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Legato Study

This document discusses techniques for achieving a smooth, legato style of piano playing. It explores how Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt approached legato playing and provides specific instructions from these composers regarding finger placement, touch, phrasing, and matching a note's decay.

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96 views2 pages

Legato Study

This document discusses techniques for achieving a smooth, legato style of piano playing. It explores how Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt approached legato playing and provides specific instructions from these composers regarding finger placement, touch, phrasing, and matching a note's decay.

Uploaded by

IraZheng
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MAKE THE PIANO SING BEETHOVEN, CHOPIN, & LISZT TEACH LEGATO

In Italian, legato literally means “tied” or “bound.” In music, legato is a term that instructs us to
play in a smooth, connected style with no audible breaks between notes. In this way, legato is a kind
of articulation, often contrasted with staccato (“detached”) articulation.

Standard notation for legato playing is either the word legato or a slur over the notes that the
composer wishes to be played legato. As pianists, we have to work especially hard to play in a
legato style. String, wind, and brass players can vary the dynamic level of a single pitch by
modifying bow pressure and airflow.

Consequently, they can use dynamic variation to give a sense of direction to every note they play,
which helps them create connected musical phrases. When we depress a key at the piano, however,
the resulting sound immediately fades. Even when we depress the sustain pedal, the sound will
eventually die. As a result, we have to find creative ways of achieving a legato sound. Luckily for
us, dynamic variation is only one way – this PDF explores how Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt
approached legato playing as performers and pedagogues.

TOUCH & FINGER PLACEMENT


To achieve a smooth, legato sound, let’s first consider our touch – how our fingers connect with the
keys.
While we use our fingertips (near the nails) to produce an effective staccato sound, we can use our
finger pads to achieve a successful legato sound.

Auguste Boissier, the mother of one of Liszt’s students, recalled that the composer-pianist
encouraged her daughter to practice legato playing with the “palm” of the finger, because its
softness and resilience helped to give her tone a “lovely mellowness.

TOUCH & FINGER PLACEMENT


Beethoven instructed his students to achieve a legato sound by playing close to the keys, namely, by
placing the hands over the keyboard “…in such a position that the fingers need not be raised more
than is necessary. This is the only method by which the player can learn…to make the instrument
sing.”

"THIS IS THE ONLY METHOD BY WHICH THE PLAYER CAN LEARN TO MAKE THE
INSTRUMENT SING." - BEETHOVEN

MAKE THE PIANO SING!


Notice that Beethoven encouraged his students to make the piano "sing."
Legato playing is often compared to cantabile (singable) playing, and we can enhance our legato by
imagining ourselves as singers.

Beethoven viewed the notes within a musical phrase as a series of stressed and unstressed syllables,
occasionally even adding words to a particular melody and singing it.
Imagining ourselves as singers helps us to achieve connected, natural phrasing.

To Chopin, unnatural phrasing sounded “…as if someone were reciting, in a language not
understood by the speaker, a speech carefully learned by rote in the course of which the speaker not
only neglected the natural quantity of the syllables, but even stopped in the middle of words.”
Directionless and riddled with musical hiccups, unnatural phrasing undermines legato playing and –
needless to say! – should be avoided.
MATCH THE PIANO'S DECAY
To play in a legato style, we need to listen carefully to each note’s decay.
In other words, the dynamic level at which a note ends should determine the dynamic level of the
note we play next.

If we don’t match these dynamic levels, we unintentionally accent each note we play, and our
phrases sound disconnected as a result. Ultimately, the longer a note lasts, the more it decays. When
we play slow music, we often find ourselves holding notes for quite some time. Consequently, we
must pay especially close attention to the decay of our notes when performing in more leisurely
tempos.

FINGER PEDALING
One technique that we may use to play in a legato style is finger pedaling.
While the sustain pedal certainly allows us to connect notes that would otherwise be impossible or
very difficult to play legato, our fingers can create a similar sustained effect on their own.

Clementi advises pianists to “…keep down the first key till the next has been struck…” This is
perhaps the most fundamental step towards achieving a legato style. To finger pedal, we take this
idea further, only releasing the first key after we hear a brief overlap with the next. The resulting
subtle blur in sound enhances the connectedness of our musical phrases.

FINGER PEDALING

One technique that we may use to play in a legato style is finger pedaling. Beethoven knew this: in
his annotated edition of Cramer’s études, he includes directions for finger pedaling sixteenthnote
sequences: “To obtain the strictest legato, the finger must not be lifted off the first note of each
group until the fourth note is to be struck.”

CONCLUSION
Clementi notes that many passages in Beethoven’s work require a legato touch even when the
composer did not indicate this articulation with the conventional slur. This, however, he believes “a
cultivated taste will instinctively perceive.”

As we develop our own musical tastes and grow as pianists, we learn that legato playing is often the
default. Clementi echoes this sentiment: “When the composer leaves the staccato and legato to the
performer’s taste the best rule is to adhere chiefly to the legato, reserving the staccato to give spirit
occasionally to certain passages, and to set off the higher beauty of the legato.”
While we have to master all kinds of articulations as pianists, we are already well on our way to
success if we begin by practicing our legato!

"...GIVE SPIRIT TO CERTAIN PASSAGES AND SET OFF THE HIGHER BEATUY OF THE
LEGATO." - CLEMENTI

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