Cantabile

Long ago my piano teacher (or maybe a succession of piano teachers) tried to explain cantabile to me. It refers to a singing quality of a tnote. (Or a phrase really, but it can also apply to a single note.) You are suppose to rotate your hand in a certain way after you have struck the key. I was able to produce it, but I didn’t fully understand how your hand movement could influence the sound once the hammer has hit the strings. To be honest, I still do not understand it — it is still magic to me.

[I should note that my primary piano teacher was an ancient lady. Some or all of what she taught me during the early eighties is probably interdit nowadays. This may very well include cantabile wrist rotation.]

Somehow the human ear is able to discern the pianist intention. The complex co-mingling of frequencies signal a “cold” or a “warm” attitude. My sister and I used to play a duet together. I was not very good, but — to my mind — her playing was mechanical while mine was (only) slightly more confident and conversational. I think I can say this with modesty, since I could also detect how primitive my playing was compared to that of people who could really play well. It is like climbing a mountain. My sister and I are on the foothills, where the technique is still important, while others have progressed to the lower slopes where playing well is a given and where interpretation starts to matter. And of course there are others at higher elevations; for them it is a whole other philosophical ball game, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphors.

Listening to a few recordings reminded me of this strange ability to detect the underlying emotion in even a short phrase. In particular, listening to someone like Mario Lanza singing “Drink! Drink! Drink!” from Romberg’s The Student Prince gives me chills down my spine. Even just those long notes he holds toward the end are enough. Or a good rendition of the William Tell overture. There are countless other examples, not only opera/operetta or classical music, but I’m a little too tired to list them now.

I suspect that piano cantabile is a myth, except insofar as it exists in the mind of the pianist. Lyrical quality is probably conveyed by tiny amounts of rubato.