Parncutt and Goebl (2022) Piano

The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance, Volume 2
Gary E. McPherson (ed.)
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190058869.001.0001
Published: 2022 Online ISBN: 9780190058890 Print ISBN: 9780190058869
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CHAPTER
17 Piano 
Richard Parncutt, Werner Goebl
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190058869.013.18 Pages 355–C17.P172

Published: 18 March 2022
Abstract
Based on research on the acoustics and perception of piano timbre, the physics and physiology of the
keystroke, and the psychology of piano ngering, the chapter explains how that timbre of an isolated
tone cannot be varied independently of its loudness but depends on nger-key, key-keybed, hammer-
key sounds, and the use of both pedals. The timbre of a chord further depends on the balance and onset
timing of its tones, whereby louder tones tend to sound earlier (melody lead, velocity artifact). Both
the sustaining pedal and una corda can enhance sostenuto. Leap trajectories are curved and
asymmetrical. Optimal ngering is determined by physical, anatomic, motor, and cognitive
constraints interacting with interpretive considerations, and it depends on expertise. The spectrum of
a piano tone is stretched relative to a harmonic series, which also stretches intervals relative to equal
temperament—more so for outer registers and smaller pianos. Keyboard feel and timbre depend on
mechanism regulation and hammer voicing.
Keywords: piano, physiology, keystroke, hammer-key, optimal fingering, piano performance, timbre
Subject: Applied Music, Music
Series: Oxford Handbooks
Introduction
SCIENTIFIC thinking, methods, and results have in uenced piano performance and piano teaching for well
over a century, and many piano-pedagogical publications have claimed scienti c validity. But modern piano
students are often unaware of the basic ndings. On the one hand, artistic writers—often great pianists and
piano teachers—fashioned complex pseudoscienti c theories to match their beliefs; some of them are now
regarded as controversial and unreliable. On the other hand, scienti c writers focused on simple hypotheses
and assumptions that are easy to demonstrate and explain but of limited interest to musicians.
Ortmann (1929/1981) successfully challenged in uential but unfounded assumptions on touch and
relaxation. Like him, we begin with observations that can be demonstrated scienti cally and move gradually
toward more complex ideas that are more likely to be of interest to modern pianists and piano teachers. We
attempt a fresh approach by combining old and new acoustical and psychological thinking and drawing
upon our own performing and teaching experience.
Physics and Physiology of the Keystroke
Curved versus straight fingers
The motor independence required to perform the complex sequences of nger movements that are typical
of piano performance can only be acquired over many years of concentrated practice. Pianists must control
not only the order and precise timing of keystrokes but also their force and the resultant key velocity
(Parlitz, Peschel, & Altenmüller, 1998).
p. 356 The force required to depress a key in the middle register varies by a factor of 100: to hold down the key
requires about 0.5 newton (equivalent to 50 grams), and to play fortissimo requires about 50 newtons (5
kilograms) (Askenfelt & Jansson, 1991). One way to accommodate this wide range is to vary the curvature of
the ngers (Ortmann, 1937).
Loud, scale-like passages are often better played with curved ngers. First, this allows force to be applied
vertically and so most e ciently (Ortmann, 1937; Goebl & Palmer, 2013). Second, this reduces the distance
between the ngertip and the knuckle, increasing the available force at the ngertip for a given muscle force
(lever principle).
Straight ngers are often preferred in softer, slower, single-line melodies, where the eshy pads of atter
ngers allow a bigger skin area to touch the surface of the key, appropriate for cantabile. Extended ngers
can also move through a larger horizontal arc than curved ngers and are appropriate when big stretches
are required at a low to moderate dynamic level.
Fingers or arms?
As a rule, all moving joints in the arms and ngers are involved to some extent in all piano playing; to try to
prevent one joint from moving would cause unnecessary tension. Beyond that, basic physics predicts that
small, lightweight limbs (e.g., the ngers) are suited for fast and/or quiet playing, while larger, heavier
limbs (the upper and lower arm) are best for slow, loud playing (Ortmann, 1929/1981; Furuya & Altenmüller,
2013). According to this principle, movements of the hand (from the wrist) and forearm (from the elbow)
are suitable for intermediate tempi and dynamic levels and for combinations like fast and loud (e.g., Liszt’s
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, with its right-hand presto octaves and left-hand chord leaps, all marked sempre
forte). Similarly, scales in fast, lightweight octaves are best played from the wrist, moderately fast and loud
octaves from the elbow, and loud, bravura octaves from the shoulder (Kay et al., 2003, Furuya et al., 2010).
The underlying physical principle is Newton’s second law of motion—force equals mass times acceleration
(cf. Schultz, 1949). Greater masses require more force to accelerate them and exert more force when they
decelerate (inertia). Thus, the ngers can move back and forth more quickly, but the arms can exert more
force (Furuya & Altenmüller, 2013). This principle is mirrored in the historical evolution of keyboard
technique (Gerig, 1974; Kochevitsky, 1967). In keyboard music of the eighteenth century, the ngertips did
most of the work and the arms were held to the sides. In the nineteenth century, a heavier keyboard action,
larger concert halls and orchestras, the new mass public, the emergence of the solo recital, and more
elaborate writing for the keyboard made wrists and forearms more important (Kalkbrenner, Leschetizky, cf.
Gerig, 1974). This led to Deppe’s (1885) and Breithaupt’s (1905) concept of arm weight and Matthay’s (1903)
emphasis on relaxation. Their basic idea was to relax the arm in free fall, then introduce minimal muscle
tension to control the movement.
p. 357 A similar pathway is still traveled by most pianists during their development from beginners to
professionals. But advanced technical concepts such as arm weight can also be introduced quite early. For
example, György Kurtág’s Játékok, a collection of children’s pieces elaborated into a system of piano tuition
by Kase (2001), introduces larger-scale bodily movements from the start, delaying focused nger
movements until later.
Leap trajectories
Performers of pieces such as Brahms’s Paganini Variations and Second Piano Concerto are often confronted
with high-speed leaps across the keyboard. Ortmann (1929/1981) observed that the optimal trajectory for a
leap is not only curved but also skewed (asymmetrical): it departs close to horizontal and lands somewhere
between horizontal and vertical. This minimizes the chance of missing the target and allows the force on the
target key to be applied almost vertically.
During a leap, the hand and arm must accelerate from stationary to a maximum velocity and decelerate
again before reaching the target. Since acceleration is a vector (with both magnitude and direction), leap
trajectories cannot include sharp corners, which would require short bursts of high acceleration (Ortmann,
1929/1981). For similar reasons, it is widely held that rounded or curved movements are preferable in all
areas of piano technique. Neuhaus (1973) pointed out that the shortest distance between two points is not a
straight line but a curve.
While performing, pianists may be unaware of leap trajectories. The process seems highly automatic and
intuitive, with the attention focusing aurally and visually on the target, not the trajectory, and relying on a
combined tactile-auditory-visual memory of the keyboard (this is called “external focus” by Wulf &
Mornell, 2008). If unnecessary tension is avoided, an appropriately curved and skewed trajectory results
automatically. The kinesthetic sense of joint, tendon, and muscle movements during the trajectory can be
developed either by practicing leaps out of context without depressing the target tone (just preparing it), by
practicing leaps in the dark (without visual feedback), or by deliberately varying the leap distance
(“variability of practice”; Bangert et al., 2014). It is di cult to practice leaps at a slow tempo—just as high
jumpers cannot practice in slow motion.
Tone repetitions
High-speed repetitions are usually easier to perform by changing (alternating) ngers, because it is easier
to move one nger horizontally o the key and drop another nger onto it, than to quickly move the same
nger up and down. The latter action requires more nger acceleration, which in turn requires more muscle
p. 358 force. Slow tone repetitions are often best performed without changing ngers, because at slower tempi
the listener is more sensitive to the unevenness (variation in loudness) that can result from the di ering
strengths of the ngers. Moreover, at slow tempi there is less nger-key noise. Conversely, changing
ngers can be useful if accentuation (i.e., deliberate unevenness) is required.
In the piano action, the let-o distance (Askenfelt & Jansson, 1990) is the distance between the string and
the top of the hammer at the moment when the jack is pushed away by the let-o button. Typically, the
distance traveled by the hammer in free ight is between one and three millimeters. The roughly
corresponding let-o point of a piano key is found by slowly pressing the key until resistance is felt (as the
jack escapes).
Depending on tempo and dynamics, fast repetitions may be best played under the surface—that is, by
depressing the key to the keybed, lifting to the let-o point, and depressing again. Being able to depress a
key before fully releasing it was made possible by Sébastien Érard’s Double Escapement Action from the 1820s
(Giordano, 2010). The minimum time between repetitions is the time taken for the jack to return under the
hammer knuckle. A short setting of the let-o distance facilitates fast, quiet repetitions, as, for example, in
the left-hand opening (pp, très fondu, en trémolo) of Scarbo from Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, but increases the
risk of double strikes. Playing from the let-o point also prevents the damper from reaching the string
between keystrokes, so that a continuous sound can be obtained without pedaling.
Acoustics and Perception of Piano Timbre
Relationship between timbre and loudness

