Clavier Companion - March/April 2013 - 38

Technique

Let’s Get Physical:

Technique
Bruce Berr, Editor
Bruce Berr has been an Associate Editor of this magazine since 1997.
Explore his website at BruceBerr.com.

This issue’s contributors:

Trevor Barnard is a British-born
Australian pianist who began piano
studies at the age of four, studied at the
Royal Academy of Music in London,
and had private training with Herbert
Fryer, a student of Ferruccio Busoni.
He served on the faculty of the New
England Conservatory before moving
to Australia in 1972, where he taught
in several higher education institutions
until his retirement in 2003. He is the
author of the books A Practical Guide
to Solo Piano Music and Neglected
Areas of Piano Teaching.

What aspects of teaching
pedaling do you think are most
important?
ost aspects of piano playing and teaching show characteristics of both science and
art. Some appear to be more on the “method” side of that spectrum, others on
the “intuition” side. Pedaling seems to be significantly more than fifty percent art,
due to the enormous variety and complexity of sounds that can emanate from the instrument, and also since physical dampers stopping vibrating strings of differing pitches and
thicknesses is an acoustically “messy” affair. Of course, the flexibility and the art arise from
that apparent messiness.
I have asked two very experienced teachers and pianists to share their ideas on the teaching of pedaling. Trevor Barnard is a retired university professor living in Australia, and he
has spent a large part of his teaching career working with college students. Anne Marie
Olson is a Suzuki piano teacher in Illinois, and most of her studio has been comprised of
pre-college students. Taken together, their offerings here present a broad overview of many
aspects of teaching pedaling.

Pedaling—responsible and educated
interpretation
by Trevor Barnard

Anne Marie Olson teaches piano at
the Music Academy in Rockford, IL.
She has been a guest clinician for
Suzuki programs at Northern Illinois
University; the Columbia Talent
Education Association in Missouri;
MacPhail Center for Music in
Minneapolis; Blue Lake Fine Arts
Camp in Michigan; Green Mountain
Suzuki Camp in Vermont; and
Kankakee Valley Piano Camp in
Illinois. She has presented at the 2010
and 2012 National Suzuki
Conferences, and her articles have
appeared in Keyboard Companion,
Clavier Companion, The Suzuki
Journal, and American
Music Teacher.

CLAVIER COMPANION

edaling is an area of piano teaching
that unfortunately seems to receive
scant attention from many teachers.
My article on the subject, published in
Clavier in September 1998, covered all its
techniques in their basic form. In this essay
I propose to go a stage further by examining aspects emanating from the basic
knowledge of those techniques that will
challenge the performer.
Learning to pedal would normally begin
when the student has progressed from the
beginning stage to an intermediate level.
At the beginning of this stage I believe the
teacher should first explain the reason for
using the damper pedal (or sustaining
pedal as it is often referred to), and then
convey the four different techniques in
gradual stages. Those pedal techniques are:

Direct pedaling
Legato pedaling (also called
syncopated pedaling)
Half-pedaling
Flutter pedaling
While students may develop proficiency
in pedaling, this expertise is normally
restricted to the familiarity of their own
and their teacher’s piano. One burden a
pianist has to carry during a playing career
is that other pianos have physical differences—subtle to flagrant—from the ones
the student is used to, so that an actual
performance may have to be given on an
instrument that is inherently different in
responses to demands placed on it.
This experience is often brought home
to me when conducting piano examinations. It may be that the candidate has the
MARCH/APRIL 2013

Clavier Companion - March/April 2013

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