This Site's Review Of Taubman Approach

Apologies if this has been discussed previously, but Milosh Yankovitch's review of the Taubman Approach at contains such an egregious error that it really should be corrected. The review includes a video clip of John Bloomfield, faculty chair of the Golandsky Institute, showing how to avoid an unhealthy stretch in a particular passage. Yankovitch comments: John Bloomfield says that joining the note C (played with the right hand 5th finger) to the note D a seventh below (played with the right hand thumb) would create too much of a stretch, which could be harmful, potentially leading to injury, and that it must be avoided. He advises joining these two notes on the pedal instead of physically linking them. I am really scratching my head in disbelief. I mean, this is a big guy! My 9-year old daughter can join the interval of a seventh no problem, and this big, grownup pianist, an obviously capable musician, is worried about hurting himself by "stretching" a seventh??? I simply cannot agree with a pathological need to avoid injury so extreme that it debilitates and disempowers instead of helping the pianist out. Oh fer gosh sakes. If you watch the video, Bloomfield is not talking about avoiding a "stretch" of a seventh from D to C (which no one with normal hands considers to be a stretch); he's showing how to avoid the resulting stretch if you were to hold down C with 5 while playing Eb and then F with 2 and 3. The moral here is that if a clearly intelligent person appears to be saying something stupid, you should consider the possibility that you have misunderstood what they're saying. Please edit the review to be fairer to Bloomfield and the Taubman Approach. Thanks.

So they're merely suggesting that an interval of a 5th between the third and fifth is too dangerous? Are we supposed to gasp now at the thought of such a challenge and casually agree that nobody should dare such a contortion?

I don't understand what prompted the sarcasm. Bloomfield's point is that, in the context of the passage, using 2 on Eb and then 3 on F while holding down C with 5 results in the kind of stretching that, in the experience of teachers of the Taubman approach, is potentially injurious. I myself had some tendinitis as a result of a fingering that required a big stretch between 3 and 4. I don't think Bloomfield is saying one should never play a harmonic 5th with 3 and 5, particularly if you use scissoring, but I think one should be cautious about fingerings that produce this kind of stretching. The Taubman folks have a great deal of experience with helping injured pianists, including some who had to stop playing, so I would take seriously what they say on the subject whether or not one ends up agreeing fully.

I don't understand what prompted the sarcasm. Bloomfield's point is that, in the context of the passage, using 2 on Eb and then 3 on F while holding down C with 5 results in the kind of stretching that, in the experience of teachers of the Taubman approach, is potentially injurious. The sarcasm is against precisely what you reiterate in the next sentence. Sorry, but I'm finding it hard to think that this could even be for real. Given the case of a very small hand, I'd make adaptations if necessary. However, if the Taubman method cannot find a way to perform a stretch (that is scarcely less significant than the 6th between 2 and 5 that is associated with the most basic of C minor chords) then they have got quite some balls to portray themselves as the arbiters of safe piano technique. If they can't show you to handle that one safely, how the hell are they supposed to be qualified to tell me the first thing about how to play serious difficulties in a Liszt Etude!!!!!! On those lines, with the bizarre idea of never doing legato fingering in octaves, I've always wondered how on earth they propose for any pianist to execute the Scriabin Etude in 9ths? Is it simply a banned work?

Such a measly little interval only causes problems when the technique in play is severely flawed (probably based on compressing downwards, rather than opening the knuckles up well into freedom, as Alan teaches). If Taubman's best advice is to flee from such a non-problem, it makes an absolute mockery of any supposed authority on technique. Give me as little as five minutes and I could show even most small handed pianists how to completely avoid any sense of straining while opening up for this very minor interval.

I'd certainly be interested in seeing a demonstration of how one can play the fingering discussed in the video, or other fingerings deemed too stretchy or twisty by Taubman teachers, with a safe technique. After teaching hundreds of injured pianists and helping them to restore their playing ability, Taubman and later her students saw what the patterns were and learned what is safe and what is not. Some the movements they found out were unsafe were certain kinds of stretches, as I found out for myself when a big stretch between 3 and 4 led to an injury -- a fingering that my then-teacher insisted on even when I told him it felt awkward. I did what Dorothy Taubman would have told me to do and refingered the passage against my teacher's advice: problem solved. If there really are better ways to avoid injuries than the Taubman strictures, I certainly want to know about them and the reasoning and experience that support the claims -- as would the Taubman folks.

The problem is that it teaches you to FLEE- and not even from a big difficulty but from a very minor one. What use is that kind of attitude in developing technique? If you hide from the small problems (rather than solve them) then how will you cope with the real ones that cannot be ducked out of? The very least they can do is offer a method to cover it safely and then add the caveat that anyone who at least TRIED to do it comfortably, can then cheat. What notes were they between 3 and 4? What was the interval? Without seeing anything direct, maybe it was the wrong fingering, but maybe it was first and foremost the wrong technique? Maybe there's still an underlying problem that would be worth solving? I'll give you a simple exercise for anything that involves a little stretch. Play the first key and tap the next with the finger- quite vigorously, but without depressing the key down. Make sure you aren't in any way digging down into the first one with the arm. Can you tap the surface sharply and freely? If so, you've found the technique. If not, maybe it really is too far or maybe you still need a little more fine tuning (to stand out of the first key a little better and stop yourself digging in- which is frequently why an opening that should be perfectly straightforward feels like an almighty stretch).Try this with different combinations of all three fingers for this case with C F and E flat. It's simply a matter of standing OUT instead of pressing in. Very few hands should be incapable of finding the freedom to do this, when first finding the freedom to move with this basic tapping exercise. Tapping exercises are important because they always expose digging in. You can't tap freely until you've found a decent alignment, that is not based on needless weight or pressure from the arm.