We use the words timbre and loudness in the accepted psychoacoustical sense of how a sound is subjectively
perceived or experienced by a listener (H. Fletcher, 1934). In general, the timbre of a sound—its perceived
tone quality or color—depends on at least two physical variables: its spectral envelope (relative amplitude of
spectral partials at a given moment) and its temporal envelope (which rises suddenly as the hammer hits the
string and then decays gradually).
The importance of spectral envelope is clear from the dependence of timbre on dynamic level. The original
dynamic level of a piano recording is clear from timbre—regardless of how loudly the recording is played
back. In this regard, the piano is similar to other instruments including the voice: louder tones have more
jagged waveforms and hence relatively more high-frequency energy. In the piano, a sharper hammer blow
produces sharper waveform peaks (Hall, 1991).
The importance of temporal envelope becomes clear when a piano tone is recorded and played backward. If
the amplitude gradually increases instead of decreasing, with the hammer noise at the end instead of the
beginning, the result sounds strangely like an organ (Houtsma, Rossing, & Wagenaars, 1987).
p. 359 The experience of loudness may be distinguished from the physical measurement of SPL (Sound Pressure
Level), measured in decibels, and from dynamic level, which is an instruction, recommendation, or
suggestion from a composer to a musician. For practical purposes, loudness, SPL, and dynamic level are
often the same, but they also diverge in everyday musical situations. Consider for example a thick bass
chord marked ppp. The ear’s insensitivity at lower frequencies means the loudness can be low although SPL
is high (Goebl, 2003, Figure 2.20). To enhance the holistic impression of ppp, a pianist playing as softly as
the piano allows can manipulate other contextual variables such as timbre (pedaling, relative key velocity)
and timing (tempo, decay).
Against the backdrop of these de nitions, we argue that the spectral and temporal envelope of an isolated
piano tone cannot be changed independently of its SPL. Hence, timbre cannot be changed independently of
loudness (Báron & Holló, 1935; Gat, 1965; Gerig, 1974; Hart, Fuller, & Lusby, 1934; Ortmann, 1937; Seashore,
1937). In a simple physical model of the piano action (Fletcher & Rossing, 1998, Figure 12.1), both the SPL
and the spectral and temporal envelopes of a piano tone are determined uniquely by hammer velocity—the
speed with which the hammer hits the string, which in turn is determined mainly by key velocity (cf. Palmer
and Brown, 1991). The crucial point is that the hammer hits the string in free ight: at (and just before)
impact, there is no physical contact between the key and the hammer. Apart from some interesting
possibilities that we will shortly address, the pianist cannot in uence how the hammer hits the string, only
the speed with which it does so.
Acousticians and psychologists have often wondered why, in spite of this evidence, many pianists still
believe that the timbre of a piano tone depends on touch—not only how fast but also how the key is
depressed. There are several possible reasons:
• Listeners can easily perceive timbral di erences between piano performances, but are not necessarily
able to explain the origin of those di erences (Heinlein, 1929b).
• Pianists almost never perform isolated tones without pedal, and the timbre of more complex textures
clearly depends on a range of factors other than the way each individual key is depressed (see later).
• Movements that directly a ect control may indirectly a ect timbre. Consider the di erence between
percussive (or struck) touch (when keys are hit from a distance above the surface) and non-percussive or
pressed touch (when the key is depressed from the surface; cf. Goebl et al., 2005). Ortmann (1925) found
that non-percussive touch permits ner key control.
• Listeners cannot necessarily separate timbre from other perceptual variables. Timbre is often confused
with pitch in ratings of performed intonation and in other psychoacoustic experiments (Singh & Hirsh,
1992).
• Di erent body and arm movements (smooth and round versus jagged and tense) result in di erent
perceived timbres (Schutz & Lipscomb, 2007; MacRitchie, 2015; Goebl, 2018). That may be true for both
the performer (perceiving her or his own timbre) and the audience.
• In general, auditory perception is in uenced by visual perception (intermodal interference). Visual

