Piano Video Lesson: How to Play Burgmüller: The Limpid Stream

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, Robert Estrin here with another tutorial lesson on how to play Bergmuller's The Limpet Stream. I have a bunch of Bergmuller tutorials for you. You can check in the description.

And this is another beautiful piece and what's great about these pieces of Bergmuller is that they're accessible if you don't have a virtuoso technique. They're wonderful pieces of music, each one with its own unique voice.

And this is no exception. And what I'm going to do for you first is play through the piece, then go through it thoroughly showing you how to practice all sections of it and how to get the most out of this wonderful piece of music.

A beautiful piece. Now first of all the name, The Limpet Stream, sounds kind of odd. It's actually from the French Le Courant Limpide. And if you translated that directly it would be The Clear Current. Still doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but you can hear from the sound of it, it sounds like a babbling brook, which I think would be a better name for this to translate. The limpet stream sounds really kind of odd in English, doesn't it? But getting back to the music. Essentially this entire piece is broken chords of one sort or another. So naturally learning it in chords is critical for being able to understand the harmonies and to develop good fingering. So I'm going to show you how to do the first section in chords and then also the second section. As you can see it's an ABA form. You have the first section, the second section, then a da capo, back to the beginning section. So the first section playing it in chords.

And you'll notice of course that there's repetition here. So what I recommend doing is to take very, very small chunks. If I was learning this, believe it or not, I would just take that much.

That doesn't sound like much, is it? It's basically three different chords. You start and end on the G major chord in first inversion.

The left hand of course is, you learn that in just a moment just by looking it over.

And so then you play the hands together in chords.

Notice I don't play the second chord because it's the same as the first chord. Just hold it for the two beats.

After you play that then of course you play it as written. Notice the double stem notes in the right hand. What is this all about? It's basically as if you have two different instruments playing. Imagine for a minute that the top triplets are played on a guitar strumming.

And the bottom part is maybe played with a viola or something.

On the piano of course you can play more than two parts at a time. Even with one hand there are two parts. So you must hold down that quarter note longer than its value of the eighth so they overlap.

Naturally you have to lift it up so it can replay again.

Now once you add the pedal it makes life much easier because the pedal can catch these notes. But it's essential that you practice holding those notes long enough so that the pedal has an opportunity to grab those notes. Because if you just played it as eighths and you tried to grab it with the pedal you might not be able to get the pedal in time. But by holding it long enough now and use the pedal there's plenty of time. And notice you want to pedal half measures. Now you can in the second measure since it's all just a broken G major chord. You could just hold the pedal for the whole measure if you wanted in the second measure. But doing half measure pedaling throughout the entire first section works just as beautifully as demonstrated.

Then release the pedal for the last note. Then we come to this beautiful middle section. Before I mention that though it's important to take note of the dynamics.

Essentially it's easy to remember as the notes get higher they tend to get louder. As the notes get lower they tend to get softer until the end of the entire section which ends gently as it's going up the G major arpeggio. So the middle section can also be practiced in chords. This is really a great way to learn this section.

You will develop good fingering and an understanding of the harmonic underpinnings of the music by practicing in chords first. And once again I recommend very very small sections at a time. I would just learn...

That much is enough.

So let's see.

Maybe two measures.

And get that memorized, the right hand.

And then learn the left hand.

And put it together in chords.

Now I'm going really fast and I'd recommend going drastically slower when you're learning this. I'm only going fast because I'm very familiar with this piece. But when you're first learning it you might have to go...

Especially when you're doing it from memory the first time.

And when you put the hands together naturally it will go very slowly.

And incidentally even if you're learning two measures at a time you may find it helpful to break it down to one measure. Just do that first measure until you got it memorized. Then do the second measure until you have it memorized. Then put the two measures together. Once again all in chords. Now here's what gets interesting.

You notice that the right hand is all a series of two note slurs. In order to make those come out you don't want it to sound like this.

It sounds very mechanical doesn't it? So the two note slurs are accomplished with a wrist motion going down on the slur and up on the second note. Essentially making the second note of the slur staccato. Now why is this? Well slurs mean to connect and staccatos mean to detach. Because the slur ends on the second note it is de facto detached which is staccato. To make matters even clearer Bergmuller puts in eighth rest. So you absolutely must release the second eighth of each group. What better way than with the wrist? I've talked about how the wrist plays staccatos with a down -up motion like this.

Well think of this as a delay down -up.

Down -up, down -up, down -up, down -up.

So it delineates the phrasing. It also makes you avoid accenting the thumb. The thumb being the strongest finger you know on because it's the weakest beat. It should be...

You don't want that. So the down -up...

And you can practice this very slowly. Down -up.

Notice the arm doesn't move up and down only the wrist.

Strike from above, from above. That makes the slur note stronger than the staccato note, the end of the slur. Then you finally when you got the right hand worked out that way you put the hands together.

And of course you connect more.

Notice the left hand also has slurs. You must delineate the slurs by not connecting what is not slurred.

And that is the way to learn this second section. Once again, first learn in chords. Just learn the right hand, the two note groups and get that memorized. Even if it's one measure, take the smallest amount you need in order to learn it in a reasonable amount of time. If it takes you more than five minutes, seven minutes to learn something, then take a smaller section because you want to be able to digest things quickly and easily. The smaller the section the easier it is to master it.

If you're learning it from the music, same thing. Take small sections even if you aren't memorizing the music. The small sections give you an opportunity to really study the score and make sure you're learning accurately right from the get -go.

And that is basically the secret to this section. And the very end of the course you have the...

You may need to practice that scale passage slowly with the metronome ticking to quarter notes.

Take whatever tempo you can play it.

Be sure to practice that with a decrescendo back to the original theme. It's not written, but it's logical. Descending lines tend to get softer just like when you're singing. You naturally get louder the higher notes. You want to have that same sound out of the piano so it gives it an organic quality like singing or a wind instrument or a boat instrument, that flowing line. So once you can play it at that tempo, then raise it a notch.

Raise the notch every time you not only get it perfectly, but it feels comfortable. And it may take you a little while, but you know what? You take your five minutes and you'll get the thing up to a better speed. Take it to the point of diminishing returns. You might not be able to get it up to performance tempo in one sitting. Don't worry about it. There's always tomorrow. Always take your practicing to the point of diminishing returns. Meaning don't beat your head on something that you're not making any progress with.

Always consider taking smaller amounts, taking hands separately. Try to break things down to smaller elements that you can absorb so that every minute of your practice is productive. You're not spending 20, 30 minutes doing something where you're not getting anywhere.

That's what my teaching is all about is maximizing your effectiveness in the work you do. And I do that with all my students. If you're interested in private lessons, you're welcome to contact me here at LivingPianos .com, your online piano store. Again, thanks so much for joining me. We'll see you next time. I'm Robert Estrin.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-play-burgmuller-the-limpid-stream/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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