Music in the Hands: The Convergence of Performance Theory and Music Psychology in History

Abstract

The hand has long been considered a powerful indicator of the mind. Recent studies in psychology, neurophysiology, paleoanthropology, and biomechanics also confirm the close interrelationship between the two, hence the “psychology of the hands.” In these general discussions, music-making, notably piano-playing hands, have featured prominently. Even before the current surge, piano pedagogy has been evolved responding to the changes in conceptualizations of the human body, as well as those in musical styles. Writings on pianoplaying in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are particularly interesting. During this period when the body and machines emerged as prevalent themes, the piano-playing hands constituted “the human-machine interface” between the performer and the instrument. How were the piano-playing hands conceptualized in this multidisciplinary body discourse? How can the practical piano pedagogy be understood in the relevant scientific/ideological context? Through the conceptual lenses of recent cognitive science, this paper analyzes the historical discourse of the piano theories. The shifting moments in the history of piano pedagogy manifest an expansion of body schema and increasing emphasis on the auditory-motor coupling. In addition to serving for performative efficiency and interpretive delivery, fingering represents motor grammar and collective semantic knowledge, taught and acquired through the contemporaneous piano pedagogy. In this conceptual framework underlining motor elements in realizing music, the hand signifies much more than a passive indicator of the mind. The theories on piano-playing hands represent music cognition that is extended beyond the body, situated in activity, and distributed across individuals