p. 360 processing can a ect the appraisal of piano performances (Behne & Wöllner, 2011), and an
important part of the emotional and interpretive message sent from a performer to an audience is
visual (Rosen, 1995). For example, if an audience sees a pianist brutally hitting the keys, they may get
an impression of a hard or brittle tone—beyond what the music actually sounds like.
• Pianists’ perceptions of their own performances are multimodal (Askenfelt, Galembo, & Cuddy, 1998):
the pianist’s perception of timbre can be in uenced by kinesthetic feedback from nger contact with
the keys (Goebl & Palmer, 2008).
Askenfelt and Jansson (1991) suggested the possibility that hammer-shank vibrations at around 50 Hz might
be greater in percussive touch and could theoretically a ect piano string vibration—either by changing the
angle of impact and thus shifting the striking point (only signi cant in the extreme treble, Askenfelt et al.,
1998) or by allowing the hammer to rub along the string during contact. But Hart, Fuller, and Lusby (1934)
and others (see Askenfelt et al., 1998) had already concluded that the in uence of the hammer shank on the
physical string motion is negligible. When the matter was tested empirically, Askenfelt and Jansson (1991)
were unable to observe any rubbing motion between hammer and string. Even if e ects of this kind are
possible, the pianist can hardly manipulate them independently of nger-key noise (see later), so they
cannot contribute independently to piano timbre.
Tone quality in piano performance is determined not only by the physics of individual keystrokes but also
involves a complex and largely intuitive interaction among body movements, technical nesse, and musical
interpretation (Kochevitsky, 1967). For example, it is possible that the exact timing of a rubato melodic
phrase a ects the global perception of timbre. The ability to produce a variety of timbres and to apply them
appropriately to the interpretation of repertoire can only develop gradually over years of concentrated
practice and careful listening.
Timbre of a chord
The timbre of a piano chord depends on the timing and relative loudness of the tones (Báron & Holló, 1935),
which a ect both the temporal and the spectral envelope. The attack portion of the temporal envelope can
be manipulated by adjusting the timing of the tone onsets. An extreme case is an arpeggiated chord, whose
timbre depends on the speed and direction of the arpeggiation—an expressive strategy employed by both
performers (e.g., Glenn Gould’s interpretations of Bach) and composers (e.g., Boulez’s Sonate No. 3,
Constellations). The spectral envelope can be manipulated by playing some tones louder and some softer. If
the louder tone takes on a singing quality, it is either because its pitch becomes more salient (clear,
prominent, audible, able to attract attention; Terhardt, Stoll, & Seewann, 1982) and/or because the timbre of
the whole sonority becomes less rough (the roughness of a beating pair of pure tones falls rapidly as the
di erence between their amplitudes increases; cf. Terhardt, 1974). The technique of bringing out a tone is
addressed later under “Melody Lead and the Velocity Artifact.”
p. 361 Sources of percussive sound

