Refingering
Lora Deahl, Brenda Wristen · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017
Fingering is a craft developed over an entire lifetime of experience. Wise choices not only expedite music learning but also provide a first line of defense against the difficulties of small-handedness. Chapter 5 explains why fingering decisions are so important for small-handed pianists and proposes innovative refingering strategies. Areas of focus include encouraging compact hand positions, repeating the same finger to recover space in the hand, optimizing sound production and voicing, moving longer fingers over shorter fingers, substituting the thumb for inner fingers, using positional fingerings to achieve maximum speed, substituting fingers, and retaking released notes silently. The chapter also provides a historical context for understanding that the standard fingering rules that are rigidly enforced today have changed and evolved over time.