Touch: A good example of a word. What does it mean? What is it exactly?
Re-reading an earlier post it strikes me that many people--many pianists--have no clue what it means. Having never been encouraged to distinguish between active and passive aspects of touch many pianists approach touch as a function of muscular activity, as in light or heavy touch.
But the kind I refer to is more nuanced. It has its origin in respect for the life of tone, especially for the quality of vibration at the edges of tone, so to speak: the place where the vibrations of one tone commingle with those of the succeeding tone.
Today I rode up in the elevator with a strange dog. Getting acquainted was more like an exercise in touch than most technical exercises at the piano.
