, just remembering that it is perfectly all right to distribute the notes between the hands however they fall most easily is the most important as well as the first step. The rest follows from that. 

It is interesting that the impulse to play upper staff notes in the right hand and lower staff notes in the left hand can be pervasive. I recently took part in a conversation about the wide left-hand chord on the fourth beat of measure 8 of the Widor Toccata (Example 11). For many players, it is impossible (or nearly so) to play all four notes of this chord in the left hand, and for even more players it is at least awkward. The player who initiated the discussion absolutely could not reach those four notes. Nonetheless, the conversation revolved around such issues as which note or notes it was best to leave out, or whether there was a solution based on arpeggiation, or whether Widor’s left hand was really big enough for him to be able to play this chord easily and nonchalantly. 

It took a while for someone to notice the obvious solution, namely that the highest note of the so-called “left hand” chord is within easy reach of the notes of the upper voice, and can perfectly well be played in the right hand. Doing it this way opens up some performance issues similar to some of those discussed above. The timing and articulation of that note must be just right, as a match to the other notes of the chord. That is intuitive if all of the notes of the chord are in the same hand—and less intuitive, more challenging, if the notes are split between the hands. This is analogous to the issues involved in passing a voice back and forth between the hands. It is also important to keep the articulation of the top line going the way you want it while adding an extra note for the right-hand thumb. A player who absolutely cannot reach the entire chord can take on the task of practicing to get these things right. A player for whom the chord is possible but awkward can decide where the balance lies as to what is easiest and what will give the best results. 

Organ Method XIII

This follows directly from last month’s column. For those with little or no prior keyboard experience, I have made this method’s exercises simple, direct, and systematic. At the same time, assuming that the student can remember and build on what has come before, the student should be able to take the right approach to practicing the exercises and be able to concoct his or her own exercises to some extent. A student who is already experienced on another keyboard instrument should be able to get something important out of this section, since the feel and sound of playing in chords and multiple voices is critically different on organ from what it is on other instruments. 

Before we look at exercises designed to get each hand used to playing patterns of more than one note at a time, there are a few general points to consider.

1) The clearest physical difference between playing one note at a time in one hand and playing more than one note in a hand, is that the latter places more limits on fingering choices. If you are called upon to play five notes at once in one hand—which is rare but not unheard of—then there is little or (usually) no actual choice about fingering. In the more common situation of two or three notes at once in one hand, there are often different fingering possibilities, but not as many choices as when playing only one line in a hand.

2) Hand position, already discussed earlier in this column, can be even more important when playing multiple notes at once than when the hand is playing one line, and can also be more difficult to manage well. In particular, the role of fingering choices for raised keys—sharps and flats—in determining comfortable hand position is crucial. In some passages, the position of the notes necessitates some compromise in hand position. Part of gaining experience and comfort with playing the most complex repertoire is learning how to manage these situations well. If a hand position is not ideally comfortable, then it is important to relax the hand away from that position promptly and smoothly.

3) In a piece of music, or a passage, in which each hand is playing only one note at a time, each hand’s part is a musical line or voice or melody. When either hand has more than one note at a time, that texture can be multiple voices or it can be chords, or it can be some combination of the two. 

4) Playing two or more separate melodies or voices with one hand in a way that sounds to an attentive listener like simultaneous melodies rather than chords is mostly a matter of attentive listening by the player. Exercises designed to address that aspect of playing are essentially listening exercises.

5) In most contrapuntal pieces with more than two voices in the hands, at least one voice migrates from one hand to the other. When this is the case, it almost always means that the piece, or that part of the piece, should be played on one manual: otherwise the sonority of that voice changes at essentially arbitrary times. It is also important that choices about which notes will be played by which hand be made carefully and sensibly. (In particular, it is important not to assume that every note printed in the upper staff should be played by the right hand, and that every note printed in the lower manual staff should be played by the left hand. These will be the tendencies, but the whole texture should be divided between the ten fingers in whatever way is most comfortable and gives the best musical results.)

6) Chordal passages often present articulation issues. If a series of chords in one hand is meant to be played legato, that presents fingering challenges, often involving finger substitution—a technique that will be dealt with later. If chords in one hand are meant to be played detached, then more fingering choices are available. Any detached fingering should be practiced first with enough space between the notes that the physical motion from one chord to the next feels easy. Once the gestures have been established, the spaces between the notes can be made smaller without abrupt gestures or tension.

7) Just as it makes sense to practice hands or feet separately, it makes sense to practice individual components of the note picture within one hand separately. Sometimes it also can make sense to focus on listening to one component of the texture of the part being played by one hand over the other parts.

