The short version: more women play the piano at the collegiate level and beyond than men, but they are woefully underrepresented among the winners of international piano competitions. Why? Because their hands are too small to play demanding repertoire – certain pieces are literally "out of reach" due to the large chords involved. For violin competitions, where reach is a less significant factor, there is no such gender discrepancy.
Large handed composers will start composing works with intervals you need large hands AND a small piano to reach. It's probably already happening on mini digital keyboards.
Not if these composers use a large keyboard and players with small hands use a small keyboard, as suggested in the article.
The classical guitar has been available in multiple sizes for many years now. I don’t think the situation you’re describing has become a widespread problem there.
The point of GP was that, if smaller keyboards are introduced, nothing stops composers with large hands from using them, resulting in even bigger chords. Hence in competitions you could end up with just smaller keyboards for everybody, unless you "regulate" the size based on hand size.
If the small keyboard was better for everyone then presumably we would already have them. But my guess is that a keyboard that's too small is just as bad as a keyboard that's too large, so the current size is a compromise based on the average hand size of pianists in the 19th century.
That's why they want 3 sizes. Humans haven't changed -that- much since then, just a bit taller and no doubt on average a little bit more finger reach. This will help solve that issue. I think it's a good thing.
Actually, a large-handed composers' large hands will stop them from using small keyboards. Their wider fingers causing unintentional adjacent note triggering, frustrating them as composers, and losing them competitions as players.
I used to play the harpsichord, whose keys are about 3-5 mm narrower than piano keys. I have huge hands with big fingers, so it was a challenge at first, but after a week it felt normal. I doubt that smaller piano keys will be much different.
I don't think this matters much for competition though? The existing classical repertoire will still be playable by a much larger percentage of women, bringing them into greater parity. Just let everyone use whatever size piano they want and it'll be an equalizing force, just like how reducing the height of the basket would be an equalizing force for height in dunk competitions.
But at least competitively, this is probably self leveling. Large handed composers they play big chords on a small piano, but they'll probably struggle to play "regular" music on this undersized piano.
There's only a problem if everyone has to use the same piano. If everyone can choose their own size piano then hand size isn't a factor
Are these competitions behind a screen? I'm only somewhat familiar with the Can Cliburn competition, and it seemed as though it was in the open on a stage.
If they aren't blind then I'd expect gender bias is a more obvious explanation (obvious because the effect that blind auditions have had in the gender make up of orchestras is obvious and dramatic)
I went looking for other data that might let us make conclusions about the situation. Here's what I found:
Cayea, Danelle, and Ralph A. Manchester. "Instrument-specific rates of upper-extremity injuries in music students." Organ 26.362 (1998): 11-14.
The high-injury-rate instruments (12.0 to 18.0)
included the piano, guitar, and harp. Women had
a higher overall injury rate thanmen (8.9 vs 5.9).
Small sample sizes for some instruments (e.g. only ~20 female trumpet players) make me doubt the solidity of the results, but it looks like bigger instruments are vastly more dangerous for women to play. The piano and organ are both pretty bad, with about 10% of women reporting injuries compared to about 7.5% of men. The double bass has the largest difference in the study, with 17% women reporting injuries compared to 8% of men. I have no idea how harps compare because there were exactly zero male harpists in the sample, but female harp was tied with female double bass as highest-injury sampled instrument at 17%.
Note that, as the studied population was "the students at a single institution's music major", an RSI injury this early might indicate the beginning of a chronic, career-limiting problem.
I can't find any competitions for the double bass that I might be able to use to confirm the correlation between injury rate and under-representation in high-level competition.
TL;DR I find it quite plausible that some instruments are objectively difficult for women to play as indicated by a higher level of upper-body injury.
> Why? Because their hands are too small to play demanding repertoire
The link does not and can not conclude this. It can not because it makes a confusing sleight of hand, with an inference between competitions, repertoire, and an implied necessary hand size which is incorrect.
It is incorrect because some of these competitions require repertoire from specific composers (e.g. Mozart or Bach competitions) whereas some do not. Entrants to the Rubenstein competitions may have the same repertoire as those to the Mozart and Bach competitions. Yet it compares winners of Rubenstein to Bach and Mozart.
>The short version: more women play the piano at the collegiate level and beyond than men
Such small numbers of people will reach a level of getting first prize in elite competitions, that these people are essentially irrelevant. In absolute terms, it sounds like males are massively excluded from piano up to elite levels. Perhaps piano sizes should be increased?
