Passacaglia (Händel - Halvorsen) - piano tutorial with explaination
Passacaglia - composed by Johan Halvorsen on themes by George Frederic Handel. How to play “Passacaglia”, piano tutorial with explanation and sheet music.
Sheet music for this version of the “Passacaglia” - please click here.
The arrangement of Passacaglia is a great example of how important it is to think and analyze the piece before playing, to look at the whole piece, and not to learn measure by measure. The left-hand part consists of only 8 measures, which are repeated many times. The right-hand part also consists of such 8-measure phrases, containing repetitive elements and always ending with the same 2 measures. It is very important to pay attention to fingering and keep it unchanged.
How do you play with both hands together, especially with faster tempo ?
The left hand should be played basically automatically, i.e. without looking at the keyboard. It means that once you start the phrase, you do not follow every note. Instead, you just check if you play the right key once playing the 1st not of the whole measure (you should look if you are "aiming" at the correct key with your 5th finger)
The right hand: it is worth playing as many notes as possible without looking at the keyboard: for example, when every second note is the same note repeated with the 5th finger (as it happens in the first 9 measures), in order to play it, we do not look at the keyboard, we focus on the notes that require our attention to play it. It is crucial to decide what we really need to focus on - we need to choose where our attention is necessary and which notes can be played automatically.
An additional tip to help you move to a faster tempo - if you already feel more confident with the notes and want to increase the tempo of the piece, then it is worth decreasing the number of notes that you accentuate. For example, while playing slowly, you may accentuate every second note and when increasing the tempo, it is worth accentuating every fourth or even every eighth note. This change of the accent will enable you to play faster.
