On 13 Feb 2007 at 11:48, John Howell wrote: > How can a piano part "resist" a key? I can see a pianist without > chops getting upset, but those guys like Chopin and Debussy seemed to > like keys with lots of black keys! I've been told (not a pianist > myself) that C major is the most awkward key for a pianist, given that > our fingers are all different lengths.
Gb and Db are very good keys for the pianist because of the bi-level construction of the hand (the thumb on the white keys at one level, the fingers on the black keys at the other level). They are just hard for many people to read. What is problematic is when a piece written in the black keys is transposed to the white keys -- then it can be almost impossible to play if the content extensively exploited the technical advantages of the original key context. This was exactly what I was alluding to in my comment about Brahms's "Botschaft". -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
