Chopin’s First Set Of Piano Studies, Opus 10

How, you may well ask, and more to the point why, would someone in their sixties, who hasn’t played the piano seriously since he was 18, set about learning some of the most difficult pieces in the piano repertoire?

The short answer: because there are things I want to prove to myself. It will be a challenge, but I believe an interesting and edifying one, even if – perhaps even more so if – it hits the rocks at some point.

That is why I’ve decided to write this accompanying journal. I hope people with more knowledge and experience than me will chip in with comments, encouragement, advice and correction. I intend to practice, and post honestly, every day. (Everything starts with an intention.) Some videos as well.

Day 7 – Time to think

Practice is going OK, and I’m seeing results, but I am beginning to mull some questions over:

Warm-Up?

Scales, arpeggios etc.? I’m not doing any.

Should I be?

So far I’ve been content to assume that the studies themselves, by their nature, will be sufficient.

One size fits all?

The studies are all very different, and I am starting to think that applying the same practice approach to them all, even though it is the easiest way from the point of view of self-discipline, may not be the most efficient path from A to B. I’m trying to learn these pieces well, not just adequately. So I need to find the best way of using the practice time.

The best answer I can think of is to have a notebook, and fill it in as I think a good teacher would. I will implement that right away.

Impatience

That little devil keeps popping his head up. I must remember that I’ve only been going a week, and things are going well. The best advice I can give myself is to keep things as they are for a period of, say, 4 weeks – which was the gap, incidentally, between my lessons when I reached the more advanced stages when I was young – and have a proper review of what’s working and what’s not.

It’s too early to be making changes.

Day 6 – Things are beginning to happen

Yesterday’s mini-revelation was that I have to get over my reliance on the score. I have to make a conscious effort to commit the notes and fingering to memory. So in today’s practice session some time was spent writing out the repeated fingerings.

It was a good decision. The score is now filling up with this kind of thing:

(From study number 5)

I shall try to be neater in future.

Now it’s easier to ‘set’ the fingering, and commit it to memory. I’m not looking at the page so much. I know writing out all the fingering is overkill for some pianists. Lucky them.

It’s studies 4-6 day today. The first tricky bar in number 4 is:

There’s nothing especially difficult in itself, just a few things going on at the same time. Stretches (for me, anyway) in both hands, and the spreads in the left hand of a kind I’ve always hated. I tend to bounce off the final note with a misplaced sense of achievement, and my hand moving in exactly the wrong direction for what comes next. Slow, hands together, until it’s committed to memory, then repeat, speeding up gradually until it starts to feel uncomfortable, and stop. Akin to weight training in the gym: some discomfort is what extends ones ability; persisting with discomfort is silly and disheartening.

Let’s see if that approach works.

Day 5 – Overcoming A Hazard

As a youngster I was very good at playing at sight. That’s fun, and essential for anyone who wants to make it on my second instrument, the organ. It also earned Teenage Me a stream of hard cash and some interesting gigs, from weddings and funerals to accompanying musical theatre productions, to playing in a band.

But when it comes to learning difficult music – I knew then and I’ve been reminded now – it means extra demands on ones self-discipline and patience.

Because it’s too easy, with the score in front of you, always to be reading the notes, rather than committing them to memory so that you can focus on the musical and physical aspects. (And it’s too easy to kid your teacher that you practised more than you really did.)

It’s especially true of fingering. The golden rule, which I never really kept to, is that you choose a fingering near the beginning of the process, and stick to it. (Unless you’re a genius like Krystian Zimerman, who learns 3 different fingerings – note, learns – for everything.) You simply can’t be in the music, and the notes can’t be in your muscle memory, if you are making real-time decisions, however instinctive, about which finger to use.

The late Sviatoslav Richter, one of the greatest pianists of all time, is well known for playing with the score in front of him, but there’s a story behind that. Namely that he lost his way once when playing from memory, and that caused him ongoing anxiety that was allayed by having the pages there. It’s not that he didn’t know the piece inside out. He did.

So a lot of marking up of scores will be going on this week. And I’ll be making a conscious effort not to look at the page so often.

Day 4 – Progress

Four days in, and I am encouraged. I’m recovering some of my old confidence, and I’m rediscovering a more relaxed physical relationship with the instrument. Although I haven’t been especially been playing more notes, or faster, on day four than on day one, the notes I am playing are being played noticeably more accurately, more consistently and more musically.

