What questions do you have about early keyboard fingerings? Let me know with a comment below!

Not only is this accurate for harpsichord, this also applies to organ fingerings for the same time period.

Hello Alice! I have been playing harpsichord since 1970, and with early fingering over the past +10 years. After studying early music in college, playing many concerts, decades of reading treatises, papers and books, and playing extant music with original fingerings, I came across a tutorial by Claudio di Veroli titled "Baroque Keyboard Fingering: a Method" (8th ed., 2020.) It captures all the basic early fingering techniques with historic examples in a way that is easy to follow, learn and apply. What it did for me was pull together what seemed to be many disparate practices into a collection of coherent techniques. I found that it then became easier to play well, and also to tailor various techniques to specific periods or styles because the basics are similar. Anyway, I think you are doing a fantastic job of sharing insights into harpsichord playing, and hope that you continue to do so because there is a real need for this kind of artful and informed teaching. Much appreciated!

You are fantastic to say the least. Thank you for the fantastic video.

After years of playing the piano (amateur) I’m new to the harpsichord and have naturally imported piano techniques that kinda sorta work but are not optimal on my new instrument. I’ve learned more in 3 of your videos than I ever suspected I needed to know. Thank you for posting such invaluable technical and historical information, A new subscriber

@harpsichord

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for your very kind words! I'm very glad that you're finding my videos useful and helpful!

@radiognome1971

3 жыл бұрын

Same here, only I have an (very amateur) organ-background and acquired a spinet some weeks ago. 'How to get the best sound out of your instrument'.... yeah... that's the challenge.

This is a very interesting theme. I tought, every instumentalist had an own fingering technic. At the earlier ages, In a fast passage I would be the king with my thumb using? With modern fingering, I can play faster in - for example - a Gibbons prelude, than with 343434. I know, speed is not the most important in music, but in late renaissance virginal music, I sometimes feel, it was important too. I had a piano student, who was very talented, but autodidact. And I asked her to play something. She played Mozart's C major sonata (facile), and the scales she played with 232323 or 34343434. But in a very virtuos way. I realised, she invented herself the historical fingering.😁

Thank you, Alice. 💐

Very thorough, thanks.

Thank you so much for making this. I first heard a player use these techniques 20 years ago, and am well in the mood to do some experimenting with them :-)

I have the Sancta Maria treatise and in the fingering section he seems to use the thumb, in one instance I think he even recommends 1-2-1-2-1-2. He has a lot of 4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1 and 3-2-1-3-2-1 etcetera. At the end of the section he says something like, fingerings are ultimately up to the ingenuity of the player

@morphixnm

Жыл бұрын

I think this was true when he said it, and as the decades and centuries passed even moreso because a large body of techniques all together became part of what players employed. For this reason, if one learns basic techniques like finger-crossing, sliding off of accidentals onto naturals with the same finger, hopping with the same finger at the ends of passages, etc, then you can do whatever you like in the moment to achieve the desired musical effect. The point is that you want to maintain the focus of early keyboard technique, which was not fundamentally about fingering but rather about having the best touch and control of the keys such that everything can be executed technically and musically well. I believe from experience that this cannot not be done unless one masters the early fingering techniques because they are integral to what was called the touch, which in turn was essential to playing musically.

Hi Alice, I was curious about this subject and was happy to find your video at the top of the results. Very nice and straightforward presentation! I wanted to remark on the similarities between historical approaches to keyboards and to the lute: In short, lute fingerings also stressed good and bad pairs of notes and assigned different weights to different fingers. In the 15th century, the lute was played with a quill like a guitar pick. Down was strong and up was weak. The lute was generally played monophonically and floridly, with interspersed strummed chords. In the 16th century, lutenists put down their quills to play polyphonic lines with their fingers. The right thumb played bass and the smaller fingers filled out chords, except the small finger which rested on the soundboard for stability. For passaggi, thumb played strong notes and index played weak. If the thumb was preoccupied playing bass, the middle finger was used to play strong notes. Toward the end of the 16th century and through the 17th, the thumb remained in the bass and the index and middle were devoted to scales, with middle as strong and index as weak. The ring finger was brought in as needed for chords, except in the French style. By the 18th century the thumb remained in the bass and the index and middle remained in the treble, but the order of the use of index and middle could be reversed as needed to accommodate string crossings. Thus, their weights were homogenized, although the music was still interpreted in strong/weak pairs. Modern classical guitar fingerings remain mostly the same as 18th century lute fingerings, except the small finger doesn't rest on the fingerboard. It's always fun to compare notes. Merry Christmas!