The percussive transient sound of a tone onset is as characteristic and integral to piano timbre as is the
scraping of the bow of a string instrument or the breath activation of a wind instrument. This is clearly
demonstrated when onset sound is electronically excluded from the tone, creating a drastic change in
timbre. Normally, we hear holistically—we do not, and perhaps cannot, hear the onset sound separately. If
the amount of transient sound increases, we hear the sound as increasingly harsh, dry, ugly, or forced and
may be unaware of the physical source of the timbral change.
The three main sources of percussive sound in piano timbre are nger-key, key-keybed, and hammer-string.
Finger-key sound can be varied independently of string amplitude, but the biggest contributor to the onset
sound, hammer-string sound, cannot (Báron, 1958; Báron & Holló, 1935), and, for practical purposes,
barely can key-keybed noise.
Hammer-string sound. The physical intensity of the hammer blow depends directly on its velocity, being
most intense in fortissimo. For this reason, cantabile can sometimes be enhanced by limiting loudness.
Perceptually, the situation is more complex, because the tone’s partials mask the onset sound, so louder
tones do not always seem more percussive. If higher tones seem more percussive than lower tones, it is
because their percussive component is more intense by comparison to the partials—not because the
percussive sound is more intense in an absolute sense.
Finger-key sound. This can contribute to the percussiveness of piano sound (appropriate, e.g., in many of
Bartók’s Mikrokosmos). It can also enhance an impression of staccato (Gat, 1965). Its audibility can be
demonstrated by holding down a cluster of keys with one hand hitting them with the ngertips of the other
hand. In practice, nger-key sound is not completely independent of hammer-string sound, because
pianists tend to play louder when using percussive touch (Ortmann, 1925; Goebl et al., 2005).
The impact between nger and key causes a sudden high acceleration and associated shock excitation (or
thump) dominated by two exing resonances of the key at about 290 and 445 Hz (Steinway); this is
transmitted through various structural parts of the piano to the soundboard (Askenfelt & Jansson, 1990,
1991). It is called touch precursor (Askenfelt, 1993) and may precede the hammer blow by about 20 to over 100
milliseconds, depending on dynamic level (Goebl et al., 2005). In a musical context, the tonal part of the
piano sound may partially or completely mask nger-key sounds, depending on dynamic level, texture,
register, room acoustics, and position of the listener. Nevertheless, it does contribute to the piano sound
and makes tones played with equal hammer velocity, but with di erent degrees of nder-key sound clearly
distinguishable (Goebl et al., 2014, see Figure 17.1). Pianists’ perceptions of their own nger-key sound may
also be in uenced by their tactile sensation of the nger hitting the key (Goebl & Palmer, 2008).
Key-keybed sound. This may be separately heard by holding the hammer against the string while pressing
the key. In a musical context, key-keybed sound occurs almost simultaneously with hammer-string sound
and so blends easily with it. Its low frequency gives it a deep timbre.
p. 362 Theoretically, pianists can indirectly control key-keybed noise (Askenfelt & Jansson, 1991, Figures 4 and 5)
and create piano tones without key-keybed sound. In non-percussive touch, the key velocity increases
steadily during the key depression, reaching a maximum at the keybed. In percussive touch, the key velocity
rst increases rapidly, then decreases (as the energy is transferred to potential energy in parts of the action
and kinetic energy in vibrations of the hammer shank) so that the key may not reach the keybed. In a
controlled listening test, the presence and absence of a key-keybed sound was detected by expert listeners
(Goebl et al., 2014). However, due to limitations of sensory feedback to motor control, it is very di cult to
vary key-keybed sound independently of the percussiveness of touch and dynamic level.
Figure 17.1.
Two tones with almost equal hammer velocities, played with a nonpercussive touch (“pressed,” above) and with a percussive
touch (“struck,” below). The finger-key impact is reflected in a sudden negative increase in the finger velocity profile (dashed
line) and a clearly visible (and perceivable) sound about 35 ms before the actual tone onset (from Goebl et al., 2014).
p. 363
Cantabile and the Pedals
Cantabile means “singable” or “songlike.” The sustaining pedal enhances the singing quality of a piano
melody by improving the legato and enriching the timbre. The una corda pedal can also enhance cantabile, by
increasing the e ective tone duration.
The sustaining pedal
Banowetz (1985) regarded the sustaining pedal as “equivalent to the vibrato of the singer or the string
player” (p. 13). Pianists do not simply depress and release the pedal but take advantage of a quasi-
continuous series of intermediate positions that allow for more or fewer dampers to clear the strings in
di erent registers—part-pedaling (half, quarter, three-quarter, etc.), pedal squeezing, and utter (or
vibrating) pedal (Schnabel, 1950). The e ectiveness of these techniques depends on a variety of physical
factors (the instrument’s make; wear and tear of the hammer heads; pre- and post-release duration of
tones in a given register; room acoustics), technical considerations (how many ngers are held down at a
given instant), and interpretation (phrasing, tempo, dynamic and timbral shading, tonal relationships) and
is controlled by highly intuitive auditory re exes and responses (Heinlein, 1930; Repp, 1999)—which may
explain the considerable di erences in pedal usage observed even among expert pianists (Heinlein, 1929a).
Walter Gieseking considered that “just as one learns correct nger technique from the head and not the
ngers, so one learns correct pedaling from the dictates of the ear and not the foot” (Banowetz, 1985, p.
231). The independent manipulation of pedal and ngers, as well as the ability to adjust to a variety of
instruments and acoustic conditions, is one of the most di cult and important pianistic techniques to
learn. This complexity makes pedaling hard to investigate scienti cally.
Decay time and melody

