Hands

For anyone who has spent a great deal of their childhood learning to play the piano (an idea that is usually not of their own but that of a parent, usually a mother), finger exercises figure an important part in any student’s regimen. When my piano lessons went beyond Bach’s minuets (think of the music that plays when an owner-type vehicle backs out of a garage – that would be Minuet No. 1) and Clementi’s sonatinas, my first piano teacher suggested that I get Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist. No pair of hands would survive pieces that scan through all the keys on the piano and various twists and turns of the fingers without exercise books such as this.

According to the description on the cover page, the Hanon book is “for the acquirement of agility, independence, strength, and perfect evenness in the fingers, as well as suppleness of the wrist.” A glance at the table of contents will confirm that the book is dead serious about this objective. There are sixty exercises devoted to different needs of the fingers and the wrist. There are exercises that concentrate on certain fingers, there are others that maintain the arch of the hand without stressing the wrist. Still, there are some that make use of the various majors and minors per key. Exercise # 60, for example, is the Tremolo, which any music student would probably guess, involves rapid finger movement. It is six pages’ worth of finger movement that incorporates the speed akin to a drum roll, with increases and decreases in volume (from pianissimo – the softest – to fortissimo – the loudest), sharps and flats, multiple keys pounded at one time. Yes, it is difficult to describe and equally difficult to execute. But of course, as with anything that is surpassed and finished with a flourish, the already-breathless student suddenly takes on an unbelievable second wind probably comparable to those who think of climbing Mount Everest or taking the plunge and get married, or even give the high school principal the finger (of course behind his back, assuming that said principal will not turn around just as the wily finger is still in mid-air).

In other words, fifteen to twenty minutes of Hanon before rehearsing the week’s diet of short and long pieces is power to the piano player. It is the breathing exercise to yoga. It is the stretching before a football match. Once stopped, it may as well be that the piano player never played piano at all.

The headiness of high school put an end to nearly a decade of piano lessons, one that began even before I started grade school. All things that were originally other people’s ideas suddenly show its tired colors. It suddenly had no space in a daily schedule. It suddenly became uncool.

Since then, piano playing was confined to the occasional burst of inspiration and nostalgia, a rare visit by a relative, a parent’s cajoling during Christmastime, even a request to provide accompaniment to a singing group. It was becoming apparent that each pressing of white and black keys required more pressure, reaching for the outermost scales took on more effort. It was clear: my hands were no longer as supple as they used to be.

It was something that I felt was not lamentable. Of course it was obvious – I haven’t seriously played in years. The computer keyboard was the closest I had to finger dexterity, though all it really generated was carpal tunnel syndrome.

The only time I felt that all those years of Hanon exercise went down the drain was when I fell in love with piano once again, and it was no thanks to a certain redhead who had a thing for faeries and convoluted vowel pronunciations. It was around that time that I dug up my old Hanon book, buried underneath corny arrangements of pop songs and jazz numbers of a certain instrumentalist whose music could pass for root canal. I felt that the time was ripe to dust the old piano and give the keys another try.

It was like saying hello to an old friend. It was at first awkward and unfamiliar. Then slowly, long-forgotten details and patterns come rushing back. Then the faint echoes become a series of poundings and the poundings crash and crash and crash until one gets lost and drowned in the waves of chords and melodies, and memories of that day when that disgustingly difficult transition was finally mastered or that pianissimo was executed with the lightest possible press of that elusive key.

The old friend beckoned and offered this prodigal soul a tall glass of lemonade.