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Thomas Mark: What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body

A valuable contribution to piano technique and pedagogy

Thomas Mark has written a fine work bringing to light many crucial aspects of how the human body moves that have remained in the dark until now. The illustrations and the practical exercises that educate the body’s feeling make it exceptionally valuable while avoiding tedious, overly technical language.

Mark mentions “Body Mapping,’ the process whereby different parts of the body that may take part in a certain movement are brought into one’s sensory awareness. This of course is a key process – perhaps even the core process – of both the Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Method of somatic education, and readers are advised to practice such disciplines if they wish to make practical use of the information found in these pages.

Playing with the whole body

In Chapter One, Basic Concepts, Mark points out the dangers of understanding technique only in terms of finger movements, and cites several 20th century pioneers (Otto Ortmann, Arnold Schultz, Dorothy Taubmann) who break new ground in understanding the involvement of the whole body in playing.  He then goes on to explain how we can involve our bodies more – by cultivating the kinesthetic sense .

He stresses the need to train the attention, because “parts of the body that are not included in our awareness are likely to become fixed, immoveable.”

He suggests improving the “body map” to develop a better functionality… “The body map is the self-representation that governs movement. A person may know about the structure of the body, but if that knowledge does not govern the person’s movement, it is mere intellectual knowledge and not a part of the body map.” The body map corollary in Feldenkrais is self-representation, the improvement of which is a key component of that method.

Mark continues: “Many pianists are unaware of their torso, back, pelvis or other body parts as they play… They are ‘disembodied,’ out of touch with their own bodies.” To remedy this situation he recommends beginning by “attending to tactile sensations of all kinds,” and later on offers specific strategies for developing awareness of those parts of ourselves especially important to playing the piano.

Finally, in “Kinesthetic & Musical Imagination ,” Mark makes a wonderful point concerning the organic relationship between the way we move and our musical conception. The continuing enrichment of our kinesthetic awareness will influence our musical conception, and the ongoing refinement of our musical conception will further develop our proprioceptive sense.

Chapter Two is entitled Mapping the Structure and provides a clear, comprehensive account of the main supportive parts of our skeleton – the legs and torso. Most importantly, he explains the crucial function of this skeletal structure Supporting & Delivering Weight.

His discussion of the spine ( Spinal Movement ) points out that a fixed spine is a non-functional one, that leads to non-functional piano playing. It is wonderful that he takes such care to discuss the entire body rather than focusing on the hand and arm alone. He aims well when he aims to help pianists involve their whole body in playing.

Chapter Three, Mapping the Places of Balance, deals with the articulations of the skeleton, the places where movement takes place. His wonderful discussion of Posture vs. Balance is a vivid illustration of Feldenkrais’s concept of unstable equilibrium, though Mark never actually uses that terminology. He expresses well the key concept that a posture held rigidly is of no use, and must be moveable to be potent. He describes how the body is a marvellous feat of engineering designed to rise up elegantly in the downward pull of gravity, and lists key places of flexibility where alternately losing and recovering balance are constant functions that keep us in good movement health.

Chapter Four brings us to the Mapping of the Arm and Hand. He continues to stress the moveability of each part of the skeletal system, and how important it is to avoid fixation . Mark is wonderfully diplomatic: he himself avoids referring to the great author-pedagogues of the past who did indeed advise fixation and simply concentrates on the task at hand, coming to an as complete and up-to-date understanding of human movement function as possible.
The arm attaches to the breastbone

Mark points out that the arm does not end at the shoulder; rather, the shoulder blade and collarbone are an integral part of the arm. He quotes neurologist Frank R. Wilson: “the hand is an integral part of the entire arm, a specialized termination of a crane-like structure suspended from the neck and upper chest.” Mark continues, “The arm structure attaches to the skeleton in only one place, the sterno-clavicular joint, where the collarbone meets the breastbone.”
Mark encourages the reader to investigate these facts and most importantly, to feel them in one’s own body – this is how this information becomes not only useful but transformative to one’s playing.

Later on, Mark pursues the suspension bridge simile further to show how the arm ‘hangs’ from the dual suspension bridge muscular arrangement of the back.

Further chapters map Muscles, Breathing, and the Piano itself before Mark turns his attention to some Additional Concerns of Organists and finally, Injuries. Apart from a few points of contention discussed below, these all present a goldmine of not only useful but fascinating information about the instrument we use to play our instrument.