I've been playing piano for 30 years, have a degree in piano performance and have played in many competitions.
There are many type of competitions. There's the Chopin International Competition where only Chopin must be played. Also the Liszt, and others. There are also Bach competitions, which don't require large hands.
Then there's the Rubinstein and Van Cliburn where you have to adhere to a set of music. Like one sonata from the romantic period etc. Many different competitions and opportunities to play many different pieces with many different requirements.
I've also watched tons of competitions and know tons of pianists.
I think a smaller keyboard would make it easier for people with smaller hands, but a lot of these "big chords" that composers write, are not playable by anyone, and were never meant to be played as one chord. Rachmaninoff has chords that regularly stretch 3 octaves. No one has hands like that.
I've also met a ton of concert pianists (name dropping here, but for a reason).
I never met Alicia de Larrocha but she was 4 ft 9 and she played tons of very large pieces like Liszt.
I've have met Helen Grimaud, Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Andre Watts, Daniel Barenboim and a bunch of others. I know Lang Lang has largish hands, but the rest have hands very similar to mine, and I'm perfectly average.
Except Andre Watts, who had super thick hands and regular length fingers. I remember that Helen Grimaud was small, but had the strongest handshake. All of them can play all the great pieces.
Also in conservatories you'll often see a these kids that can play crazy pieces.
Do large hands help. Yes. But like anything, we adapt, and you learn your own technique. I don't think it's the same as having long legs in running. The biggest difference would be for people who can't reach an octave comfortably. After that, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th. You're in the same camp as the rest of us. Some I've seen can reach a 10th comfortably. But I can play a 10th, if I stretch, but I don't because that stretching will injure my hand over time. I play it as a quick roll.
I've also analyzed the technique of many of the greats in slow motion. Go watch Evgeny Kissin at 1/4 speed on YouTube. He isn't using his hand size to make the difference, he's just very efficient in his movement. He's the same height as me, but maybe with his fro slightly taller.
Look up Dorothy Taubman, and Edna Golandsky. I studied the Taubman techinique for years. What she did is (in the 70's) rented slow motion cameras and recorded great pianists and not so great pianists, and she realized, it wasn't so much the hand size but they way they used their hands. Great pianists had a natural rotations between notes. They were very naturally efficient. They made large jumps by moving quickly to the notes and then playing vs flying blindly. They move their hands and fingers to play notes vs just playing notes with finger movt. Many large discoveries, She turned it into a whole technique which Edna Golandsky later took over and made the technique her own. I had a lesson with Edna, and it was life changing. It was the realization that it doesn't matter what your hand size is but how you use your fingers, hands, arms and body together. I've been playing wrong for years. Because no one teaches you how to move. There's the "Russian technique" which will give you tendonitis. The movement hasn't been studied as much as it should be.
I learned 10 or so major concepts and swore off all other music for the summer and retrained everything. I studied that technique for a few years, and now I am able to play the Liszt's and Rachmaninoff's, given enough practice. It was that I was playing incorrectly. I didn't know how to move my body. It's an efficiency thing, that some discover naturally.
My biggest handicap is my learning speed. I personally think that the real thing that makes the greats great is their ability to naturally sight read. Think about it. If you can sight read very quickly you have solved all other problems with movement. Watch Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Ashkenazy on YouTube sight reading together as 20 somethings. This is something they are very naturally talented at.
Anyways, key size is only one tiny piece that I think will have diminishing returns.
Brilliant response, thanks for posting this. I'm a small handed pianist (secondary instrument, really a saxophonist) and am interested in whether you have links to resources (books, videos, etc) on the training and methodologies you're discussing.
Taubman made a series of videos called "Choreography of the Hands". You can now find them on YouTube.
They were originally VHS, and they are very eye opening. But there isn't anything like having a real lesson.
Yes, vote this up. It's too easy for people to just default to claiming that it's all a conspiracy by white males. Deeper understanding by a knowledgeable person is more useful that default claims.
No one thinks it's a conspiracy. It's just lack of empathy for people who don't have the reach that others and have to come up with workarounds and more effort than they would have if the piano had multiple sizes. What's wrong with having a couple of more options?
> Because their hands are too small to play demanding repertoire – certain pieces are literally "out of reach" due to the large chords involved.
