Comparative Study Of "Hanon Piano Practice Fingering" And "Schmi Finger Exercises"

When it comes to piano playing, the scene will appear in people’s minds that fingers are every now and then touching, jumping, wandering and running in the black and white keyboard. Playing the piano is an activity using both brains and muscles, which needs hands, feet, ears, heart and other related body parts to work together. It is no doubt that First-rate piano playing must require consummate piano playing techniques. Independently-pressing, evenly-pressing and flexible fingers are the basis of piano playing techniques. In the primary stage of piano playing study, training of independently-pressing fingers is an important task. As the study goes further and fingers get more independent, training of evenly-pressing and flexible fingers becomes the main task. In the history of piano playing, there was once an exercise machine which aimed to help piano learners solve technical problems such as the shape of hands and finger problems. Schumann’s story tells us that mechanically practicing is inadvisable. To get evenly-pressing and flexible fingers, piano players should use scientific piano textbooks of finger exercises and work hard. As the founder of the Russian piano school, Anton Rubinstein, said,"the biggest secret of playing the piano is to press in the right place, use correct fingering, and play the right keys.’The most widely-used piano fingering textbook in China is LePianiste-Virtnose by Hanon, a famous French organist and pianist. This fingering textbook, which has spread for more than one hundred years, is very useful for the training of independently-pressing, evenly-pressing and flexible fingers. However, because of the historical limitations, LePianiste-Virtnose has some obvious deficiencies. Therefore, I think learners can use Schmitt Piano Fingering Exercises at the same time. This textbook can be seen as updated version of LePianiste-Virtnose. The book introduces in detail points of practice, training methods and steps and teaching progress, which is very helpful for the training of basic skills of beginners. The latest teaching version of Schmitt Piano Fingering Exercises is analyzed in this paper, which, based on the original version, has more detailed fingering techniques, training methods, and practical teaching experience.This paper makes a comparative study between LePianiste-Virtnose and Schmitt Piano Fingering Exercises, whose musical theory and practice are closely linked. They the content of the two books highlight the current situation of beginners’fingering practice, but each have their unique emphasis. They can not only be used by preschool education majors, but art education majors as well.