Examples 1 and 2 are simple exercises with which to begin playing more than one note in each hand.

I have placed these exercises in regions of the keyboard that, for most players, will permit the note patterns to feel most comfortable, with the forearm and hand aligned well. However, as with earlier exercises in this chapter, you should move them around: up or down by octaves, or by other intervals, mixing versions with few or no sharps or flats with versions that have more. 

There is an obvious fingering for these exercises. For the right hand: 3/1–4/2–3/1–4/2–5/3–4/2, repeat; and for the left hand: 3/5–2/4–3/5–2/4–1/3–2/4, repeat). However, you should also try different fingerings, for example, playing all of the two-note chords with the same pair of fingers, and simply moving the hand smoothly and gently from one chord to the next, or a mixed fingering such as (for the first exercise) 3/1–4/2–3/1–4/2–4/2–3/1 (repeat). In any case, whenever you pick up the same pair of fingers to play the next chord, make that gesture as light, relaxed, and smooth as possible. In particular, do not try to make the space between the chords particularly short: use as much space as you need to allow the gesture to be completely without tension or any feeling that you are “snapping” from one chord to the next.

Keep the tempo slow for now, and do not worry if you hear the two notes of each chord not quite sounding at exactly the same time as each other. This is important: of course in the long run you need to be able to make multiple notes in one hand sound exactly together, and also indeed to make them sound not quite together in ways that you have decided on for musical effect. However, any attempt to ensure that each finger depresses its note at exactly the same time as each other finger does —before you have developed a fair level of comfort playing note patterns of this sort—will lead to a touch that is too crisp and too focused on driving each key to the bottom. This can sometimes lead to real physical tension and, in the long run, pain. The good news is this: any tendency of multiple fingers to play notes somewhat out of kilter with one another will go away naturally and of its own accord as you continue to practice. 

If you have studied other keyboard instruments, you might be impatient with the simplicity of these first exercises. However, the touch and sound of the organ are different enough from piano, harpsichord, and clavichord that both the physical act and the listening aspect of playing more complex textures is very different indeed.

After taking a first look at these exercises and moving them around on the keyboard a bit, you should practice them in a couple of different ways that involve breaking them up. For example, play each line (upper note and lower note of each chord) separately, as shown in Example 3. (And similarly for the other parts of the exercise.)

Or stagger the upper and lower notes, as in Example 4. (And similarly for the other parts of the exercise. Don’t make this too fast: for this purpose, the rhythm doesn’t much matter.)

Note that these deconstructed versions of this two-voice chord exercise are themselves simpler than the exercises and pieces that you have already been playing. 

Try playing three-note chord patterns,  such as those in Example 5. In this case, the fingering can well be 1–3–5 (or 5–3–1), and the same for each chord. It is important to move from one chord to the next smoothly, allowing the breaks between chords to be as long as necessary to keep the motion comfortable. Are there other fingerings that are possible or, perhaps, better? Play around with it. Move these patterns around to other notes and other regions of the keyboard as you have done with other exercises.

This set of exercises can also be broken into component parts—the lower two notes, the outer notes, the upper two notes—or played staggered. You can devise ways of moving from one of these components to the full three-voice texture yourself, as in Examples 6 and 7. Make sure that you use the same fingers for the components that you want to use for those notes when they are put back into the full texture.

An exercise such as that shown in Example 8 combines some of the above:

A traditional four-part chorale harmonization, such as that of Old Hundredth (shown in Example 9), provides material for continuing to practice moving each hand from one two-voice chord to another.

For the current exercise, you should break this hymn into short sections, and into separate hands. Then work out a comfortable, sensible fingering for each section, assuming that it is acceptable to allow a breath or break between each two successive chords: that is, to play detached. Do not worry at this point about how detached the chords are, but, no matter how much space you leave between chords, keep your hands light and flexible at all times. Release notes/chords smoothly and gently, and move to the next note or chord calmly. Do not necessarily expect to put the whole hymn together or to put the hands together: that is not the point at this stage, though you may very well return to it later and learn it as a piece, probably with pedal. You can find ample material for this sort of practice in any collection of chorales or hymns. ν

Next month’s column will continue this discussion, moving on to techniques for practicing the art of playing truly independent voices together in one hand.

