Most violinists use their left hand for intricate fingerwork, so why is the right hand used for more complex key pressing on the piano?
Peter Sheppard Sk忙rved
London, UK
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As a violinist, I can say that the right hand and arm executes more complicated sets of movements than the left. These are almost too many to enumerate: combining up and down bow motions and complex voicings (up to four strings played at once), pressure downwards on the strings from arm weight and/or muscular tension, bow angle (which controls how many of the bow hairs are in contact with the string) and articulation, the impossible-to-count possible beginnings and endings of notes.
What鈥檚 more, there are the hundreds of different bowing combinations that are necessary to control the timbres, colours, tone and syntax that the bow (which is always in motion, and with no consistent point of reference) has to produce in even the simplest music.
It shouldn鈥檛 be surprising that a number of great players who were left-handed, such as Rudolf Kolisch, played with their violin the other way round. The dominant hand needs to control the bow.
As for the piano, I can鈥檛 help you there!
Jerry Whitman
Barnham, West Sussex, UK
Early instruments were for accompanying singers. Lutes, mandolins and guitars required intricate plucking, which was carried out by the more dexterous hand. The pitch of the strings was determined by frets across the fingerboard, so the less dexterous hand only had to 鈥渟top鈥� the strings with fingers behind the frets, a much simpler task.
Viols still had frets, but also had bows. These instruments made the dexterous hand and arm鈥檚 task more dynamic, which it is suited to. The transition to violin, which had no frets, made the less dominant hand more responsible for pitch (tuning) accuracy, but still didn鈥檛 require as much dexterity as the bow. Don鈥檛 underestimate how difficult it is to control a bow! Having established that pattern, the rest is history.
Keyboard instruments, however, evolved so that a player could play tunes and harmonies simultaneously. So the dexterous right hand needed access to the dominant higher-pitched notes and the left hand the lower-pitched harmonies with their less complex patterns, thus determining the keyboard orientation. I am not aware of any mirror pianos. What鈥檚 more, over the centuries, the lower pitches have become more prominent and performing pianists are now equally dexterous with both hands.
Graham Jones
Norwich, Norfolk, UK
As an amateur violinist, I think the violinist鈥檚 left hand probably has an easier job than the right. In the violin family, the left hand controls the exact pitch of the note. By contrast, the right hand controls the loudness, style and tonal quality of the note, all of which probably require finer motor control.
Most left-handed people play the violin conventionally, but a few play in mirror fashion, which requires the instrument to be built to suit. So those who are very powerfully left-handed can go to a lot of extra trouble to get a left-handed instrument.
Charles Henry
Greensburg, Pennsylvania, US
In most Western music, the melody lines are in the upper voices. The soprano and alto parts contain far more notes per measure on average than the tenor and bass parts. Those upper notes happen to fall to the pianist鈥檚 right hand. Actually, it wouldn鈥檛 seem to matter, because a number of great pianists have been left-handed, including Glenn Gould and Daniel Barenboim.
I have played the violin most of my life and found that left-hand finger placement is largely learned in the first few years of study. Sensitive bow control is a major technical difference between a very good player and a virtuoso. Mastery of bow technique is the work of many years.
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