Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Arm tension in 3rd mvt of Schumann's violin sonata no.1?

I'm looking for advice from someone who has played Schumann's violin sonata no.1 in A minor for violin and piano. The third movement, lebhaft, has been exhausting to play in tempo for me. Most of it is sixteenth notes marked either "nicht gebunden" (detached- is that the correct explantion for the term?) or staccato, and by the middle of the piece I'm very tired (especially from my arms) that I can't play the octaves in the last page. Is their a particular "healthy" way of playing this without creating a lot of tension? I'm not very familiar with the different kinds of staccato and the exact differences between them.

I don't really play the piece but it seems to me that the R.H. figure involves a little "trick" that might indirectly be the source of your problem. This is a thing where maybe most people would talk in terms of mechanics, but I think the answer is more about how you grasp and conceptualize what's going on.

With figurations like this, it's tempting to view the notes as groups of 4, corresponding to each beat, because that's what's going on musically. But that's not what's going on technically most of the time.

I think that for the most part the notes do divide into groups of 4 (not always but mostly)....but that they usually overlap across beats. For example, the first 4-note group (from a technical standpoint) is the upbeat plus the first 3 16th notes.....then I assume you put your thumb on the A, which seems like the logical thing -- and so that note is the beginning of the next group. (That next group would probably be more than 4 notes, it would depend on your fingering -- doesn't matter; the thing is that this note is the beginning of a new group.)

The reason I think this might be the source of the problem is that if we don't realize this -- I mean Realize with a capital R -- then our head and hand are fighting with each other and probably with themselves too. When learning a piece like this, I would make sure to think the R.H. in terms of how the groups lay out technically. That doesn't mean accenting the first note of each group -- you want to stay musical all the time -- but just thinking of it that way technically and realizing that it's what the hand is doing. Maybe a simpler way to put this is: just be very aware that the places where the hand moves aren't aligned with where the beats are.

I realize it's impossible for me to know without playing the piece, but, I doubt I'd have any tension or exhaustion if I followed that, but great tension and exhaustion if I didn't.

I don't have a familiarity with the work, but I'd suggest you play those octaves from the wrist. It sounds like to me you might be playing them with your arm - maybe not, but I thought I'd just throw that tip out here and see if it would help your problem at all.

Thank you, Mark. That made sense, and it's probably too early to tell, but for the past couple of hours it has seemed to help. I'm back to much slower tempi to be able to focus on the finger groups, but moving my hand (and following it with my elbow) with each group and not each beat is removing some arm tension already. I know that some of the tension in general is probably the result of years of the bad habit of tensing my neck and shoulders, which I'm trying to get rid of. I have a lot to learn about being aware of my body and using it to play.

I have six days until I play this, and I'm hoping it will get better. Thank you again for the time you took to respond.

Sarah,
Thanks. I actually am playing them from my arm. This might sound like a dumb question, but I'm not exactly sure how to play them from my wrist alone. I think I've always used my arm. If there's any exercises or helpful studies or reads I can use, I would greatly appreciate the advice. Thank you.

No, it's not a dumb question at all! And, while octave technique is one of my few strong points, I can't claim to have divine revelation on this one - it's just the way my teacher does it, and so far it's been satisfactory.

Playing octaves from the wrist is difficult to explain without being able to show it; but imagine, if you please, keeping a relaxed shoulder and elbow and a loose flexible wrist. Form your octave in your hand, raise your wrist slightly, and "throw" or drop the octave on the keyboard. Don't overdo the motion - in fast speed it will be very small.

There is a place for arm octaves, I think - places like the beginning of Rach's op. 3 no. 2 prelude where the octaves are slow, powerful, and majestic - but you'll need to use your wrist to play with any speed at all and still stay relaxed while you're at it.

I wish I could remember a book or site that goes into this more in-depth, but I can't at the moment. Good luck, and I hope this helps you!

Well, there we have it -- completely different approaches.

I would guess that you're focusing too much on the octaves. I know that this is what she mentioned in the first post as being where he starts dying but I think the prior stuff is what makes that become an issue. I doubt that the octaves in themselves would be.

I think it's likely that as long as one appreciates the issue of how the "technical" grouping of the 16th notes in the R.H. is different from the musical grouping, and that the two things can struggle against each other if we're not acutely aware of it, the rest takes care of itself.

And thinking about it more, I'd guess there is a mechanical aspect to it after all, not just a conceptual one: If we don't see the technical groupings for what they are, we'd probably tend to try just to put the thumb "under" rather than helping out by moving/shifting the hand. In a passage like this, where we're trying to articulate every note, the "scrunching" of the hand when we do "thumb-under" tends to put strain on the hand.

Oh, Mark, I'm not trying to take away from your counsel on the sixteenths. I thought you'd handled that very well - I completely agree with your take on the groupings, as I do that myself - so I'd thought I'd address the secondary octave issue so that she could eliminate even more tension. I suspect that the mastery of this piece requires the remedy of several problems, hence my pointing out the octaves.

Cool! I didn't realize that was what you were thinking.