RAVEL | Gaspard de la nuit: Le Gibet: mm. 40–42

SPECIAL COLLECTION | Dorothy Brandwein’s Ravel Fingerings

Published on 4/28/2022 with the author’s permission

First appeared in Dorothy Woster Brandwein, "Divisi Fingering in Selected Passages from Ravel's Solo Piano Works" (DMA diss., University of Missouri–Kansas City, 1981), 48, 99.

46–47: “When possible, a pianist with small hands should divide the notes in wide-spaced chords, rather than rolling them with one hand alone. Those ninth chords having an interval of a second on the bottom or at the top of the chord (for the right or left hand, respectively,) are usually not difficult to reach since the thumb can play two notes simultaneously.... However, many other ninth chords, as well as all chords containing the interval of a tenth are inaccessible to small hands. Example 30 illustrates divisi fingering in situations where a small hand does not have the span necessary to play all the notes.”