LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Debussy: Pianos
built 608 days ago
One of Debussy's former students, Marguerite Long, noted that she remembered him saying: to make their hands "enter dedan"-get inside the piano, rather than strike it from above. This method encouraged his students to imagine the keys rising towards the fingers, like a magnet.
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Debussy was fond of unusual scale patterns. Medieval church modes and numerous scales from the orient were used extensively. One such scale is the pentatonic scale. As implied by the name, this scale utilizes a total of five notes (e.g., corresponding to the black keys of the piano keyboard) rather than the traditional eight. A pentatonic scale is illustrated below:
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The Welte-Mignon mechanism used in the Debussy recordings represents an extreme sophistication of the player piano’s perforations on paper and pumping feet. Sensors measure the pressures exerted on individual notes. Other systems, the program notes for the Pierian CD say, added musical nuances after the rolls were made. Unlike Ampico and Duo-Art, Welte recorded them in real time. Listening, one looks over the shoulder for ghosts. One is at a séance, with the great man rapping on the table from a distance to make his presence known.
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Pianos