Hand Distribution I

In the last few months, several of my students have simultaneously wanted to zero in intensely on the question of how to decide which hand should play which notes of a passage, when there is any choice. I have been known to rely on a general comment, “if it’s unclear, try out different things, and go with what is most comfortable.” It is possible that I have over-relied on this level of generality; however, there is nothing wrong with this casual approach. It is the essence of what one should do in the end. Furthermore, just leaving it at that with a student could encourage that student to develop autonomy, to think for him- or herself. 

But there are also many more specific and analytical things to say about how notes might best fall between the two hands. (In the series of columns from a few years ago that I headed “Working”—in which I examined the process of learning two particular pieces—I touched on this a little bit. Those brief discussions were tied to the specifics of certain passages, and not as theoretical or general as what I want to do here.) One of the purposes of this kind of analysis should be to widen the range of possibilities that students can see, to move the student farther from making limiting assumptions about what the choices are likely to be.

In this column and the next, I will analyze in detail my thinking about this. This analysis may seem too detailed: sort of fussy, or making too much out of something that could in fact be done efficiently through trial and error. Some students will happily take to going over these issues with this sort of fine-toothed comb—finding it interesting in the manner of a puzzle or detective story. Others will not, but will probably still learn something from doing some of it. Probably no one will go on analyzing these situations exactly like this permanently: it is a stage in learning to think about it and to develop intuition for it.

It is inadvisable to create a fingering for a passage without first deciding or knowing which hand will play which notes. However, perhaps because we talk so much about “fingering” as a crucial step—the crucial step?—in preparing a piece, students naturally want to plunge in to the actual fingering process as soon as possible. This may be one reason that students (and many players who are not students) often give more weight than is appropriate to the assumption that the upper staff is “the right-hand part” and the lower staff is “the left-hand part.” It seems to give a ready-made answer to the question of hand distribution. It would be willfully silly not to notice that there is a correlation: higher notes are more likely to be within the reach of the right hand, lower notes within the reach of the left hand. However, I think that it serves the player well to try to separate that simple logistic fact from the typography. The first principle of hand distribution, for me, should be:

Try not to think of the two manual staves as representing the two hands. Instead think of the combined staff—ten lines, eight normal spaces, one larger space in the middle, ledger lines, and so on—as representing music for your ten fingers to play in the best way possible.

Of course this—and all of what I am going to be discussing here—does not apply to music that is expressly written for two manuals.

This is just a change of attitude, but it makes a difference. Part of the difference it makes, if you really internalize it, is that there is no longer a “burden of proof” assigned to the notion of playing notes with the “other” hand. The sort of question that goes something like this—“Is it OK to play that note with the other hand?” or “Would it be all right to take that note over with the right hand?”—simply goes away. This saves time, for one thing. I have known performers to debate with themselves and take a long time to believe that it is (morally, ethically, or practically) acceptable to “switch” some note or notes to the “other” hand, when that is clearly the natural way to do it, and when the composer’s original way of writing out the music very likely didn’t have the notes divided the same way between the staves anyway! 

Analysis for hand distribution

In order to determine how to distribute the notes between the hands, there is a sort of protocol that you can follow—a series of observations to make about the passage that will help you discover  the most comfortable hand distribution for you. The way I am going to present it here is too cut-and-dried, really: in practice, all of these interact with one another and sometimes with other considerations. But these questions are a good starting place:

1) Is the manual part in (only) two voices? If so, then there should be a strong assumption that each hand will play one of those voices. This is the simplest case. It is almost not worth talking about, except that it brings us to the second great principle of hand distribution: when it is possible, ask your hands to share the work pretty much evenly. Students should be reminded not to play two voices in one hand while the other hand does nothing—at least not to do that reflexively, just because both voices are in one staff (as they might often be) or are both high or both low. Once in a while, two voices should be combined in one hand for the most practical of reasons: to free a hand up to turn a page or to manipulate stop knobs or something like that. This should only be done if the loss of ease in playing is very small. 

2) If the passage is in three voices, then realistically the issue becomes “which hand will play the middle voice?” Again, this is a better way to ask the question than “where can one hand take over the middle-voice notes that seem to belong to the other hand?” This is probably the kind of texture in which these issues actually come up the most. The questions to ask in figuring out how to distribute the notes of a middle voice between the hands are:

i) To which outer voice are these notes closer?

ii) Is one outer voice more active, busier, or just plain harder than the other? If so, then can the inner voice be grouped with the less difficult outer voice?

iii) Is the middle voice more intricate than either of the outer voices? If so, then    what can be done to make it as simple as it can be: can it be split between the    hands, for example, or grouped with the simpler of the two outer voices?

iv) Are there ornaments—especially trills—in any voice, and does it make sense to isolate ornaments into their own hand, if possible?

v) Sometimes the need to prepare a good fingering for a repeated note suggests a way to proceed.

vi) Is there anything about hand position, independent of all of the above, that suggests that the middle voice notes can be played more comfortably with one hand than the other? This often comes about because of something to do with sharps or flats. Perhaps one hand would be forced to play a raised key with an awkward finger if also called upon to play the inner voice, while the other would not run into any such trouble.

