Fingering

Many editors of music provide for a fingering suggesting that all notes have to be played legato from start to finish.  Very often this gives some very impractical results.

Ideally, fingering supports the phrase structure of the music and in that respect it is good to learn the student to reposition the hand at each new phrase and try to find a fingering which enables the student to have the whole phrase or fragment 'in the hand'.

Bach, for instance, starts his phrases AFTER the heavy beat and lets the phrase run until the first note of the next heavy beat. This means that you do not base your fingering on the first note of the bar, but on the second note. Since this is the way Bach has written his music you avoid a lot of difficulties if you realise this in you finger and practise habits.

In contrast Mozart very often ends his phrases at the end of the Bar and does start at the beginning of the bar. Debussy is very Mozartean in his writing style, but Chopin again was greatly inspired by Bach in his phrasing. 


Another aspect of fingering is getting around the keyboard really treating all keys the same. There is nothing wrong with a thumb on a black key and it is not always useful to change fingers on repeating notes, if only your wrist is flexible. 


Students should be taught to lead fingers below other fingers - very often the thumb - or over other fingers - very often the 2nd or 3rd finger. The last is an option which is very often ignored by a teacher.


Muscles do not like to be in the same stretch continuously. They are not designed for that and if you do it it may backfire very badly on you. You can injure your hand! Muscles typically want to perform an action and relax again. Do and undo. 


Which means through the execution of a phrase the hand opens and closes again. Just, by the way, as the music does. There is nothing wrong with tension during an execution of a phrase, there are many things wrong with lack of relaxation after the execution of a fragment of music.

So never take the fingering in an edited piece of music for granted. Edit it during study very carefully and adapt it to your hands, your needs and the flow of the music if the editor has forgotten about the last principle.