Is the piano a suitable instrument for the performance of melody? Two of the perceptual factors that
encourage a sense of melody (across cultures) are sustain (slow decay) and pitch salience (Huron, 2001). The
piano best satis es both conditions in the middle registers: high tones decay quickly, and both very high
and very low tones have low pitch salience (cf. Terhardt et al., 1982).
By convention, the decay time of a sound is the time taken for its SPL to fall by 60 dB. This corresponds
roughly to its perceived or e ective duration. The decay of a piano tone before the nger is lifted is called
prerelease decay and varies from some 15 seconds in the deep bass to 0.5 second in the highest register (Hall,
1991; Repp, 1997; Martin, 1947). The use of the sustaining pedal extends the prerelease decay only in the
p. 364 middle register by 2–5 seconds (Lehtonen, 2007). Postrelease decay times are roughly half a second in
both treble and bass (Repp 1997, Figure 4), but they vary unpredictably from tone to tone, depending on the
state of the dampers and their pressure on the string. The timbral e ect of damping the string is more
audible in the lower registers where the strings are heavier.
A sense of melody may be created in higher registers by use of the sustaining pedal and by legatissimo, the
overlapping of successive keystrokes (Repp, 1997). Legatissimo can be acoustically e ective in all but the
extreme high register where there are no dampers. Finger legato is important not only where the pedal is
being changed frequently but also where part- or utter pedaling is being used, which tends to damp the
upper strings more than the lower.
Another way to create an impression of melody is suggested by Bregman’s (1990) theory of auditory
streaming. Successive tones are more likely to hang together as melody if they are close in pitch and time and
similar in loudness and timbre. Thus, a pianist can optimize cantabile by holding key velocity relatively
constant, compensating for the piano’s acoustic discontinuity in the higher registers. If a passage calls for
metrical or structural accentuation, other means may be used, such as agogic accents in the melody or
dynamic accents in the accompaniment.
The sustaining e ect of una corda
Casella (1936) considered that the una corda (soft) pedal allows the executant to interpret a cantabile melody
with greater depth of touch while never overstepping the mark. Arthur Rubinstein (1980) remarked that he
often produced his best cantabile by playing the melody with soft pedal.
The underlying physics was explained by Weinreich (1977; see also Hall, 1991; Fletcher & Rossing, 1998;
Giordano, 2010). The una corda pedal reduces the decay rate of the tone and so increases the e ective
duration. On a grand piano, the pedal shifts the mechanism sideways so that the hammer strikes only two of
three unison strings (early pianos had only two unison strings, therefore only one string was hit, as the
Italian name suggests). This reduces loudness, mellows the timbre, and modi es the hammer-string sound,
because a di erent part of the hammer—the ridges between the grooves formed during normal playing—
strikes the strings.
When the una corda pedal is not depressed, the three unison strings initially vibrate in phase, allowing them
to transmit energy e ciently to the bridge and causing the sound level to fall rapidly. But the strings are
never tuned to exactly the same frequency—and excellent tuners are able to control the aftersound by
slightly mistuning unison strings (Weinreich, 1977). So, the unison strings soon get out of phase with one
another, reducing the e ciency of sound transmission to the bridge. Once the phase relationship between
the strings is e ectively random, a second, slower decay phase—the aftersound—begins. With the una corda
pedal depressed, one string begins almost at rest. Over the next few seconds, energy is transferred from the
struck to the unstruck strings via the bridge. The overall decay rate is slower, because the struck and
unstruck strings are out of phase from the start; the aftersound begins sooner and lasts longer (Hall, 1991,
Figure 10.9).
p. 365 We recommend experimenting with the sustaining e ect of una corda in relatively quiet passages whose
timbre is not adversely a ected by the soft pedal. Melodic tones should be relatively long (say, a full second
or more), to give the unstruck string time to start vibrating. The audibility of the e ect will of course vary
according to the instrument, chosen register, and room acoustics.
Melody lead and the velocity artifact

Integral to piano technique is polyphonic touch, or the di erentiation of dynamic levels within a chord,
which enables melodies to be brought out of a contrapuntal context. Pianists have been doing this since the
earliest clavichords and fortepianos allowed key velocity to determine dynamic level, allowing, for example,
the entries of Bach fugal subjects to be projected. Sophisticated exercises and studies that addressed this
technique appeared in the late nineteenth century. For a later generation, Artur Schnabel suggested that
students play the cluster CDEFG repeatedly with ngering 1-2-3-4-5, each time bringing out a di erent
tone to create a melody, for example, 5-3-3, 4-2-2, 1-2-3-4-5-5-5 (“Hänschen klein,” a German nursery
tune) (Wol , 1972, p. 177). In the eighth measure of his Klavierstück Nr. 2 (1) of 1954 (London: Universal),
Stockhausen notated a widely spaced ve-note chord for the right hand and labeled the individual tones ,
f, f, mf, and f—a tall order for a human performer but something that the piano is at least physically
capable of.
To play a chord with one note louder than the rest, Vladimir Horowitz recommended holding the
corresponding nger lower and rmer. Actually, it is not necessary to hold the melody nger lower—the
e ect is psychological (Eisenberg, 1928). Along similar lines, Schultz (1949, p. 176) suggested that “to
accent the C in the chord E-G-C … ngered 1-2-5, the thumb and second nger show more joint-movement
than the fth, the muscles of which contract relatively strongly. The accented tone is actually played a
fraction of a second before the unaccented ones but the di erence in time is too small to be readily
observable.”
The asynchrony referred to by Schultz is known in modem music-psychological literature as melody lead. In
the piano, the time taken for a single key to fall from the surface to the keybed ranges from about 25 ms in
forte to over 200 ms in pianissimo (Goebl et al., 2005). When ngers strike the key surface simultaneously
but descend at di erent velocities, the maximum possible asynchrony is around 100 ms (remembering that,
in quiet percussive touch, the hammer reaches the string up to 35 ms before the key reaches the keybed but
only 2 to 5 ms in forte; Askenfelt & Jansson, 1990, Figure 8). In practice, melody leads are typically in the
range of 20 to 40 ms, which is short enough to be inaudible (again, like early re ections in a concert hall).
They are observed in performances at all levels of expertise (Palmer, 1989; Repp, 1996).
Goebl (2001) found that melody lead times could be predicted accurately by calculating key and hammer
travel times on the basis of their measured velocities, con rming that in one-hand chords his pianists were
striking the key surfaces almost simultaneously, regardless of emphasis. This was consistent with the
pianists’ apparent lack of awareness of melody lead in interviews. Melody lead may thus be regarded
primarily as an artifact of keyboard construction.
p. 366 Melody leads of similar duration also occur in ensemble performance (Rasch, 1979). This could be an artifact
of a di erent kind: those that lead an ensemble tend to do just that and play in nitesimally earlier than the
others who follow, just as less-experienced piano accompanists sometimes tend to drag. Alternatively, the
e ect may be a deliberate or intuitive expressive device to help bring out the melody. Pianists, too, may
deliberately anticipate melody tones by di erent degrees, depending on the expressive intention (Rasch,
1978; Henderson, 1936; Palmer, 1989). But this is di cult to con rm experimentally, as one must rst
subtract out the e ect of the velocity artifact.
Melody lead (or lag) can render a tone more salient than other tones in a chord, independent of the
associated intensity di erences. The anticipated tone is initially not masked by the other tones; and
according to Bregman’s (1990) theory and experiments, a slightly asynchronous tone is more easily heard
as part of a melody. Thus, from a perceptual point of view, it may be unnecessary or even inappropriate to
develop a deliberate strategy to compensate for the velocity artifact—that is, to attempt to control the
relationship between key velocity and synchrony.
A pianist who wishes to do this consciously and thereby widen the range of available interpretive
possibilities is faced with a technical problem. Due to intrinsic motor and physiological limitations, it is
extremely di cult to directly manipulate the timing of almost-simultaneous nger movements, because
the time required by sensorimotor and aural-neurophysiological feedback between the ngers and the brain
would be similar to the typical duration of melody lead times (some tens of ms). The rst author of this
chapter gets around this by raising the nger whose onset is to be delayed and setting all ngers in motion
at about the same time, applying more force and velocity to the raised nger. That nger then hits the key
surface slightly later than the others—not earlier, as suggested by Horowitz, and perhaps corresponding to
the “diametrically opposed” method referred to by Eisenberg (1928). By adjusting the height of the raised
nger and listening carefully, the asynchrony at the keyboard can be reduced. The technical and artistic
e ectiveness of this technique, which follows logically from the psychological ndings but seems to
contradicts much pianistic practice, is yet to be systematically investigated.
We have not addressed the tendency of some pianists—especially pianists from the early days of recording
—to deliberately delay the melody (sometimes called bass lead; Goebl, 2001; Repp, 1996; Vernon, 1936).
This is technically relatively easy, since the asynchrony is between rather than within hands and may be
regarded as a kind of agogic accent.
Psychology of Piano Fingering
To impose a ngering cannot logically meet the di erent conformations of hands … the absence of
ngerings is an excellent exercise, suppresses the spirit of contradiction which induces us to
choose to ignore the ngerings of the composer, and proves those eternal words: “One is never
better served than by oneself.” Let us seek our ngerings!
(Debussy, Douze Etudes)
p. 367 How do pianists determine ngerings? What are the underlying criteria? How do ngerings di er among
pianists? Only recently have questions such as these been regarded as amenable to psychological research
methods.
In the following, we limit ourselves to psychological aspects of ngering and assume that pianists are free
to choose their own. The question of whether ngerings prescribed by composers such as Schubert, Chopin,
Brahms, Liszt, Rachmanino , and Bartók should be followed (as, for example, Claudio Arrau has insisted) is
a cultural, historical, and perhaps even ethical one and beyond our scope here.
Optimal fingering
Optimal ngering emerges from a trade-o or compromise among various physical, anatomic, motor, and
cognitive constraints in conjunction with interpretive considerations. It depends on the relative importance
of these di erent aspects for a given pianist or musical context. The complex interaction among these
various constraints and their dependence on pianist and style mean that one can rarely speak of a single best
ngering for a given passage.
Physical constraints on ngering include the horizontal and vertical arrangement of the black and white
keys. In the determination of ngerings, these interact with anatomic constraints and associated individual
di erences: hand size and shape (measured by Wagner, 1988; see photos of pianists’ hands in Gat, 1965) or
the maximum comfortable stretches between pairs of ngers (included in the model of Parncutt et al., 1997;
see also Jacobs, 2001).
Motor constraints can apply either within a single hand or between hands. Within a hand, they limit nger
independence. According to Ortmann (1929/1981), such motor constraints can be reduced by practice but
never eliminated. Between hands, motor constraints are involved in the coordination of tremolos, two-hand
trills, and shakes; the execution of seamless transitions from one hand to another within Thalberg-style
thumb melodies or accompanying gures; and the sharing of technically di cult gurations between the
hands.
Cognitive constraints determine how well we can encode and retrieve complex nger patterns and their
context dependencies. Fingerings that stay the same in di erent keys may reduce cognitive demands but are
physically and anatomically more di cult. A change of ngering at a key change may be worthwhile if the
anatomic and physical advantages balance the added cognitive load. To master these di culties, many
piano pedagogues, including Liszt (and, e.g., Frey, 1933), have recommended transposing di cult passages
to all keys without changing the ngering.
Interactions between the two hands are primarily limited by cognitive constraints. In sight-reading unison
passages (hands an octave apart), for example, two di erent ngerings must be planned and executed
simultaneously (Parncutt, Sloboda, & Clarke. 1999). The cognitive load is reduced in mirror-image patterns
in contrary motion, where ngerings can be identical in both hands—for example, in Messiaen’s Vingt
regards sur l’enfant Jésus (Troup, 1983, 1995).
p. 368 By interpretive considerations we mean both communication of musical structure (Bisesi, Friberg, &
Parncutt 2019) and emotion (Juslin, 2000). Fingering choices are often determined by matching a constraint
to a given interpretive intention, for example, thumb on black at the start of a measure or phrase (Clarke et
al., 1997) or second (index) nger at the end of a phrase. A more general interpretive consideration is
exibility: pianists need a ngering that allows for changes of interpretation without changes of ngering
that would increase the rate of errors (Sloboda et al., 1998).
Procedural versus declarative knowledge

