Description
« About split beats »
Etude for both hands: on the split beats.
When the student moves on to a study whose difficulty has already been dealt with in this book, we engage him, before working on it, to play at least once each of the previous studies that contain this difficulty. Since it is developed only in degrees, and since each piece deals with it only in one of its aspects, the student will conceive that this relationship in the work of the same subject will make it easier for him to overcome the new difficulty it presents. The observations we made on split beats, Etudes No. 19 and 22, leave us little to add here. This piece is more difficult than the other two, because the beat splitting being of only one note in each hand, the interruption is extremely brief which requires a perfect balance in the hands, and a great equality in the way to touch the note. These sixteenth notes must be distinctly hit, but not loosened like the ones you mark, which would make this kind of line dry and hard; the expression must be as vivid as motion. (H. de Montgeroult)