The pelvis and the spine

In Mark’s discussion of the sacrum (the central part of the pelvis – p. 20), he says that the pelvis does not participate in spinal movement. But from a functional viewpoint, the pelvis is the lowest vertebra of the spine, the point at which the spine connects directly to the legs through the hip joints. A few pages later he implies as much himself, noting that the spine of a pianist with a fixed pelvis cannot lengthen and gather. Cultivating the image of a pelvis as a unified part of the spine is simpler, more elegant, and more useful than introducing the complexity of the sacrum, iliae and isciae as separate entities.

The problem of deducing function from construction rather than from required actions

Understanding function from the point of view of how the body is constructed can lead to different conclusions than looking at it from the point of view of the action needed. The former limits functionality; the latter capitalizes on the body’s wonderful capacity to adapt. Mark runs into this problem in two key areas: ulnar deviation and the hand’s arch structure. 

Ulnar Deviation (pp. 82-86)

Mark rightly notes that the forearm rotates around the ulna: the radius moves while the ulna stays stationary. He calls movement that respects this aspect of structure “fifth-finger oriented movements.” He illustrates how the hand reaches out from the forearm in a straight line when it is fifth-finger oriented, whereas it is turned to the outside when it is thumb-oriented. This position is ulnar deviation, and Mark says it is ‘bad,’ that it leads to tension and injury.

Unfortunately, taking this as true limits us tremendously in our movements at the keyboard. The main problem lies with the length of the five fingers. When the hand is positioned straight on to the keyboard, the thumb is much shorter and much further away from the keys. For the thumb to even reach the keys, the fingers must venture into the black key area. Ulnar deviation has the wonderful effect of bringing the thumb into the keyboard, making it equal in length to the fifth finger, greatly facilitating ease of navigation.

Mark notes that it is not the position itself that is dangerous, but the quality of movement with which the position is assumed, and he says that it is possible to deviate effectively and without risk of injury. However, he notes that most pianists who do deviate are at risk, because they haven’t learned to organize themselves well in doing so (or in his terminology, the movement hasn’t been properly mapped).

Mark says that pianists who rotate in a “thumb oriented” way are at risk whereas those who are “fifth finger oriented” are not.

Ulnar Deviation and Rotation

Hold a note with your fifth finger and raise your thumb to the sky. Rotate your thumb all the way to the outside, past your fifth finger that still holds its note. This is an easy movement, because the radius, which rotates in an arc to move your thumb, is not attached to the elbow. Only the ulna is attached to the elbow, and it remains stationary.

Now try the same movement but holding a thumb note and lifting your fifth finger. Now the radius is fixed and the ulna must move through an arc. But because the ulna is attached to the humerus, it can’t rotate freely unless it gets help from higher up: the elbow rises and so the rotation now involves the upper arm as well as the forearm.

Mark says that this second movement is dangerous if used in piano playing – but try playing a tremolando octave using only the first of these two movements. Not very practical, is it? In fact, both radial and ulnar rotation play a big part in piano technique, and both need to be effectively mapped by the pianist.

The Arches of the Hand

Mark has a wonderful illustration of the foot, showing how both its longitudinal and transverse arches serve to bear the weight of the body coming down through the leg.

It is fascinating to see how the foot’s arch works in a similar way to the hand’s on the keyboard. At least that is how this reader responded to the apt and telling illustration.

However, when Mark reaches the hand itself, he totally neglects its corollary arch. I believe he does this assuming that, because the construction of the hand is different from that of the foot, its function must be different as well. There is no leg bearing down on the metacarpal-phalangeal joint of the hand – instead, the arm is attached horizontally at the wrist, and so Mark envisions a different kind of arch comprising both hand and forearm.

Mark’s whole book has the great intention to empower pianists by having them make better use of their skeletal structure, and is wonderfully effective in doing so. But this view of hand structure severely limits its functionality. Seeing the wrist as the keystone of the hand’s arch weakens the true arch whose peak is the metacarpal-phalangeal joint, drastically reducing strength of tone, hampering facility and even increasing the risk of injury.

Apart from these few caveats, this book is highly recommended, and we are grateful that Thomas Mark has invested so much of his intelligent speculation in this fruitful investigation of how the human body works in movement.  

Article researched and written for PianoTechnique.org by Alan Fraser