The knowledge (or memory) that underlies ngering choices may be described as episodic or semantic, or as
procedural or declarative. These terms are de ned in psychology (see, e.g., introductory texts) as follows.
Episodic knowledge refers to a speci c event: a pianist may nger a passage in a certain way because the
passage resembles a previously encountered and ngered passage. Semantic knowledge is more generalized:
here it includes rules and principles of ngering. Both episodic and semantic knowledge can be either
declarative or procedural. Declarative knowledge can be verbalized (knowing that), but procedural knowledge
(knowing how) typically refers to automated movements that underlie a skill, such as riding a bicycle or
producing grammatically correct sentences: a ve-year-old may be able to do both but is unable to describe
the underlying physical or grammatical rules or principles.
All four aspects are important at all levels. Even the most experienced pianists try out ngerings at the
keyboard (procedural) but can also explain their ngering choices (declarative: Clarke et al., 1997).
Procedural knowledge of ngering may be acquired either by applying declarative knowledge (rules) to
repertoire excerpts (episodic; see, e.g., technical methods of the 1920s and 1930s) or by improvising
exercises to address speci c ngering issues (semantic; e.g., Cortot, 1958; Gellrich & Parncutt, 1998).
Dependence on task
Optimal ngering depends on whether a passage of music is improvised, sight-read, played from the score
after rehearsal, or performed from memory. For example, marked di erences were observed between
ngerings spontaneously used by pianists in the sight-reading task of Sloboda et al. (1998) and ngerings
written on scores of the same music by the same participants several months previously (Parncutt et al.,
1997). Standard ngerings for scales and arpeggios are of course more useful in sight-reading (where they
reduce the cognitive load) than in memorized performance, where the pianist has time to automate new
ngerings (Clarke et al., 1997)—although this does not necessarily apply to professional sight-readers, who
have usually seen the score in advance.
Di erences between written and sight-read (or improvised) ngerings may be explained if we assume that
writing primarily taps declarative knowledge and sight-reading (or improvisation) primarily taps
procedural knowledge. Only during rehearsal does a pianist have the chance to allow declarative and
p. 369 procedural knowledge to interact, as new ngering patterns are deliberately learned and automated.
Teachers and performers may therefore develop di erent ngering approaches and strategies for sight-
reading as apart from rehearsed performance, beyond merely learning standard ngerings for scales and
arpeggios (cf. Deutsch, 1959).
Dependence on expertise
Fingering depends on expertise (Clarke et al., 1997; Sloboda et al., 1998), because technique ( nger
independence, coordination of nger, arm, and hand movements, and so on) typically matures before
interpretive ability and personal style. Beginners focus almost entirely on anatomic and physiological
constraints but may not yet have the experience and knowledge necessary to choose the easiest variant.
Young professional pianists (e.g., conservatory graduates) tend to use a ngering that is anatomically and
physiologically optimal. Seasoned artists with consummate techniques usually focus on interpretive
considerations; for example, Schnabel was famous for sacri cing digital expediency for interpretive
integrity, regarding hand position (“handing”) as more important than ngering (Wol , 1972). Thus, a
teacher’s best ngering is not necessarily best for a student, and while it is always advisable to extend the
student’s awareness of available ngerings, it may be unwise to expect rigorous imitation.
Piano Tuning and Voicing
Unlike most instrumentalists, pianists do not usually tune or otherwise maintain their instruments, as they
lack the hard-won skills of professional piano technicians (for an overview, see Reblitz, 1993). A basic
understanding of piano tuning and regulation of the mechanism can nevertheless help a pianist to better
understand the art of performance and interpretation.
Tuning
The partials of piano strings are not exactly harmonic. Because the string vibrates freely and is not
completely elastic, the e ective length of the string depends on the partial (or mode of vibration).
Consequently, the frequencies of upper partials are shifted upwards relative to a harmonic series, making
the spectrum slightly inharmonic. Higher partials are shifted more than lower partials. Inharmonicity
depends on the string material: the larger the string diameter, and the sti er and shorter the string, the
greater the inharmonicity (Giordano, 2015). Because the pitch of a complex tone usually depends mainly on
the higher partials rather than the fundamental, the inharmonicity of piano tones tends to shift the
perceived pitch slightly up relative to the pitch of the lowest partial heard alone. For the tuner, the task of
achieving equal temperament becomes one of splitting a slightly stretched octave into twelve equal parts.
p. 370 Tuners may tune octave intervals by tuning the second partial of the lower tone to the rst partial of the
upper, minimizing beats; other partials can also play a role. As a result, the frequency of the lowest partial is
lower in the bass register than one would expect if octaves were tuned 2:1, and higher in the treble,
p. 371 producing the so-called Railsback stretch (see Figure 17.2). This characteristic curve has been explained
by psychoacoustic models of dissonance (Giordano, 2015). The piano’s stretched octaves are not normally
noticed in performance (e.g., in piano concertos), because octaves in music are generally stretched for
perceptual reasons (Jaatinen et al, 2019).
Figure 17.2.
Stretched tuning and inharmonicity. Deviation of the first 32 partial frequencies from an equal temperament tuning at 440 Hz
across the entire compass of a freshly tuned Steinway D. Fundamental frequencies are lower in the bass and higher in the treble
(“Railsback stretch,” thick line). Due to inharmonicity of the strings, frequencies of higher partials become higher, more so in a
wide range of the treble register and the lowest bass than the bass. (Figure prepared by the second author using the algorithm
by Rauhala et al., 2007 on recorded sound samples of Steinway D with serial number 547089, located at the University for Music
and Performing Arts Vienna. The standard pitch there is at 443 Hz for concert A. Partial power is reflected in the lightness of that
data point. Octaves of first partial are marked by partial number.)
The inharmonicity of a Steinway D concert grand piano is shown in Figure 17.2. It is lowest in the bass
register where the strings are long and their diameter and sti ness are relatively low. Toward the lowest
bass and up toward the treble, inharmonicity increases consistently. At the highest pitches, the interval
between the rst and second partials exceeds an octave by more than half a semitone. Smaller grand pianos
exhibit larger inharmonicities, particularly in the middle and low registers, and require therefore a more
pronounced lowering of the frequency of the lowest partial in the bass.
Another challenge for piano tuners is to tune the two or three strings that correspond to each key on the
keyboard to avoid perceptible beats and optimize the sustain portion of the temporal envelope (or
aftersound; Weinreich, 1977). Due to the coupling of the two or three strings through the bridge, no beatings
will occur for frequency di erences of less than 0.3 Hz. Within this very small range, expert piano tuners can
adjust the aftersound of a piano tone and therefore make tones more coherent across the compass of the
instrument (Weinreich, 1990).
Regulation of the piano action

