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| Are pianos sexist? | Login/Join |
| Unrepentant Dork Gadfly  |
Really fantastic podcast episode looking at piano size and arguing that, even for most men, piano keyboards should be smaller. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/...9311?i=1000580119281
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| knitterati Beatification Candidate  |
That was really interesting! I would think that it would be confusing for your hands to play on different sized keys, but apparently it’s not. I don’t see why conservatories would object to having one to try out, except for TRADITION.
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Minor Deity |
No argument about making the double bass smaller or the Tuba lighter?
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| Unrepentant Dork Gadfly |
They brought that up in the episode! Violins, for example, go all the way down to 1/16th size and that’s not an issue. At one time there were practical reasons why piano keyboard needed to be large enough to accommodate the action but that isn’t the case anymore. I’m not sure why I was so accepting of the idea that some pieces of music were just inaccessible to me because I’m a woman with average size hands. Also as someone who suffered from a repetitive stress injury when I was most actively playing piano and clarinet, I’m appalled that there seems to be no willingness by the piano community to consider possibilities! (For the record, I was able to wear a strap designed to take some of the weight off my hands while playing the clarinet, as well as a brace. Unfortunately with the piano the brace meant I went from being able to reach some ninths to struggling to even reach an octave.)
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
Thanks for posting this Dol, I'll give a listen. I've read about alternative sized keyboards, I follow a FB group dedicated to the issue as well. And to speak to AdagioM's comments, by all accounts, the size that's one step below standard size (can't remember what the dimensions are now) is apparently incredibly easy to adjust to. If money were no object, I would get a smaller sized keyboard for my piano. I can reach a 9th on a good day, but not musically. And there are chords that strain my hands/thumbs. There have been pieces that I have either given up on, or drastically reduced, because I can tell that playing them will damage my hands because it's just too much of a stretch for too long. Even just a slight reduction in the key width would probably resolve 95% or more of those issues for me. I'll have to listen to the podcast to decide whether I think it's sexist or not. But given that men are affected by the size as well, I would say it might be more apt to call it misplaced devotion to tradition. Well, and maybe a little bit of macho-centric posturing, which negatively affects men as much as women....
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Chatterbox |
I used to play concertina, choosing the Maccann system as it most closely follows the piano. But there were players who learned more than one system (others being anglo, english & hayden) with their very different button layout and bellows methods. Ultimately like most things, it's just a matter of practice. Regarding piano size personally, as a teenager bewitched by the Tatum and Peterson swing/ballad sound, I stretched the web between thumb and first finger of my left hand in order to play most tenths without clipping. There are some tenths of course that are recognised as being beyond the natural hand span. Still, as a race we are evolving to be larger. I'll try to listen to the podcast
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| Foregoing Practicing to Post Minor Deity  |
Really interesting…I haven’t listened yet, but I will. I bet historical keyboards were smaller (harpsichord, clavichord, etc.). And for centuries girls and women were strongly encouraged to learn keyboards. How do you think the virginal got its name? My own piano, built in 1928, it turns out, has shorter keys (lengthwise) than are now standard. I never noticed any difference. If I were to get the action rebuilt, longer keys would be an option.
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| Unrepentant Dork Gadfly |
They talk a bit about the standardization of the piano keyboard in the episode, but you’re right, previous keyboards were smaller. But they also discuss that women have always been far more likely to play (and teach) piano than men, but men are far more likely to become performance pianists.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Seems like the podcaster is making a category error. It’s not the instrument that some people find unreachable per se, it’s the pieces written for it. Had the keys been smaller from the beginning Rachmaninoff would have written in 16ths chords instead of just 12ths and we’d be having the same conversation. The issue isn’t confined to big handed composers like Rachmaninoff. Likewise composers with normal to small hands would have been able to play larger chords too and would surely have written them into their pieces.
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| Shut up and play your guitar! Minor Deity  |
I am comfortable with the size of the keyboard except when playing this chord in the Chopin Prelude in A major.   | |||
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| Foregoing Practicing to Post Minor Deity |
This keyboard arrangement was designed, in part, to solve all these problems. It got some traction for awhile! Wikipedia article: Janko keyboard
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Minor Deity |
I think that Jon is right that composers would continue to write pieces that exploited the limits of the relationship between the instrument and the human body. I suppose that, if I were a composer, I might consider whether my work would be more widely played if I didn't push the limits of that relationship so hard, but they're free to write what they write. I don't follow piano competitions, but I suspect that there is a bias in judging toward the big-hand pieces, because they sound so dramatic and because everybody can't play them. One could consider that sexist, I suppose, and there's an argument to be made that competitions that require pianists to choose pieces from a repertoire include only repertoire pieces that fall within an agreed-upon standard for hand size. I wouldn't want to see the big dramatic pieces not be played, but there could always be a "player's choice" round of the competition where people would get the chance to show the judges how big their hands were.
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| Minor Deity |
If hand not big enough for a piece, modify the piece. Take the example Mark provided above, one can skip the lowest A# on the right hand and the piece would still be harmonically sound. As for deciding which note(s) to skip, studying music theory can help one arrive at a workable solution faster, but even without formal study of music theory, I believe most people can arrive at workable solutions by trial and error. As for a composer’s view point, there was a time when I deliberately limited myself to avoid any stretch any larger than a sixth when writing pieces meant to be played by young children. (Then you hope that after these “young children” grow up, they would develop some instinct to fill out the harmony more with their then larger hands if they ever come back to revisit these childhood pieces.)
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
this makes a lot of sense.
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Jodi| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity  |
Is there any documentary evidence that composers like Rachmaninoff wrote what they did deliberately to advantage big-handed pianists? And I don't mean just themselves, i.e. Rach writing the opening chords to the 2nd piano concerto just because he noodled around and it worked just fine for him. | |||
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