There is an unspoken assumption here from the word "literally": pieces of classical music are written in stone and are not allowed to be transcribed to fit the player's hand.
That assumption is about as coherent as anything you'd read in a Qanon Facebook group because:
1. Transcriptions from dead composers like Busoni are allowed in competitions. So if you're dead and gone, your transcription is a "work". If you're alive and playing in a competition it's not allowed, unless the student is making emendations to an already transcribed piece. So Liszt-Busoni-student transcription, perhaps ok. Beethoven-student transcription, definitely not ok.
2. The above exception is probably rationalized on the basis that these transcriptions generally add another dimension to the music. But composers like Schumann were constantly voicing chords in their own music to comfortably fit their own hands, often at the expense of more complex or compelling voicing. Yet these composers' pieces are to be played exactly as written in the competitions.
3. Hell, Beethoven was known as a goddamned master improviser. Just throwing that in there...
4. At least for tonal music, the tones of most chords can be found within a single octave. Additionally, there's a perceptual phenomenon where one can leave out a doubled note in a widely spaced chord and the listener will perceive it nonetheless.
5. It turns out that human creatures are little analytical machines that can interpret the function of chords, voicings, phrases, etc. Outside of some very famous voicings of some very famous pieces, these humans can often leverage their ingenuity to find perfectly valid, functionally equivalent voicings that both fit their own hands and the character of the music.
The piano competition world essentially says to its students to learn all these things as part of a well-rounded musical education. But then it forces them to ignore them and adhere to a set of arbitrary strictures shared by most competitions. That might make sense if the strictures were necessary to judge all the performances on a more or less objective or at least normalized basis. But competitions rely on the taste, deliberation, and fairness of judges who generally hear different pieces from each student. So you get a vicious cycle of students who are rarely forced to think critically about how to transcribe pieces for competitions, and some them later become judges who lack those same skills and thus default to perpetuating the same unquestioned strictures of competitions.
Anyway, if you changed that stale culture, there wouldn't be any need to change the size of the pianos because adapting the music to one's hand would be common practice. And if one thinks of how resistant the current culture would be to changing any of those strictures to help students exercise such an important skill, what makes one think they'd be any more open to changing something as fundamental as the size of the piano keys?
> Transcriptions from dead composers like Busoni are allowed in competitions. So if you're dead and gone, your transcription is a "work". If you're alive and playing in a competition it's not allowed, unless the student is making emendations to an already transcribed piece.
Huh, interesting... Do you happen to have a pointer to any more info/context on this or a link to a competition’s rules where they say this? I played piano for a long time (although never at anywhere near an international competition level) and I’ve never heard of this; it seems like a really bizarre rule to allow competitors to make arbitrary changes to an already-altered piece, but not allow any changes at all for a fully original one. I feel like I’m missing something.
It seems like I know less about this than you, but: aren't most players with smaller hands effectively playing larger chords one key at a time, just doing it very fast so it's nearly the same?
I assumed that was just the common practice with people playing pieces their hands were not large enough to play, and that this is completely fine in a competition setting.
No one has made the claim that it would be fine if only men with small hands were negatively affected. The focus is on women in this instance for one reason: the data gathered and referred to in the comment you so disingenuously took offense to shows that women are disproportionately affected by this issue. Are men with small hands also affected? Yes, but that is not an identity half of the people on this planet identify with. I'd hazard to guess there are not a great deal of people who feel defined by the size of their hands (or discriminated against systematically).
Fortunately breaking down this barrier benefits everyone, regardless of sex. Feminism benefits all.
I have sympathy for the feminist movement, and the GPs post was needlessly hostile, but in their defense I'd like to phrase the argument a different way:
If we imagine a world where men and women hand-sizes were statistically equal, ought we be interested that some people have smaller hands and are under-represented in Piano competitions? If so, shouldn't a study that looks purely at hand-span as the variable, without regarding gender or ethnicity, ought to be equally useful as as impetus for change in both contexts?
Edit: Though interesting to note that there's been some effort at balance in terms of national acclaim, but if smaller handed competitors had access to scaled keyboards, it's possible that their would be better international recognition of female players.... or it could expose a gender bias.
I'm not going to downvote here, but please don't take a comment on gender differences to be inherently sexist, or assume that a comment has to be written in a way that is defensible to any argument that can be thrown at it (like men with smaller hands).
Saying that women, on average, have smaller hands than men is as sound as saying women, on average, have a higher likelihood of getting pregnant during sex than men.