I know where my particular challenges are, and I can focus on them. Unexpectedly it is Study 3, which is all about achieving a really good legato, that I am finding most difficult, and I am conscious that my hands really aren’t built for it, and there’s one stretch that I can’t physically manage. But – again – though tricky for me, the study becomes more comfortable with each practice.

So far, all is going as I hoped it would. The key is going to be my patience – resisting the temptation to run before I can walk.

Day 4 – Practice

This is my fourth day of practice, and I have been considering what the regime should be. I am ready to try various things, but what I’ve settled on so far is:

  • 45 minutes a day. This is what I can commit to, with confidence that I will rarely miss.
  • 1st 6 studies for now. This gives me a chance to feel the progress I am making. All 12 would be too much. I will alternate groups of 3, beginning with 1-3 and 4-6 on alternate days. In this way, each study gets a day’s rest between practices. I remember, and now have confirmed, the miracle of subconscious practice. This gives me a 15-minute block of time on each study. At the moment my approach is to spend the first half on the passages that I find most difficult, then to play a whole page at a time at a speed at which I can make no mistakes.
  • Metronome. I will use a metronome, mainly to stop me speeding up too early, which I can remember as my worst practice habit.
  • Fingering. I shall need to settle on a fingering and annotate the score, otherwise -I’ve already seen – I will not be consistent, and thought processes to do with execution will eventually interfere with musical intention.
  • Strictness. I will not allow my practice, in total, or for work on individual studies, to run on beyond the allotted time. If I decide later that it would be a benefit to practise more, or less, I will change the allotted times.

Day 3 – Equipment

Piano: A once-beautiful Bluthner upright, short keyboard, built in 1917. So it’s been through the wars, literally and metaphorically, and given several removal people a hard time, weighing in at about 40 stone. The action is a little sensitive, and it tends to boom in the middle register if you’re not careful, but still has a nice tone. In dire need of maintenance, which hopefully Covid precautions will soon allow.

Hands: Fairly small, and – I’m still angry that no one spotted this when I was younger – with unusually immobile and short thumbs. Only the top joint, nearest the nail, has any significant movement. So the elbow-waving that irritated my teachers so much was not me failing to try hard enough. A skiing accident that dislocated the top joint on my right hand, that further restricted movement, didn’t help either. One of the interesting challenges of the project will be dealing with these restrictions. I know that many great pianists have overcome much worse; Alicia De Larrocha for example had both small hands and short arms, and was one of the finest pianists of the twentieth century.

Brain: Once very good, still adequate to the task, but I’m already aware that some of the études have the technical equivalent of tongue-twisters that will require more very slow practice, and therefore more patience, than they might have done twenty years ago. That’s fine, I knew that patience would be key.

Day 2 – Discipline

I am going to need plenty, and it has never been my strong point. So I need a plan, above all one I can stick to. I have seen enough, and paid enough attention in my day job writing software, to know that the only way to attack a huge task is to break it down into smaller chunks. So, initially, I will only look at the first 6 of the 12 studies. And see how it goes.

How much will I be able to practise? It would be silly to commit myself to too much, until I know it’s working. I know, I was taught, I’ve read, and I’ve worked out for myself, that the key to progress on a musical instrument is not the raw amount of practice you do, but the intelligence you apply to the activity of practising; good musicians are musicians who are good at practising, but that’s not the same as practising a lot. That is a relief – I’m no masochist.

So, my first aim is to work out the smart way to practise. If every time I practise I improve, then it’s only a matter of time.

Day 1 – My Background

This isn’t a standing start. I began learning the piano at 8, and had made good progress by the time I decided to focus my undergraduate studies on mathematics. (The right decision? I’m increasingly doubtful – the subject of a different, as yet unwritten, blog.) I had been on the way to a teaching diploma (LRAM), though I didn’t get as far as the exam.

So the Op. 10 Études aren’t new to me. I had begun to study them, albeit only a couple, but enough to show that – then, anyway – I had it in me. That’s one reason I am hopeful that the present project may not be a fool’s errand.

And I know that the discipline and patience required to practise these pieces is something that the 18-year-old me possessed in zero measure. Study – to use the term loosely – at a British university in the late ’70s was about a lot of things, but not those. One edge this me has on that me is the comparative lack of distraction.

I have plenty of time – I hope – and no deadline.