Arm Weight And Arch Structure

When I observe the best practitioners of the Arm Weight school, people like Claudio Arrau, Yonty Solomon, Carola Grindea or Raymond Banning, I notice something very interesting: their hands always manifest very prominently the arch structure that is one of the central tenets of my work. This structure is not stiffly held, but it is there, functional, dependable, serving them well. Something else I notice is that they never speak about it in their teaching. It is something that is taken for granted, and well it should be. Do we think about how our pelvis is supporting our torso and resting on our hip joints as we sit in a chair or get up to walk? Of course not, it is part and parcel of the Normal Order of Things, and we never give it a second thought. If you observe Peter Feuchtwanger closely, you’ll notice that even his hand, with his hyper-relaxation exercises that turn it into a limp sort of fishy thing (thus freeing it to do the most astounding feats of agility), takes on its arched form when it needs to, that is, when the technical demands of the music necessitate it. When a student is introduced to the concepts of Arm Weight, with its wonderful refinement of touch and blossoming, shimmering warmth of tone, if his hand already ‘knows’ the functionality and use of its arch structure, all goes well. Even if his hand doesn’t ‘know,’ the student still stands a good chance of it developing naturally. The problems arise when a student tries to relax as his teacher is telling him, and ends up with a flaccid hand that he feels is simply collapsed and powerless. His hand is so limp that he feels he can’t do anything; when his finger goes to play a note, he doesn’t feel its bony structure enough to connect him through to the key. At this point it is useful to begin talking about the hand’s arch structure – its shape and function. However, another danger immediately arises. If you focus on the skeletal power of the standing hand’s arch, there’s a strong tendency to stiffen it. Our first experience of that potent arch structure is usually standing on it, secure, stable, and relatively immoveable. It’s not an easy matter to find the vertical, unstable equilibrium of that arch which gives it full functionality. Interestingly enough, there is a parallel here as well between a developing piano technique and the development of standing, walking and running in humans. A baby stands up well before its first birthday, and usually takes its first steps at somewhere around one year of age. However, the full, complicated coordination of adult locomotion is not fully integrated in the growing child until age 7! Analysis of pelvic movement in adult walking shows a complicated, three dimensional figure-8 movement between the two hips, necessitating a corresponding flexibility of spine, swinging of arms and freedom in the neck. The head rides on top of a flexible, moveable skeletal structure, and even the function of standing is not one of statue-like stability but of fluid balance, with thousands of constant micro-readjustments going on at every moment to keep us floating upright in the field of gravity (outside our conscious awareness, of course). It takes children a full 6 years after standing up to integrate all these further, subtle aspects of standing and walking into their neuromotor organization. We should be well aware of this as we nurture our students through the long apprenticeship to truly functional ‘pianistic walking’ that is the basis of their capability at the keyboard. This type of walking has many constituent functional elements that take time to integrate. It’s a long process, and necessarily so.