Talk:Three-hand effect

Remit

As the article states, it is about "a means of playing three registers simultaneously on the piano, as if one were using three hands." Piano music specifically written for three hands, or for pedalier, or for piano duet, therefore does not come within its remit.--Smerus (talk) 14:24, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Serious problems

This article has serious problems: firstly, although I immediately recognise the topic of the article (i.e. I've had a go at Un sospiro), I cannot see any particular justification for the title "Three-hand technique" - the only obvious reference in a bit of web-searchnig is a discussion at the Pianostreet forum. The third paragraph of the lead cites a paper titled "The Situation and the Importance of Three-Hand Pieces in Piano Education", which is written in barely comprehensible "Turkish-English", but seems to be about three-hand piano pieces, i.e. pieces for 3 real hands. Well, this simply isn't anything to do with Liszt's technique. I have not checked all the pieces listed, but it very much looks as though these are similarly irrelevant. (I also wonder if "register" is the right word: to me it sounds like something to do with organs. If anything, should this not be "voice"?) Imaginatorium (talk) 06:46, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I couldn't possibly agree more. I have had a go at clarifying the muddle in the first sentence, but the list of pieces certainly includes many pieces not giving the effect of three hands but using only two. In any case, I'm not sure why the three- (four-, five-) voice fugues common in Baroque keyboard music to be played by just two hands are not given any space here, though I can easily see and hear the difference in texture between the Liszt illustration and, say, the six-part ricercar from the Musical Offering. This difference needs clarifying, I think.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:24, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I suppose I ought to say it too: I had never heard of "three-hand technique/effect". The first thing that would help is a citation of a large standard musical reference, such as the Oxford companion to music, which describes this using the "three-hand" term. (I might call it "3HX".) And although I am familiar with much of the music mentioned, I still can't actually make sense of the thrust of this article. One problem of course is the ease with which particular word-strings can be found throughout the "literature", making it easy to pepper an article with apparent footnotes, whether or not they are really relevant or reliable. In particular, I am still looking for an original citation of this term at around the time it is said to have been coined -- in which case it is extremely unlikely to be in English.

Francis Schonken gave a cite: "it was first described by François-Joseph Fétis in 1837..." [1] and says we should include this... but it is not an article by Fétis in 1837, it is a book by Dana Gooley in 2004: she says that Thalberg "supposedly invent[ed] the 'three-hand technique'", but in the reference she gives (Belance-Zank, 1997) this is actually "three-hand texture".

But what was 3HX originally? A bit of searching in French turns up an article on Marie-Félicité Moke-Pleyel[2] - "Influencée par l'art du grand Thalberg (appelé "pianiste à trois mains"),...", which is now referring to Thalberg as the "pianist with three hands". Already this sounds vastly more convincing: Thalberg could play the piano in a way that listeners asked themselves, "Does he really have only two hands?" But (from the Gooley reference again): "Indeed, when he [Thalberg] was eventually prevailed upon to produce a treatise, he entitled it L'art du chant appliqué au piano. So Thalberg's "Art of melody" has become 3HX through Anglophone terminological inflation, aided by the academic paper-mill. Just for numbers, here's another French reference to Thalberg having trois mains, "three hands" in funny French quotation marks.

The only attempt given by the article to define quite what 3HX is keeps mentioning "three registers" on the piano. Well, the piano doesn't have three registers -- a flute does, for example: these are tonal ranges with distinct characteristics. So we have no way of knowing quite what might be bundled into the great 3HX bag. I personally think it would be best to limit this strictly to mention of Thalberg and the particular composing technique of putting a melody in the middle of a massive arpeggio. Imaginatorium (talk) 06:58, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that the Thalberg example offered in the text shows an upper layer sweeping up and down through the alleged "middle voice", supposedly in a different "register".—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:21, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, right. I've just pursued the claimed earliest example by Boely: you can see the cited study here: page 53. To call this "3HX", in any sense related to Thalberg seems to me far-fetched in the extreme. But then the author only says "achieves a three-hand effect when performed correctly", whatever that might mean. The reference is a dissertation provided as part of the conditions for obtaining a DMus at South Carolina; there are two occurrences of the 3HX string, the other sounds more like it, with something about arpeggios and a tune, but I can't see which study it refers to, without getting a copy of this thesis, which requires "ordering" even to find out the price, and "ordering" requires creating an account. I suggest this whole reference should be deleted as marginal. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:49, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Three-hand technique