Example 1 shows the Alla Breve section of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D Major, BWV 532, beginning on the last beat of m. 16 of the piece. It provides all sorts of material for thinking about hand distribution in three-voice manual textures. The rest of this column will be taken up with a detailed analysis of parts of this section. (For simplicity, from here on I will provide examples with only the manual staves, since we are only looking at the manual writing, though there is pedal almost throughout.) In this entire 80-measure section, there is no spot at which the right hand actually cannot play both the upper voice and the middle voice—though in many spots doing it that way would create awkward fingerings and articulations that would probably not make either the player or the listeners happy; the left hand can reach both the lower and the middle voices for all but an occasional measure or half measure. Therefore this is a good passage to think about what is best, not what is necessary or inevitable.

The middle-voice f#′ on the last beat of measure 16 can be taken very easily with either hand. It is almost equidistant from the upper and lower notes, and there is nothing in particular going on: on that beat, no voice is, or is about to become, busy or intricate. So, is there a way to make the choice, other than at random? (“At random” is fine when there is no reason to prefer one over the other: this is often the case. The point is to recognize when it is not the case.) The thing that I notice about this beginning is that there are several repeated notes coming up. I would prefer to finger them with different fingers for each repetition. Of course, different hands implies different fingers, so right away it seems as though there might be some good to be derived from moving the middle voice back and forth between the hands a bit. So, if we take that f#′ with the right hand, then the left hand is free to finger the repeated d′ in the lowest voice in whatever way seems best, and then the left hand can play the repetition of the f#′. Example 2 shows one specific version fingering modeled on that idea.

And there could be others. A player who does not want to change fingers on the repeated notes, might use fingerings shown in Examples 3 and 4, or something else.

At each point over the next few measures, we see one voice being more active than the others, as shown in Example 5.

In the first half of measure 18, it is clear that the middle voice should be taken in the left hand, both because that way the more active voice is left alone in one hand (point ii above), and because the notes of the middle voice are closer to those of the lower voice (point i above). In the second half of measure 18, the situation is more complicated, since the voice that is more active than the others is the middle voice itself. The three last eighth-notes in the middle voice, c#′′–b′–a′, can be reached by either hand. Does it matter which hand plays them? The c#′′ is closer to the upper voice, and the other two notes are closer to the lower. That might suggest splitting that line that way. However, the upper voice is in itself simpler than the lower voice through that part of the measure, which would suggest just playing the eighth-notes of the middle voice in the right hand. Here personal habit or something about the shape of the player’s own hand might determine the choice: therefore it is a place to try it a number of ways and see what works.

However, that might be influenced by what is coming up. The first few notes in the middle voice of measure 19 can also be reached by either hand. However, here the choices might make more of a difference to the musical effect than in the previous measure. The second eighth-note of the measure must first  sound like it slips in and takes over the position of the e′ that is being held: that is, in such a way that it doesn’t sound like that note is being repeated in the same voice, even though as a key on the keyboard it is in fact being repeated. (This notion comes up again very soon.) Then it has to be held over into the a′ half-note, just long enough to suggest that the lower voice is still there. Furthermore, the a′ half-note itself begins a new pattern (that is, through the lens that we are using here). It begins a long passage in which the upper voice is clearly more active than the lower two voices, and should therefore be left alone in the right hand if at all possible. It is possible: beginning on that second beat of measure 19, the two lower voices fit comfortably in the left hand for the rest of this excerpt. 

So if that a′ should be in the left hand, then so should the e′ that precedes it in the middle voice. (Otherwise there would be an unnecessary and awkward hand crossing.) If the three e′s in a row will be played in the left hand, then that hand needs all the flexibility it can get, in order to come up with a fingering that creates the right flow: in particular, this is a case where changing fingers on that note is a tremendous aid in creating the non-repeated note repetition that I described above. The left hand is the most free to finger those e′s if the right hand plays the g#′. That should then also be taken into account in planning the approach from the previous measure to the g# on the first beat of this measure. 

To be continued . . . ν

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] and his website is www.gavinblack-baroque.com.