@harpsichord

Жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for this, Taylor! This is great information to know and useful to have! Hope you're doing well, and thanks, again!

@taylordiclemente5163

Жыл бұрын

@@harpsichord doing well! I hope you're staying warm and your instruments are staying hydrated. Happy holidays!

Given how different Couperin's fingering system is from earlier treatises - as he says himself - I am wondering if we know how quickly his ideas spread, and when other harpsichordists started using them. Specifically, I'm working on some music by Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, Couperin's exact contemporary, and unsure how much to employ Couperin's finger substitutions to achieve the legato sound that he urges.

This is fantastic ❤ very helpful. Would these fingerings paired also apply for clavichord technique??

Your small and practical size instrument brings a nice quality of sound to my speakers. Room or spot mic´ed ? I´d like to give it a try building one, of so mentioned natures. Do you know some good resources for design and material insights ?

Thanks Alice, very interesting! I am not clear on the importance of historical fingering: are you saying it is something that should be used when playing pieces from specific periods? Or is it merely of historical interest? It seems to me that the piano technique always gives more control on articulation. In the case of a simple scale at least, we always have 2 fingers near 2 keys, giving us freedom to control note duration for musical reasons, and not purely mechanical ones as with eg 3-4. (Disclaimer: I never touched a harpsichord)

Oh okay this makes all kinds of sense coming from piano

Great video! Could you elaborate on how the fingering indicate on the video is different from the music sheet? sometime in between 9:26- 9:35 . Thanks!!

Again a very interesting video! I have a couple of questions. The 3-2 and 3-4 fingerings work very well with scales to up to semi quavers, but when applying to smaller note values definitely slows down the music (at least in my hands). It will slow down the whole piece if the speed of these passages dictate the speed of the work. For instance in Sweelincks Fantasia Chromatica there are a few scales with demisemiquavers. Would you play them with paired fingering or perhaps group them by four? And if so, would you use the thumb and play 1-4, 1-4 or 2-5, 2-5? My second question relates to the position of the hand. You will know the print on the cover of the Dover edition of the Fitzwilliam virginal book which shows a lady playing the virginal wherein she rotates her right hand to the right. This could be interpreted as a hand position playing a paired fingering. I have actually seen one video wherein paired fingers are used wherein the hand is rotated to enable a kind of "walking" with 2-3 or 3-4 on the keys. See kzread.info/dash/bejne/gKqNuMlygcaTkaw.html What do you think of this? Lastly, you say in your video that paired fingering does not make a lot of sense when there are black keys in a scale. I agree that it makes it difficult. So how do you finger such scales? Thanks!

Would the way you play a two octaves C scale on the piano be the same as Rameau, for instance, would have done it on the harpsichord?

@harpsichord

3 жыл бұрын

I think it would depend on the context--since there's no sustain pedal on the harpsichord, like on a piano, whenever you shift your hand position there's a small break in the sound. So for harpsichord playing you have to find a fingering that matches as closely as possible the musical line you want to create, putting hand shifts whenever possible in the same places you want small breaks in the musical line. So the answer isn't "no"--"modern" C Major scale fingering would definitely have been used in certain contexts by the time of Rameau, but they would not always have been used for scalar passages in C Major. Do you have a specific Rameau passage in mind?

@Darkvibration

3 жыл бұрын

@@harpsichord. Thank you so much for your answer, you are very kind and helpful. No specific passage in mind. I was just wondering if there was a standard way of playing scales (any scale, for practising purposes as well) in the time of Rameau, and if it was different to the standard of today. From what you say I guess that fingering was very flexible then and it would change according to the piece you were playing.