This section copied from discussion in WP Classical Music projecy, per suggestion of Imaginatorium - Smerus (talk) 09:09, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

User:Kazvorpal has created the article Three-hand technique, a reasonable and useful topic. However, s/he insists on adding to it a list of pieces which are either unsupported by sources, or (for the most part) simply pieces for two, three or four hands, or for keyboard and solo instrument, not representative at all of three-hand technique which, as s/he correctly reports, is "a means of playing three registers simultaneously on the piano, as if one were using three hands." When I twice removed these pieces (on the last occasion one by one, explaining why they were not appropriate, and adding a further explanation on the article talk page), Kazvorpal reinstated them, adding helpfully on the second occasion that "Again you show that you're a bad editor, as well as incompetent to curate this article." In view of my wickedness and incompetence, perhaps other editors might care to look at the article and offer their opinions. --Smerus (talk) 20:45, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Actually, the sources were in the article, but you were either too lazy or incompetent to notice them. I have now duplicated three of the footnotes in the list you kept foolishly deleting without checking for yourself, as well as adding a new one for two more. You can be a big boy and check the others, or at least a real editor who tags them as questionable until I get around to it, instead of a bad editor who wipes out whole swathes of an article simply because you are ignorant of whether such sources exist.
—Kaz (talk) 20:51, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

I invite editors to check for themselves the citations which Kazvorpal offers. Inspection of IMSLP will indicate that nearly all of these pieces are in fact originally written for three hands, pedalier, duet, or keyboard and solo instrument. A number of them in addition are either by non-notable past composers or contemporary amateurs who have self-uploaded their works to IMSLP. Kazvorpal's other remarks speak plainly for him/her.Smerus (talk) 21:56, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

There are no citations in this article, only to the individual works. Kazvorpal would get a better hearing if there was less antagonism and more focus on improving the article. - kosboot (talk) 01:26, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Kosboot is of course correct, but inspection of the actual works in IMSLP (whither the citation links) reveals to any music-reader their non-"three-hands technique" status.Smerus (talk) 07:07, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

There are indeed problems in the article: can @Kazvorpal explain how the *Turkish paper (ref 1) is related to playing three parts with two hands? (* Sample sentence: "However, it’s considered to be some deficients about teaching three-hand piano pieces, which are the preliminary of four-hand ones." Can anyone say what this means?) As @Smerus has said, many of the listed pieces are titled "For three hands", and are thus irrelevant to the topic as described by the first sentence of the lead. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:03, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I've never heard of the phrase "three-hand technique" used except in this article. There really is no "three-hand technique'; composers sometimes use 3 staves to delineate musical lines. As such, it's not a technique but a way of clarifying musical notation. - kosboot (talk) 11:47, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Re. "There really is no 'three-hand technique'": apparently there is, seems like it was first described by François-Joseph Fétis in 1837 as invented by Sigismond Thalberg ([3] – I suppose our article on the technique should mention that article by Fétis). See also Sigismond Thalberg#Thalberg as composer which touches on this (and cites some Fétis but not sure whether it's the same article). In our Thalberg article also this source: Belance-Zank, Isabelle: The "Three-Hand" Texture: Origins and Use, in: Journal of the American Liszt-Society 38, 1995, p. 99–121 – which may be a useful source to Wikipedia's three-hand technique article. Anyone with access to that Belance-Zank article? Further: Mendelssohn got interested & composed three-hand technique pieces: [4] – [5]

