The pianist's hand: anthropometry and biomechanics

Abstract

The aim of the study was to obtain an overall view of the extent of variation in hand size and joint mobility in professional pianists. Twenty dimensions of hand size, 17 ranges of active movement and 11 features of passive joint mobility were tested on both hands of 127 male pianists aged between 17 and 63 and 111 female pianists aged between 16 and 64. The male hand showed significantly higher mean values than the female hand in all absolute hand-size variables with the exception of fingertip prominence 3–5. The lateral differences were numerically slight, although occasionally significant; the variability of hand-shape dimensions, except in the case of finger-tip prominence, was less than 10%. All mean values of finger spans with the thumb were greater in men than in women. The same tendency prevailed in the case of finger spans without the thumb, although the differences were only occasionally significant. Five of the 20 finger spans were on average significantly greater on the left than on the right. The rest of the ranges of active movement (flexion of the first metacarpophalangeal joint, wrist abduction and forearm pronosupination) were greater on average in the women. The variability in ranges of active movement was between 5% and 26%. With regard to passive mobility, significantly higher mean values for all characteristics were apparent in the women and, with one exception, there were significantly higher values for the left hand. The variability here ranged between 11% and 38%. A weak negative correlation prevailed between joint mobility and age. This was only calculated for the male pianists. The corresponding characteristics in the right and left hand were highly correlated, whereas the characteristics within one hand were, on the whole, weakly correlated. Out of 1512 intercorrelations, 1387 coefficients were below 0·6. There was a conspicuous frequency of negative relationships between hand-size factors and mobility. There was a tendency for greater mobility in pianists than in non-musicians. The question of the relevance of data on hand size and mobility when data on muscle strength are lacking is discussed. The possibilities of the practical use of the available data for the assessment of the manual aptitude of a pianist are illustrated by means of a biomechanical hand profile and the significance of the data for keyboard design in general is pointed out.