Hearing voices?: Addressing the subject of balancing voices in pianistic textures - piano teaching

American Music Teacher, April-May, 2002 by Thomas Lanners

How might piano teachers guide students in developing skills associated with voicing? From a technical standpoint, there are many effective ways to bring out certain notes while subduing others. The following are a few ideas proven effective in my own experience. When playing a solid chord, one must be able to channel the arm's weight down from the shoulder through a relatively relaxed hand and into one chosen finger at a time. If the hand is too rigid, all pitches will be equal in volume. By the same token, if the finger's first joint (closest to the nail) buckles under the arm's weight, or if the pianist's bridge (the arch underneath the hand that structurally supports it when playing) is not strong and flexible, efforts to differentiate voices again will be undermined. Directly aligning one's wrist behind the finger playing the note to be brought out is helpful because it focuses the arm's weight on the proper fingertip. When done correctly, one should feel pressure on one fingertip, while the others remain relaxed. To give an effective tactile demonstration of this, simply "play" a few chords on a student's forearm, "bringing out" different pitches each time. He or she immediately will sense which of your fingers would create the fullest tone at the keyboard.

In addition to this technical advice, many effective pedagogical approaches may be employed. A simple exercise for chordal voicing is to play all notes of a five-finger pattern at once, bringing out one note at a time. Students who have mastered this exercise may make it more challenging by emphasizing the notes of familiar tunes whose pitches fall within the five-note pattern, while still playing all five notes simultaneously, of course. This exercise may be played hands alone at first and later with hands together. One also can practice chordal voicing by playing the pitch to be emphasized in a given chord alone and at a higher volume level than the remaining notes of the chord, which are played softly a moment later. After several successful repetitions, the louder note may be played ever closer in time to the others, eventually approximating a grace note. At this point, sensations felt by the fingers, hand and arm when playing pitches of differing dynamic levels will be memorized, and the student is ready to play the chord's tones simultaneously, listening closely and retaining the tactile sensations now ingrained.

Perhaps the simplest voicing task students encounter involves playing a single line in one hand (usually the right, since it commonly carries the bulk of melodic material) louder than a single line in the other, as would be appropriate in the excerpt, shown in Figure 1, from the second movement of Franz Joseph Haydn's Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI:23; L. 38. To accomplish this, encourage students to imagine one arm is extremely heavy, with gravity exerting great force upon it, while the other is light as a feather. Use of such imagery can produce immediate, audible results. This may be practiced away from the piano by having the student hold a crayon in each hand, drawing parallel vertical lines simultaneously down a sheet of paper, alternately making one line darker than the other. Eventually these skills may be polished by practicing scales, arpeggios and the like hands together, with one hand at a higher dynamic level.