[The art of touch. Elisabeth Caland and the physio-aesthetics of piano playing].
The issue of how it is possible to play the piano without striking it was raised by Chopin: one must 'caresser' and not 'frapper' the piano. In her teachings on the art of piano playing, Elisabeth Caland (1862-1929) attempts to articulate a scientifically grounded solution to this complex (kin-)aesthetic problem. The solution turns on her intuitively discovered 'lowering of the shoulderblades' which was documented in 1904, through X-rays, by the Berlin physiologist René du Bois-Reymond, and recorded as a way of coordinating movement which had been unknown to physiology up to that time. Caland's physio-aesthetic of piano playing, which she worked out on the basis of du Bois-Reymond's observations, turns on the ideal of 'floating sound' put forward by her teacher Ludwig Deppe, and on Ferruccio Busoni's technique of piano playing. Her method makes essential use of what Feldenkrais would later call the 'sixth sense' (i.e. proprioceptive perception); in fact, it represents the first modern kinaesthetically based conception of piano playing. Caland's doctrine of touch was ahead of its time and it virtually disappeared from discussions of piano technique after 1930. But it has become accessible again through reprints of her most important writings: Deppe's doctrine of piano playing (1897), Sources of power in piano playing (1904), and Artistic piano playing (1910).
Herrgott
Gerhard
G
gerhardherrgott@compuserve.de
D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007699:Kinesthesis; D009146:Music / Q000266:history*; D010827:Physiology / Q000266:history*; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology