45. The Joke of Holding Your Fingers ‘Delicately’
Let us recall the stages of familiarization. A teacher has just shown you how to properly place your fingers on the keys. If you were able to mimic this pose accurately, you’ve passed the sounding-out stage with the help of your muscles.
When you’ve memorized how to set down your hands and can envision the position in your mind, you’ve mastered the silent utterance stage mentally.
When you’ve learned to place your hands on the table or any surface without the help of your teacher, you’ve mastered the Grammar Stage.
If you can apply this skill to playing on the piano, your hands have reached the Stage of Creativity.
The joke is that none of this will actually help you to play the piano. Frozen in a beautiful pose, a “correctly-placed” hand doesn’t have the slightest relationship to the technique of the fingers and their work on the keys! Before a person has mastered the mechanics of playing an instrument, the elegant process of the placement of well-rounded fingers is an empty waste of time and effort. A “beautiful hand,” regardless of the movement it involves, can’t be a support when playing piano. This is because the freedom of the muscles isn’t a skill, but a consequence of physical development.