Mario Berlinguer

20 Jun 2013
Esercizi e Studietti - an explanation
Here is a series of short studies, each one page, many not even thirty seconds, facing several technical problems (Without the pretense of being omni-comprehensive). The most instinctive pianists will be able to play them first-sight, while the slower ones (like myself) will manage to study them step by step in a rather short time. Amongst my goals in writing them, was the aim of making them not exceedingly sterile from a music standpoint. Even though they are not written in an extremely complicated or evolute language, I've tried to infuse them with elements of contemporaneity, first because this is how I like to compose for piano solo, but also because there's not enough technical studies to prepare the pianist to approach a modern or contemporary repertoire, while there's a huge quantity of studies in a traditional tonal language. (http://marioberlinguer.musicaneo.com/sheetmusic/sm-186812_esercizi_e_studietti_in_una_pagina.html)

In one page.

Like for many amateur pianists, and like many other composers, it's always been difficult for me to keep my fingers and my reading on the piano in good shape. Granted, you could practices daily scales and arpeggios, or you could keep under your fingers some masterpieces of the piano repertoire, but who has the time for that? For people like me, which don't have the gift of an instinctual pianism, to keep in repertoire the Well Tempered Klavier, or Chopin's Etudes is almost impossible, unless one can commit to this activity for several hours every day. And the immensely rewarding practice of first-sight reading is often made very complicated by your fingers not going as fast as your eyes on the score, or your hand not finding the keys without you looking at the keyboard.

To accomplish this necessity, I have started to look for collections of short studies, not for beginners and not exceedingly virtuosic, preferably not too sterile from a music standpoint. Besides Bartók, I haven't found much. Short studies are usually for beginners, while the repertoire of Etudes is composed by rather large works. The reasoning for this is that the “Etude” has during the history of music became a true music genre. Also, like my pianist friends point out, given a technical issue it's a good thing to face it from different perspectives and variations, and stretch it in time so that the pianist will have the opportunity to achieve total control of it and a sort of an “aerobic” endurance to it.

Long story short, I have never found anything that satisfied me, nothing that I could study in a short time and add to a quasi-daily repertoire of pianistic gymnastics. Until (strangely rather late) it crossed my mind that I could put together my composer activity with my playing piano hobby. I'll write them myself, I said, why didn't I think it before?

So here is a series of short studies, each one page, many not even thirty seconds, facing several technical problems (Without the pretense of being omni-comprehensive). The most instinctive pianists will be able to play them first-sight, while the slower ones (like myself) will manage to study them step by step in a rather short time.

Amongst my goals in writing them, was the aim of making them not exceedingly sterile from a music standpoint. Even though they are not written in an extremely complicated or evolute language, I've tried to infuse them with elements of contemporaneity, first because this is how I like to compose for piano solo, but also because there's not enough technical studies to prepare the pianist to approach a modern or contemporary repertoire, while there's a huge quantity of studies in a traditional tonal language. In this perspective, I hope that this studies and exercises can be also useful for students. They will hopefully take some advantage from a page on fifth-lets or other irregular tuplets (too often even professional pianists are not “square” enough when it comes to that), or one on different tonalities for each hand, etc. etc.

For some of this studies and exercises you'll find tempo indications. They are obviously not mandatory, and some of them will be achieved only by the best of you. If you don't get to that, no worries, try to increase the speed gradually, but always keep in mind that the worse enemies of piano technique are stress and fatigue. I'll take the liberty to suggest to take the best care for what concerns accuracy and dynamics (when present).

I've tried to give attentions to both the right and left hand, therefore you'll find some studies and exercises that face the same problems for both hands separately. One hand plays some arpeggios, for instances, while the other one carries an easy melody, then in the next one they will switch, and in some the same figure is then played together by both hands. It's sort of like studying the same work with separate hands and then putting them together, but hopefully this way the study will have some music interest, and it should be a little less boring. In some cases I've opted for gradually reaching to the most difficult version of the study or exercise in a sequence that suited me, but that can obviously be changed according to your personal taste or inclination. If one day somebody will decide to perform this studies in a concert, he or she will naturally decide to leave out or keep the preparatory versions.

I really hope that this little studies and exercises will not be considered purely technical. The gymnic component, so to say, is very important (and it is the main reason for which I started them), but for some elements of contemporaneity in the language, for some rhythmical complexities, I hope they can also be considered a sort of a training for the mind.

I've had a great time writing them, and I'm having a great time studying them and keeping them under my fingers, and I sincerely hope that whoever will add them to their repertoire will find them an useful and pleasant past time.

 

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