The optimal operation of a piano action depends on the professional regulation of the many adjustment
screws, correct tension of various springs, and the appropriate selection of felt and cloth cushion thickness.
Most important, the ratio of key travel and hammer travel has to be adjusted (Reblitz, 1993). Key travel is
normally around 10 mm, while hammer travel is around 47 mm (Askenfelt & Jansson, 1990). Together with
the let-o distance (1–3 mm before the hammer reaches the strings, described earlier), which determines
the moment of jack escapement, these settings in uence the haptic feeling of the action. When pressing a
key, the pianist can clearly feel the hammer escapement at let-o (“pressure point”), and some key travel
after let-o , called “aftertouch” (Askenfelt & Jansson, 1990). Skilled piano technicians are able to
completely change the feel of a piano action (in German, Spielart) by modifying these and other parameters
such as the position and spring tension of the repetition lever or the position of the backcheck, to name a
few. In order to prepare a concert grand for a performance with an orchestra in a large hall, the key travel
may be increased to 11–12 mm, to enable the pianist to create sounds loud enough to compete with the
dynamic level of an orchestra.
Voicing the hammer felt

Another important way to change the timbre and the responsiveness of a piano is to adjust the exact hitting
p. 372 angle, shape, and hardness of the piano hammers. The most challenging of these is modifying hammer
hardness by piercing the hammer felt with needles (“voicing”). Softer felt sounds duller, while harder felt
sounds brighter and louder. As the hammer felt is glued to the wood molding of the hammer under high
pressure, stinging the needles into speci c locations around the part of the hammer that touches the
strings, skilled technicians can manipulate the timbre of speci c dynamic levels independently (see Figure
17.3a), creating di erent sound spectra for a given hammer speed (see Figure 17.3b). As piercing with
needles only softens the hammer felt, the resulting timbre change would always sound mellower. To reverse
this process, technicians use chemical hardening solvents, the composition of which often kept secret from
other technicians. Hammer voicing is a laborious process requiring hours of patient work; extensive
hammer voicing of on-stage instruments in concert venues means that the hammers need to be changed
frequently.
Figure 17.3.
(a) Needling locations on a piano hammer for specific dynamic levels (reproduced from Reblitz, 1993, p. 198). (b) Sound spectra
for C4 with a hammer voiced too hard, normal, and too so (reproduced from Fletcher & Rossing, 1998, p. 373).
p. 373
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Reflective Questions
Based on the content of this chapter:
1. How might the idea presented here change how you practice or perform in the future?
2. What topics were most helpful for your understanding of piano performance? What parts of the
chapter con icted with what you previously believed?
3. What are the main physical and performance parameters that you would use to manipulate dynamics
and timbre on the piano?
4. What parts of the movement chain ( nger, wrist, arm) would you choose for fast and light playing,
which for slow and loud?
5. What acoustical property does the una corda pedal alter, beyond mellowing the timbre?
Authorʼs Note
This chapter is a revised version of Parncutt, R., & Troup, M. (2002). Piano. In R. Parncutt & G. E. McPherson
(Eds.), The science and psychology of musical performance: Creative strategies for music teaching and learning
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The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance, Volume 2

Gary E. McPherson (ed.)

https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190058869.013.18 Pages 355–C17.P172

Physics and Physiology of the Keystroke

Acoustics and Perception of Piano Timbre

Relationship between timbre and loudness

• In general, auditory perception is in uenced by visual perception (intermodal interference). Visual

p. 361 Sources of percussive sound

Decay time and melody

The sustaining e ect of una corda

Melody lead and the velocity artifact

Psychology of Piano Fingering

(Debussy, Douze Etudes)

Procedural versus declarative knowledge

Piano Tuning and Voicing

Regulation of the piano action

Voicing the hammer felt

Giordano, N. (2010). Physics of the piano. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Based on the content of this chapter:

Bregman, A. S. (1990). Auditory scene analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Breithaupt, R. M. (1905). Die natürliche Klaviertechnik. Leipzig: Kahnt.

Casella, A. (1936). Il pianoforte. Rome: Ricordi.

Deppe, L. (1885). Armleiden des Klavierspielers. Deutsche Musiker Zeitung, p. 325.

Deutsch, L. (1959). Piano sight-reading. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

Hall, D. E. (1991). Musical acoustics. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Matthay, T. (1903). The act of touch. London: Longmans.

Rubinstein, A. (1980). My many years. New York: Knopf.

Schnabel, K. U. (1950). Modem technique of the pedal. London: Mills Music.

Wol , K. (1972). The teaching of Artur Schnabel. London: Faber.

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