This does however not solve the issues with the haphazard list of pieces, apparently rather for three hands than well-chosen examples for the technique. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:59, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Some better examples would be Liszt's Un sospiro, as well as some of his Schubert song transcriptions (e.g. Sei mir gegrüsst, Ave Maria, and Der Lindenbaum). But sources would be needed (and preferably, sources explicitly listing them as examples, which would be even better than just citing a score). Double sharp (talk) 14:28, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Actually, sources are only mandatory for controversial claims, in Wikipedia. You just named one of the most famous three-hand technique pieces, by one of the three men most famous for using the style. That would be an example of something that does not absolutely need to have a citation. Overdoing demands for citations is a bad habit that new editors pick up when they run into people trying to censor valid information from articles using wikilawyering: Taking general guidelines and demanding they be followed to an extreme, and completely removing anything they can on a technicality, instead of actually fixing them. — Kaz (talk) 03:48, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Francis for this. Can you or someone advise on editing the actual article, since as you say the pieces in the list (which are not exactly, or at all, "well-known" as the article states) are clearly not examples of 'three-hand texture/technique' and this section of the article (at least) is therefore erroneous and misleading. As Kazvorpal seems unprepared to accept this, is this a case for going to an administrator?--Smerus (talk) 14:00, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

You say that as if you had not deleted three pieces that already had citations proving they were actual three-hand technique pieces, as well as others that were easily verified, something I demonstrated by immediately footnoting two of them. The problem isn't my not accepting your bad edits, it's you making them. When you delete large chunks of an article wholesale that are at least partially valid, you are committing bad editing, especially when your mistake is pointed out to you and you do it again. Perhaps you only have a handful of edits, since clearly you don't understand how Wikipedia works yet, but you need to learn before you go around mutilating articles in your ignorance and general incompetence. — Kaz (talk) 03:39, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I'd suggest less discussion of procedures and ripping on co-editors, and instead continue with providing refs and adding of verifiable material (gave some suggestions above), and/or removing of unverifiable material. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:24, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

• I suggest that all further discussion of this topic should take place on the article's talk page. Imaginatorium (talk) 05:51, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposed new title

I suggest that the title should be changed to Three-hand effect. Both forms of 3HX occur, but "3H-technique" is usually quoted, since it is not a technique for three hands, but rather a technique for two hands to provide (perhaps!!) a "3H-effect". Also, I think the "effect" term is rather more common in the more carefully considered bits of writing. Imaginatorium (talk) 10:07, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I support this proposal and have boldly carried it out.--Smerus (talk) 10:41, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Article currently is not well balanced

@Smerus: has put a lot of work into tidying up this page, and I do not want to sound uncooperative or ungrateful. But I think the page currently is simply not accurate or explanatory. Here is what I believe happened.

• Thalberg, being an amazing pianist, played so people said "How does he do it? Has he got three hands?" ... and he gained the nickname "trois mains" (French, of course). In particular, this term came to be applied to pieces with extended arpeggios across the whole range of the piano, with a melody played in the middle, by skillful bits of finger switching.

• Later, terminological inflation caused by the academic paper-grinding apparatus caused the metaphorical "Thalberg has three hands" to escalate to a technique, which could retrospectively be applied to practically anything having independent voices played on the keyboard.

• To create this article, much google-scraping was done, finding occurrences of "three-hands" in many places. A selection of these were adopted as "sources"; some fairly reasonable, others frankly utterly marginal, applying this term retroactively to any piece requiring independence of fingers over more than two voices.

So my criticisms are roughly as follows:

"The three-hand effect (or three-hand technique) is a means of playing three registers simultaneously on the piano with only two hands, but producing the impression that one is using three hands."

No: the piano does not have "three registers". Playing a four-part fugue should give an impression of four voices, but it would not sound to a pianist as though the player had three or four hands. To a non-pianist listener it is difficult to say what it would mean for them to form the impression that the player had three (or four) hands.

"Typically this effect is produced by keeping the melody in the middle register, whilst accompanying it by arpeggios in the treble and bass registers."

No, the actual effect has the accompaniment going right through the middle of the range (which I suppose would be the middle register if there were one).

"The effect had been prefigured by composers including Francesco Pollini (1762–1846), a pupil of Mozart, whose 32 esercizi for the piano (1829), based on techniques found in the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Jean-Philippe Rameau, included music written on three staves, and using interlocking hand positions, to generate the impression of three, or even four, hands."

I have not seen what Cvetko says, but in no proper sense at all is any of this a "prefiguring" of Thalberg or Liszt's music, except in the trivial sense that composers since the keyboard was invented have been combining voices to be played by two hands.

"Another early example exists in an 1817 caprice in E-flat Major by Alexandre Pierre François Boëly. This four-voiced composition has two melodies in bass and treble, with a third melody harmonized in sixths played simultaneously between them."