It's one thing to point out how women have especially hard time competing due to hand sizes. Which is true and a fair argument to make in favor of among other things (such as sizes accessable for children, etc)
But saying that it's the most compelling argument is where it arguably becomes full on sexist.
Truth of the matter is most concert pianists and serious competitors have absolutely gigantic hands that most people do not posses. With very few and rare exceptions.
And that the current piano size is way too large for most people, esp. if they actually would like to excel at it. Or at a minimum a very large portion of the population, incl. geographic areas where people tend to be shorter on average.
> Truth of the matter is most concert pianists and serious competitors have absolutely gigantic hands
Is that true? I wouldn't have thought so, at all, and a few minutes googling "do most concert pianists have huge hands" digs up a lot of sentences like "Plenty of world-class pianists have small hands, including Alicia de Larroccha and Vladimir Ashkenazy, and yet they seem to be able to cope with the most physically demanding works in the repertoire." And sites talking about how it's a misconception that classical pianists have or need huge hands.
Jazz pianist with huge hands here :-) Huge hands often goes with height, and I have never noticed classical pianists are unusually tall. I can't think of any who are. Maybe people are thinking of Rachmaninov (6 foot 6). One would expect classical pianists to look like towering basketball players if, as you say, they mostly have absolutely gigantic hands. But I'd say there are many more under 6 feet tall than over it.
If I got a penny for every time Larroccha gets mentioned in the discussions about small hands and alt sized keyboards I would be a millionaire.
First of all, nobody, ever in their right mind would bring up Larroccha when talking about greats. Frankly the only times Larroccha would get brought up... is when talking about pianists with small hands. Severely limited repertoire.
Secondly, isn't that curious that they don't mention what the actual reach of Ashkenazy was? Well, it turns out that he doesn't have small hands, merely on the smaller side when taking the absolutely gigantic hands of every other concert pianist as a reference point.
I've heard by some people that Horowitz had small hands too (compared to whom, a 7ft tall giant who can reach a 15th?)
I'm not an expert in the matter, just am talking about your specific claim
> most concert pianists and serious competitors have absolutely gigantic hands
which I still doubt, unless you have data supporting that. Depends on what you mean "absolutely gigantic" and how you define "serious competitors" etc.
Also, almost every sentence in your reply uses exaggeration, so it does seem you allow that to yourself but insist others speak accurately. Maybe this is just a case of that, not to be taken literally. It seems so. And nobody apart from you mentioned limiting that matter to "great" pianists - a straw man.
Look, the very link OP has posted even has an image which shows that the handspan of the "internationally acclaimed pianists", it is wholly concentrated in above average handsizes. Which only a fairly small portion of the population has.
> As if it's fine that men with small hands can't compete (very common too btw), but oh-boy, since it's especially affects women, now it's a super big wrong that has to be corrected.
The site points out that adult men are affected. It also points out that it makes it more technically difficult for children learning: forcing them to learn unergonomic things that will not be necessary as their body grows.
But yes, it disproportionately affects women, which is an additional reason to be concerned.
The website is smallpianokeyboards.org, not letsonlyletwomenusesmallpianokeyboards.org, and there’s nothing sexist about mentioning that women are more frequently affected by this. Pointing out the intersectionality helps create a larger coalition of people who can help fix the problem, and doesn’t in any way prevent men from also benefiting from the solution. Piano players, women, men, and people with small hands can all be on the same side whether they are part of just one of those groups or all four.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that only women are disadvantaged, though I wrote much too hastily.
What the data shows is that between two groups with very different hand size distributions, the one with (on average) larger hands has a tremendously easier time playing. So, while some people will argue hand span is a secondary factor, in fact there is a critical need for smaller keyboards.
Women on average have smaller hands than men. And yes, there's also variance, so it affects men with small hands too. If it were corrected, men with small hands would be able to compete, and even more women would be able to compete. It would disproportionately help women, and it would also help men with smaller hands.
With words like sexist, it can be hard to distinguish between two different types of statements:
- the observation that a specific group is hurt by something
- the claim that individual bias against that group causes the hurt, or that the inverse group is to blame for the hurt
And to make things harder, sometimes people cause trouble by saying things that are deliberately ambiguous between those two, or sometimes saying one thing and sometimes saying the other. That's frustrating when it happens.
