The Fusion of the Hands

A.B. playing Albeniz: Orientale

#1

As a general principle the left hand should always be playing with and encouraging the right hand.  When nothing is written for the left hand in a particular measure, then, for practicing purposes, the left hand can either provide notes that support the right hand harmonically, or make gestures as if playing these notes but without sounding them – as long the physical effort involved is tantamount to or greater than the effort that would be made to sound the notes.

In the section where A3 is held and the remaining fingers play a series of parallel triads in inversion, AB’s right hand feels insecure; he says that it doesn’t feel balanced; the fingers feel awkward trying to play the exact notes of the triad. I asked him to play the octave a2-a3 in the left hand, and to re-play with each triad in the right hand.  “Miraculously”, his right hand no longer felt out of balance.  The reason that it is best when both hands are lending mutual support to each other is because we are bilaterally symmetric creatures – our arms and legs are mirror images of each other.

If we interlace the fingers of our two hands and then move our hands conjointly around in space (up and down, sideways, it doesn’t matter), we are no longer automatically conscious of what one hand is doing versus what the other hand is doing. They have lost their individual identities once fused together in a larger, single, natural entity. Starting with this larger unit, we can then farm out assignments to each hand.  There is a ‘pulse’ generated by the center of the body that travels like an electric current down both arms in concert.  This pulse can also cross from arm to arm in analogy to how the optic nerves crisscross on the way from the eyes to the brain.  We should assume, in both cases, that each gains support from the other.

The hands form a unity such that each hand suffers when that unity is broken.

#2

A chord is the same regardless which hand plays it:

In the same section of the piece, where a sequence of parallel triads occur over a held a3, A.B. says that if he uses his right hand to play all three notes of each triad, his ear is more able to be aware of the chord that is formed by the three notes.  I said that ideally, we want to reach a point where what we hear is not dependent in any way on which hand is playing which notes of the chord.  The chord exists as a single sound unit regardless of which notes in the chord are played by the right hand and which by the left hand – it’s always the same chord with the same sound. Physical differences are secondary.