Ten fingers sounds like plenty, until a piece starts moving this fast.
La Tarantelle is not a "brisk walk" fast. It's "running to take the chicken out of the freezer while your mom is ACTIVELY pulling into the driveway" fast. At full speed, each finger gets a tiny window to land, lift, and get out of the way for the next one. Absolutely ridiculous.
At the start, my fingers did not respect this window.
A thumb would show up where my third finger was supposed to be. Two fingers would go for the same key, like my brother and I reaching for the last piece of practically anything. Then the whole passage would collapse. Sigh.
What happened next is not my proudest moment. I would scream. Then I would get up and storm around the house, absolutely fuming, while my mother and sister enjoyed the free show. They laughed. I'd like to say I laughed too.
I did not. Maybe in a few years' time.
Looking back, I was performing the tarantella exactly as the legend intended. Rambunctious movement, a lot of noise, and the general energy of someone who had just been bitten by an actual tarantula.
Economics is based off of one main principle: scarcity. Our wants are unlimited, but our resources are limited, so we must decide how to use what we have. For my friends well versed with economic terms: allocate our resources efficiently.
Usually that means scarce money or scarce time. At high speed, the piano adds a new one: scarce fingers. Ten fingers to be exact, quite a ridiculous budget to work with. Each note in the piece needs a finger, and each finger can only be in one place at a time.
That's what fingering on the piano really is: allocation. You decide in advance which finger is responsible for which note, so you never end up with two fingers fighting over one key while another note goes unnoticed and feels lonely. Gotta spread the love.
When I left it to chance, the whole piece fell apart. When I wrote the fingering in and stuck to it, the same ten fingers suddenly seemed like enough.
Nothing about my hands changed. Same resources. I just used them more efficiently.
That's really how to deal with scarcity at its core. You don't get an eleventh finger, a longer day, or a slower version of the piece. You just get better at deciding how to allocate your resources.
My family still laughs sometimes. But these days, the laps around the house are a bit shorter. Some days.