Again, I think this is just terminological inflation. Actually Kim's DMus thesis (which this is) contains two occurrences of "three-hand", but only one can be sufficiently read on Google books to find out which study he is talking about. The one in Eb major is a pretty humdrum finger exercise, not remotely resembling anything that would remind anyone of three hands. (More likely, one would be amazed if it turned out to be one of Godowsky's for one hand!) And yes, this is a source, a proper printed book, only it isn't. No price can be found, and it is unclear if it is actually available in printed form. It is a DMus thesis, for goodness sake; it offers no pearls of wisdom, just enough dregs which collected together fulfil the conditions for the degree. Dr Kim gets quite good comments from his students, and no doubt is a competent and enthusiastic teacher, but I do not think this is his meisterwerk. The thesis is about 60 pages, a "textual analysis" (or similar, I'm writing from memory) of the studies by this long-forgotten composer, so each study gets about a page. Half of that is an example, much of the rest is banality, listing harmonic sequences, leaving about two lines for comments. On this one he remarks on how bits of it are written in the alto clef (ouch!! first thing I noticed, of course), and also the ditty about "three-hand effect when performed correctly". I do not think this is worthy of inclusion in WP.

And of course, the omission: no hint of how this overworked label came about.

Lurking in the background is another confusion. Who can have failed to be gobsmacked the first time they encountered something written on three staves. Having learnt in early lessons that the top staff is for the right hand, and the bottom staff for the left hand, they cry: What? Do I need three hands? Well, no. Some music written on three staves is very very difficult, other pieces much less so -- Grieg's To the spring, for example, is not particularly difficult, and uses three staves for readability as much as anything else. It would be a good idea for the article to point this out, perhaps with more examples.

So I have voted against confusing the general public with this as a DYK. Imaginatorium (talk) 16:55, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

* Imaginatorium, I suggest you are getting a little over-excited. What 'you believe happened' is WP:OR and unacceptable for Wikipedia. What is in the article and cited is acceptable by Wikipedia standards. If you wish to added cited and sourced material to the article you are welcome to do so. If the references are wrong, correct them (and some of them, placed by an earlier editor, were corrected by me) - but to say that some of them were 'scraped' is again WP:OR - either they are valid as references or they are not. (By the way, Master's and Doctoral theses which are online, as Mr. Kim's is, are acceptable as references. They don't have to have a price attached). If you 'haven't seen what Cvetko says', then in my humble opinion you have no right to contest it. kenneth Hamilton suports what Cvetko says and he is a better authority than me, and maybe even than you. Todd's book on Mendelssohn, and the books by Kenneth Hamilton, Rosamond Harding and Arthur Loesser, which I added to the article, are I think perfectly acceptable and respectable and provide adequate backing to the article - and to the DYK hook. Your reaction to the DYK perhaps indicates that you are not familiar with this feature of Wikipedia, which works by giving an intriguing 'hook'. If you expand it to 'playing the piano with two hands can sometimes sound like playing the piano with three hands' you would I think not dissent; but the hook would be rather less attractive. Best, Smerus (talk) 06:46, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Over-excited? Possibly, but I think Imaginatorium nevertheless has a good point. This article is currently in a state of flux, and it would be a good idea to wait until it has settled down a bit before putting a DYK "hook" out there that might only lead readers back to a version revised to a conflicting point of view even before the hook was cast in the water.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:38, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes but - DYKs can only be initiated within 5 days of an article being started (or 5x expanded). So waiting until 'settling down' is not an option for this function - unless the article is truly dysfunctional, in which case AfD is called for. I don't think anyone would argue that the latter is the case. Of course, like every article in WP, it could do with improvement. Attracting potential editors to the article (e.g. via DYK) is one way of working towards that.-Smerus (talk) 08:18, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Hook is by the way now explicitly sourced - see section above.--Smerus (talk) 06:39, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Busoni

See Klavierübung (Busoni)#Book 4: "For Three Hands" — just ran into this, might contain material for this article. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:23, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Francis, just looked these up on IMSLP, very interesting.--Smerus (talk) 20:30, 29 July 2016 (UTC)