But in the opposite direction, it's also easy misinterpret someone as though they're saying the second thing, when they're really trying to say the first thing. And when someone gets misinterpreted like that, that's frustrating too. I think a pretty good compromise is to try to assume people are saying the first thing as much as possible.
There's really no reason to be so negative in the opening of your comment, it would read much differently without it and probably wouldn't be flagged.
That said, you're probably wrong in the same way that saying "anyone can be a great basketball player even if they're short, here's [insert example player who was short], if he can do it anyone can".
That's wrong in a few ways:
1. It's only talking about whether someone "can" be a great player, not how hard it is (much much harder for someone short).
2. It ignores the fact that there are probably other genetic advantages that a short player has, and that "make up" for the height, but are still rare in combination.
3. Even with that, I highly doubt someone can be the greatest basketball player of all time while being relatively short. It's just not possible today.
The situation with piano is the same, except it seems that, unlike in basketball, there's actually something to be done about this. What's the downside?
Wait actually, we do do that - for kids, there are lower baskets, and smaller balls! This makes it easier for kids to learn, because they have smaller hands, and we want them to actually learn!
In any case though, the main difference is that at some point, if you want a competition that is between people, you have to pick an actual size that people compete on, and whatever you choose, different genetic characteristics will give some people benefits over others. Piano playing, on the other hand, is a solo activity - so there is no reason why people shouldn't have individualized instruments, even for "competitions" (except for practical purposes).
> I’m mad because the individual is being deceptively discouraging in a way that is less informative and more harmful.
I mean, I guess that's a valid interpretation of GP's comment, but that's not how I would've read it. It might make more sense to not assume bad intent, or even if you do assume it, to inform. In any case that kind of communication is heavily discouraged here, so if you want to get your message across, using it is less than optimal.
Having said that, I also kind of disagree with the rest of your comment. You write:
> Consider the greatest programmer of all time. Is it fair to say that greater hand size confers faster typing ability which allows the greatest ever programmer to program faster? Sure.
I'm a programmer. I've played piano on-and-off most of my life, strictly as a hobby. I also have relatively small hands for a man.
Your comparison is wrong and uninformative. Is there a chance that there's a tiny difference in programming when it comes to hand size? Maybe, possibly, there is, but I highly doubt it, and even if there is, it's tiny. Some extremely competent programmer don't even touch-type, which slows you down way more. Just ask a few programmers whether hand size matters for programming, I assume most will give you blank stares.
In piano playing, there is a big difference, and everybody knows it. Just look through the thread here. Not every piano player agrees with the proposal, mostly for practical reasons IMO - but not many really deny that there is a difference.
I'm not sure why you didn't take me up on the basketball analogy, because I think it's a much closer situation to hand size in playing piano.
> The fact remains that being the greatest pianist ever comes down to hard work and innovation, not hand size or wrist constitution.
I mean, it comes down to both hard work and genetics. (Hard work itself is partially genetic as well, actually.) This is true with literally everything - some people are just genetically more gifted in the ways that are relevant to becoming world-class at {specific-hobby}.
> Saying that hand size might limit someone only serves to misleadingly discourage newcomers from entering the hobby.
I highly disagree with your premise here. I mean, sure, I totally wouldn't want anyone discouraged from playing piano if their hand size is small, and I get why you'd be upset if you think that that is the message being sent here.
But I think the problem is this whole "best in the world" thing. Most people are, obviously, not going to be "best in the world" at anything, and if they are, it'll probably be only in one very specific field. If that is your standard for entering a hobby/profession, you'll probably never get started with anything.
The amount of hobbyist pianists is vastly larger than professional pianists, and almost all of them would never dream of "going pro", let alone being best in the world. Nor would they consider the idea that they won't be best in the world as demotivational. It's a hobby, they do it for fun.
Even if professions being best in the world is not usually the bar you have to reach, e.g. you really don't have to be best in the world to get a job programming. Competitive areas are obviously different here, which is why the analogy between piano competitions and basketball is relevant in my mind, though obviously there are lots of not-best-in-the-world-but-still-pro piano players around.
The short version: more women play the piano at the collegiate level and beyond than men, but they are woefully underrepresented among the winners of international piano competitions. Why? Because their hands are too small to play demanding repertoire – certain pieces are literally "out of reach" due to the large chords involved. For violin competitions, where reach is a less significant factor, there is no such gender discrepancy.
For the long version, please read the link.