1-6-8 Goken-cho, Mito-shi, Ibaraki-ken, 310-0063 Japan
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webstaff@arttowermito.or.jp / Phone: (029)227-8111
Takahiro Sonoda
Mini-lecture #7: How to Use the Pedal
Open Seminar for Piano Jan. 15, 2000 (Sat.)
Good evening. Today I'm supposed to talk to you about pedaling.
However, everyone has a different way of pedaling, depending on the piece,
and there's really no way to master it except by trying it out for yourself.
It's absolutely not something that you can understand just by listening to someone else,
like you are today.
In most normal situations, the pedal is pressed to sustain the sound.
The reason for that is that the damper (which presses against the piano strings) is lifted,
letting the sound reverberate. (Plays a chord on the piano.)
If you play just the sounds, these are the only three that are heard,
but the reason the whole piano reverberates is because of harmonics.
For example, (plays a low C, and holding down that key, plays several other sounds in succession) all of these sounds should be ringing as well.
A long time ago, when I lived in Germany, I used to own a dog.
It was a Dalmatian the kind with the black spots sprinkled all over a background of white fur.
It seemed to enjoy napping under the grand piano that I had.
When I started to play the piano -- it would of course be loud,
waking the dog -- the dog would strangely begin howling along with the piano.
Dogs have extremely sensitive ears, and are able to hear sounds above 20,000Hz.
Apparently they are able to hear all of the harmonics that are being made.
It was so noisy that the dog would start to whimper.
Before long, it would slink out.
What that means is that just by making one sound,
there are a lot of harmonics (in successive layers) that can be heard above it.
Human ears are not so sensitive, and cannot hear everything.
Listen to this (silently holds down the top C, while hitting the bottom C).
You can hear that, can't you? If you hold down the upper key that corresponds to the harmonic,
without actually making it sound, and then hit the lower note, it will resonate. Now, by using the pedal, all the harmonics are made to sound richer. Therefore, using the pedal just to sustain the sound is a completely rudimentary thing what I mean to say is that the pedal is used for tone color or timbre.
You probably think that people ordinarily just press the pedal to sustain the sound. In fact, though, it can also be used to cut off the sound to cut it off completely. Humans talk easily about stopping sounds completely, but it's really quite difficult to accomplish that on the piano. So that's why the pedal is used for cutting off the sound as well.
In addition, I mentioned how it was easy to press the pedal,
but actually there are different ways to do it:
there's a kind of pedaling for forte, another for piano,
another for mezzo forte, pianissimo, and so on.
In other words, there are various intensities of pedaling.
That is something that you all simply cannot understand just by sitting here and listening to me.
You can talk about it, but only those people who have actually done it can understand it.
Breaking down the different kinds of pedaling, there are forte,
piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, pianissimo, fortissimo around six altogether.
Each uses a different style of pedaling.
Also, since the pedal is a spring,
I think you can understand there are huge differences between pedaling lightly and pedaling hard.
The same thing happens as you lift the pedal.
The clumsiest way to lift the pedal is all at once, making the sound stop suddenly.
Try lifting it smoothly I often explain that is something like letting a door creak open slowly.
And I often tell people to lift it this way at the end of the chord.
There are a lot of ways to press and lift the piano pedal:
both pressing and lifting it strongly,
or else like this increasing the strength gradually, and then gradually lifting it.
Another way to use the pedal is for emphasizing the beat as well as the beginning of the phrase.
It's also used for the purpose of articulation, that is,
using the pedal as a way to link musical phrases together.
There's another way of pedaling that emphasizes sforzando,
which is sort of a bang.
And then there's a way of fluttering the pedal slightly in a vibrating sort of way (Japanese are bad at this).
There are a whole lot of ways to use the pedal.
Now this is a story that I heard about Franz Liszt.
He used to invite pianists from all over Europe to get together at places like Weimar,
Rome, or Budapest, and gave them lessons.
One pianist that once went to hear Liszt heard heard him explaining about the "23rd way" of using the pedal.
That means that there were 22 other ways that he had explained before that.
And he continued explaining more techniques after the 23rd one as well.
If I counted the number of different pedaling techniques that I know myself,
it doesn't quite amount to that much, maybe just half.
But if I tried to explain each of them to you,
demonstrating them by playing actual pieces,
I could probably design an entire lecture on it.
But just because you happened to attend such a lecture,
or steal a glimpse of it, that would hardly make you any better as a pianist.
It would just give you some hints.
Also, talking about the effectiveness or utility of harmonics,
if you just make one sound a low note like this you can hear all these other sounds,
can't you? Well, if you don't hit a low note but rather a key in the middle of the keyboard,
while holding down the pedal, you can make its harmonics sound,
including the ones below it. Although it's hard for the human ear to hear,
that changes the tone color or timbre of the whole sound.
Moreover -- and this is hard to hear striking single notes --
the sound of a chord changes completely depending on how you make it stand out:
playing all the component sounds of a chord equally strongly,
or playing one of the keys (top, middle or bottom) stronger than the others.
That's why pedaling is such a difficult thing.
As regards where exactly to start and end pedaling,
it's hard to inscribe it using symbols, so such things aren't found in scores.
Although even Beethoven wrote that the pedal should be kept down all through a certain spot,
he never mentioned anything like a company secret that I talked about just now.
As for French scores, composers such as Debussy never included pedal markings.
The sense seems to be, "Oh, do what you feel is right if you can't,
then you're not a musician," or just "Go ahead, do what you want."
But this is not really something that you can just leave up to chance everyone studies really hard how to use the pedal the best.
In Japan, it's also the same way. However, all of you seem to be waiting intently for me to give you some helpful advice.
Well, pedaling is something that is quite hard to master.
I guess you just have to try actually performing Mozart,
Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Debussy, and so on,
learning how to handle the differences, and mastering it that way.
Copyright ©2001 Mito Arts Foundation. All Rights Reserved. Created by TK.
Mail to: webstaff@arttowermito.or.jp
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