Piano Video Lesson: Should You Follow Pedal Markings in Your Scores?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin.

The question today is should you follow pedal markings in your scores? All too often you don't even have pedal markings, you wonder where should you pedal? And the answer to that is of course a subject for another video, but in a nutshell it's where harmonies change. You don't want to blur harmonies from one chord to another chord because you get a mess of dissonance. So whenever harmonies change that's the appropriate place to change pedal. But what about when you do have pedal indications in the score? Well, this comes down to two factors. Are they the composer's markings or are they the editor's markings? Well very, very few composers wrote pedal markings in many scores.

Most of pedal markings you're going to find are going to be editor's markings.

And these can be taken, you can try them, but really I would for the most part ignore them unless you find them helpful.

Now what about when composers write pedal markings? There are some places where Beethoven wrote pedal markings for example.

Even then with Beethoven as a good example the piano was a very different instrument in Beethoven's lifetime.

As a matter of fact the piano was a very different instrument early in Beethoven's life than later in his life. The piano was evolving and the pedaling that worked for Beethoven's piano doesn't necessarily work quite well in the modern piano.

Well what about for later composers if you have composers who are late 19th century or 20th century composers writing pedaling in? Should you follow them? Well somewhat. Sometimes you'll have markings for the unicorda pedal, the soft pedal. Should you follow those? Well in regards to the unicorda pedal on some pianos the soft pedal does almost nothing.

On a new piano for example where the hammers aren't grooved the change of the position of the hammer makes so little difference. Whereas other pianos it can make a dramatic difference in tone if the hammers are very heavily grooved and you push the pedal and the hammers move over as they do on a grand piano as you've probably noticed how the action moves and the hammers move. That puts the soft felt striking the strings getting a nice tonal change. Well did the composer make these unicorda markings for a piano with a dramatic change or with a subtle change? You have to weigh that in whether you follow the markings exactly. Now in regards to the sustain pedal there again different pianos have different levels of sustain, different rooms have different levels of reverb and the composer may or may not have been a great interpreter of their own music.

So I would say pedal markings are suggestions.

Try them by all means when their composer wrote them certainly and even if editors wrote them. But if they don't work for you don't feel compelled to follow pedal markings in your score because they may or may not work on your piano in your room and in the whole style that you're trying to achieve in your playing.

So I hope this is helpful for you. Again I'm Robert Estrin this is LivingPianos.com your online piano resource and for more videos like this go ahead and subscribe hit the bell and the thumbs up. I really appreciate it. It brings these videos to more people.

I'm Robert Estrin saying thank you to all of you.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/should-you-follow-pedal-markings-in-your-scores/

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