Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner handspan

I can barely reach an octave.

Liszt could just do a tenth. (see "The Great Pianists" by Schonberg, p. 179)

I can do a 9th with ease, a 10th is stretching.

I'm also in the easy 10th / uncomfortable 11th club.
What's odd is I could play 10ths when I was about 9 years old.

I can comfortablly reach an octave, no more. This may hold me back in the future, but lately, I've adopted the attitude that "If there's a will, there's a fingering and a way."

Not any more.

Scriabin did the small hand thang too.

13th uncomfortably but 12th easy.

i liked the idea of the poll, so i did the math based on the comfortable span reached, since most provided 2 intervals and i counted all the teachers and pianists as well
i think there's an error with the total but here are the results, 30 results:
8th:6.6%
9th:23.3%
10th:50 %
11th:0%
12th:20%
13th:0%

Inherent bias in the results due to self selected subjects. Those with ten and above tend to want to brag about it.

I can reach out for a 11th.
And about the composers you mentioned:
Chopin could stretch his both hands covering a span of c to a flat`` together.
Liszt didn't have that much of a span - 11th maybe.
Rachmaninoff's hands were enormous. His fingers were so long they hit the wall behind the keyboard if placed horizontally (!!!).
And also, Schumann had a pretty large span - 13th, I think.

By the way, guys: It is much more important to have a flexible hand than a big one. I used to have problems with the last few left hand chords in Rachmaninoff's prelude op. 23/1 (actually I don't think you should play them arpeggio). But then I found out how I can improve my hand span.

Just put your hand on the chord keys, press them down to the keybed and leave your fingers there for a while. If necessary stretch the fingers (very carefully!) with your other hand. Repeat this from time to time. After a while you will be able to play chords you couldn't play before - of course within your natural possibilities.

I think this is the ability which contemporaries reported about Chopin's hand.

----------

http://www.pianistenschule.de

I remember reading a comment by one of Chopin's students that Chopin sometimes wrote chords he himself had to roll. He was also quite willing to take two keys with one finger if helped the situation.

I have small hands. I can reach an octave comfortably, but full chords are sometimes a problem. I sometimes have to roll them, and use the pedal to sustain the sound. Purists will frown, but it is the best I can do. Sometimes I leave out notes that are doubled. Gaby Tu

Depends which tenths. Eb/G,Ab/C,Db/F and Bb/D are uncomfortable in Waller basses so I break them. The rest are all right quite fast, even filled in. I can play an eleventh but it's hardly worth bothering. My left hand has a wider span because my left fifth finger is a few millimetres longer than my right one.

It is worth remembering, when considering spanning intervals, that physically similar looking positions actually have small differences in stretch.

1. The centres of the key shanks, black or white, are equally spaced.

2. The borders of the white notes are equally spaced.

To take the case of sharp key tenths, which caused me to notice this effect:

For these particular tenths therefore, what matters for stretching purposes is the distance between the upper border of the lower white notes and the centre of the upper black note. Well, strictly speaking , the lower border of the upper black notes, 1/24 of an octave less, but for comparative playing purposes in this example this doesn't matter.

Let the distance of an octave be unity. Then the centres of the key shanks are therefore at 1/24 + 2n/24 and the borders of the whites at m/7.

For an E tenth:
The upper edge of the E is at 3/7 and the centre of the G# is at 41/24
Stretching distance = 41/24-3/7=215/168

For a D tenth:
The upper edge of the D is at 2/7 and the cente of the F# is at 37/24
Stretching distance=37/24-2/7=211/168

For an A tenth:
The upper edge of the A is at 6/7 and the centre of the C# is at 51/24
Stretching distance=51/24-6/7=214/168

For a B tenth:
The upper edge of the B is at 0 and the centre of the D# is at 31/24
Stretching distance=31/24-0=217/168

There are very tangible variations in the span of any physically similar grips involving two colours. In fact, because of the arithmetic no black/white pairs can have identical spans.

This is very important to mention, indeed. Only very few (even professional) pianists know that the black keys are not always right in the middle between two white keys.

----------

http://www.pianistenschule.de

Of course, there are differences between the same intervals.

I can do a 12th with my right hand but only a 11 with the left.

Wow all of you are so...stretchy.

I can do a tenth with a little bit of stretching. My most comfortable is probably a 9th. But it depends, usually on my hands.

Both hands a 10th, left is able to reach a 11th with a lot of streching.

It's hard to compare the pianist's handspan from the past with those of now, because I've you've noticed they are building keys wider and wider... On a 19th century Pleyel or Erard Chopin played the keys are much narrower.

I can reach a tenth if I have a moment to prepare for it. I have practiced playing larger tenths (D - F#) broken, but very quickly emphasizing the top note. On a good day, these sound quite acceptible. I also agree w/the posters who talk about developing flexibility. I was taught to expand my hand from the palm rather than to strain to reach from the fingers. Struggling from thumb to pinky actually restricts motion a lot like those chinese finger toys that only pull you in tighter the more you try to pull out.