Incidentally, I recently exposed slight habits along these lines, while practising un sospiro by liszt. It involves arpeggios which are implied to be fingered by all five fingers in order, spanning a 10th. For example, there's one of b flat, d, f, b flat, d, with all fingers in order. It seems like a stretch at first, but it isn't UNLESS the arm is compressing downwards and restricting the free opening of the hand. Once properly tackled, not one of the intervals is actually a big stretch. I've actually used examples like this and op 10 no 1 by Chopin with students who are nowhere near the level to play the pieces properly. However, by playing each interval very slowly and sensitively, they will expose even a trace of compressive downforce. Once they realise how easy it is to span them, if they actually stop digging in first, they are equipped to deal with almost anything. Digging in causes strain, not the perfectly manageable intervals. I don't believe in ducking out of these difficulties. If you do, they come back and bite you on the arse later- as was the case with me at first, in the Liszt Etude.

The problem is that it teaches you to FLEE- and not even from a big difficulty but from a very minor one. What use is that kind of attitude in developing technique? If you hide from the small problems (rather than solve them) then how will you cope with the real ones that cannot be ducked out of? The very least they can do is offer a method to cover it safely and then add the caveat that anyone who at least TRIED to do it comfortably, can then cheat. If a refingering allows you to play the right notes, up to tempo, with the right dynamics, articulation, etc., and no risk of injury, then I don't understand why you would call it fleeing or hiding from the problem. It's a real solution, although you might come up with a different one. What notes were they between 3 and 4? What was the interval? If memory serves (it's been a long time and I don't have my score with me), it was something like LH: 4321 on Gb Bb Eb F followed by 4321 on F Bb Db Eb, in a very fast tempo. As I recall, I changed the fingering to 4212, which worked just fine in performance. Now, you *can* play stretchy intervals if you can get the arm to carry the fingers along and eliminate the harmful stretching, but in this case the tempo was much too fast for that. In any case my teacher, on the faculty of a major US music school, didn't understand the potential for injury, which a Taubman teacher would have seen immediately. Without seeing anything direct, maybe it was the wrong fingering, but maybe it was first and foremost the wrong technique? Maybe there's still an underlying problem that would be worth solving? I'll give you a simple exercise for anything that involves a little stretch. Play the first key and tap the next with the finger- quite vigorously, but without depressing the key down. Make sure you aren't in any way digging down into the first one with the arm. Can you tap the surface sharply and freely? If so, you've found the technique. If not, maybe it really is too far or maybe you still need a little more fine tuning (to stand out of the first key a little better and stop yourself digging in- which is frequently why an opening that should be perfectly straightforward feels like an almighty stretch).Try this with different combinations of all three fingers for this case with C F and E flat. It's simply a matter of standing OUT instead of pressing in. Very few hands should be incapable of finding the freedom to do this, when first finding the freedom to move with this basic tapping exercise. Tapping exercises are important because they always expose digging in. You can't tap freely until you've found a decent alignment, that is not based on needless weight or pressure from the arm. Thanks, I'll try this out at the piano.

If memory serves (it's been a long time and I don't have my score with me), it was something like LH: 4321 on Gb Bb Eb F followed by 4321 on F Bb Db Eb, in a very fast tempo. As I recall, I changed the fingering to 4212, which worked just fine in performance. Now, you *can* play stretchy intervals if you can get the arm to carry the fingers along and eliminate the harmful stretching, but in this case the tempo was much too fast for that. In any case my teacher, on the faculty of a major US music school, didn't understand the potential for injury, which a Taubman teacher would have seen immediately. Thanks, I'll try this out at the piano. Sure, but at what other costs? I wouldn't ever allow anyone to ban me from legato octaves, for instance- simply because Taubman was paranoid about something that serves a musical end and which I've learned to do just fine. For what you describe, I'd have no problem with changing the fingering (which doesn't mean cheating on a perfectly manageable musical detail, like the example the thread is about). However, I would concerned by the underlying reason why it caused strain and I'd wonder whether your playing still suffers problems. I can't envision any tempo in which I wouldn't be able to use arm movement to avoid stress there. In such a scenario, even if I changed fingering for the performance, I wouldn't be willing to walk away from that until I'd got to the bottom of why it was strenuous. The fingers would have to move well mind- as pushing arm impulse through any single finger would bog it down. This is one of the areas where the refusal to deal with safe (but truly meaningful) finger technique can make Taubman hugely limited. But I couldn't possibly strain without digging downwards, thus causing the limitation.