🎹 What Comes First: Music, Instrument, or Pianist?
- Jean Muller
- May 24
- 2 min read
This question isn’t rhetorical — it shapes everything about how we approach piano technique.
When facing a technical difficulty, many pianists ask:
What am I doing wrong?
But I believe a better question is:
What does the music ask of me?
Then:
What does the instrument require to fulfill that musical idea?
Only then do we ask:
What must I do to make it happen?
This is the order of priorities I work with:
⸻
1. The Music
The music comes first. It defines the artistic intent, the emotional shape, the phrasing, the color, the energy.
Technique is not the goal — it’s the tool.
As Josef Lhévinne once wrote, pianists should aspire to a touch as delicate and beautiful as Cluny lace.
That search for beauty applies not only to interpretation, but also to the sound itself. We must listen, question, and refine.
⸻
2. The Instrument
The piano is not passive.
It has mechanical laws, physical limitations, and acoustic possibilities.
It doesn’t respond to our intention — only to what we physically transmit.
We must understand what the instrument needs in order to give us what we want.
⸻
3. The Pianist
We are the adaptable element.
It is our task to discover the movement, the biomechanics, the gesture that allows the musical idea to pass through the instrument — expressively and efficiently.
⸻
But this hierarchy is only meaningful if we cultivate one essential ability:
awareness.
Without it, we can imagine we are playing legato — while the sound is choppy.
We may think we are playing with color — while the piano tells a different story.
To work truthfully, we must train ourselves to really hear what we are doing — not what we wish we were doing.
Awareness is the bridge between intention and sound.
And through it, our technique becomes not just efficient — but expressive.
Soon, we’ll begin exploring how this framework shapes practical technique: from how we touch the key, to how we build sound, to how we organize practice.
✨
JM | Art of Piano
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