| Series | Music--scholarship and performance
Music--scholarship and performance. ^A161426 |
| Contents |
Foreword / by Malcolm Bilson -- 1. Background for the study. Point of view ; Invention and gradual acceptance of the piano. The musical need ; Cristofori's invention ; The piano's ultimate triumph -- Some influences on performance. Music and rhetoric ; Empfindsamkeit (Sensibility) ; Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) ; Haydn and Mozart ; Beethoven and the rhetorical spirit ; Beyond Beethoven -- The musical score. Changes in the classic era ; More-recent developments -- The composers and their pianism. Haydn ; Mozart ; Clementi ; Beethoven ; Czerny's observations on Beethoven performance -- 2. The fortepiano circa 1780-1820. General characteristics of construction -- Expansion of keyboard compass and instrument size. Changes in range and construction ; Beethoven's extension of range ; The problem of "note restoration" -- Tone and touch -- "Mutations": hand stops, levers, and pedals -- English versus Viennese fortepianos. Actions and sounds ; Attempts to modify the Viennese action -- Four classic composers and their fortepianos. Composer-performers and piano makers ; Haydn, Mozart, and Clementi ; Beethoven -- Instruments played for this study. Viennese instruments ; German instruments ; English instruments ; Personal observations -- 3. Dynamics and accentuation. Playing classic period music on a modern grand piano -- Notation and interpretation of dynamic indications. Introduction ; Orientation to composers' notation and unfamiliar terms ; The scope of forte and piano ; Concinnity of dynamics and form ; Filling in the missing dynamics ; Terraced and graduated dynamics -- Repeats. Repeats in sonata-allegro form ; Inner repeats in the minute or scherzo da capo -- Evolution of calando and related terms. Origin, use by Haydn and Mozart ; Clementi's definition and usage ; Use of calando by Beethoven, Hummel, and Czerny -- Qualitative (dynamic) accents. Indications for accents ; Composers' uses of accent indications ; Rinforzando -- Types of accentuation ; Accentuation in Beethoven's music, the annotations to Cramer's etudes. The annotations to etudes IX and XII ; Schindler and Beethoven -- An assessment of the annotations to Cramer's etudes -- 4. Use of the pedals. The damper pedal: introduction ; Types of pedaling. Rhythmic pedaling ; Syncopated or legato pedaling -- Stylistic use of the damper pedal. Contemporary descriptions and uses ; Planning appropriate pedaling -- The development of pedal indications and their ambiguities. England and France ; Germany and Austria -- Special effects by Beethoven, Dussek, Clementi, and others. Indications that create distinctive timbres ; Indications that highlight form ; The "Moonlight" Sonata -- Adjusting early pedal indications to the pianoforte -- The una corda pedal -- 5. Articulation and touch. Introduction -- Nonlegato, legato, and the prolonged touch. Nonlegato, tenuto, and heavy light execution ; A shift toward more legato ; Legato and legatissimo touches described in tutors ; The prolonged touch -- The language of the slur. The expressivity of short slurs ; Longer legato groups and slurs -- Do all slurs indicate attack and release? ; Dot, stroke and wedge -- |
| Contents |
6. Historical technique and fingering. Point of view ; Specific functions of technique. Role and position of the arm and hand ; Finger technique ; How to practice ; Staccato touches ; Playing the incise slur ; Repeated notes, octaves, and glissandos ; Summary -- Increasing technical demands. Clementi's introduction and gradus ; Beethoven's exercises and other fragments -- Fingerings by Clementi and Beethoven -- 7. Ornaments. Introduction ; Appoggiaturas and other one-note ornaments. Identification ; The short appoggiatura ; The long appoggiatura ; Afternotes and grace notes -- Afternote and anticipatory performance of other short ornaments -- The trill. Overview ; Evolution of the trill start ; The trill start in works of Haydn, Mozart, and their contemporaries ; The trill start in works of Beethoven ; The short trill and the schneller -- The mordent -- The turn and the "quick" turn. Haydn's notation of turns and mordents ; Interpretation of Haydn's turn "over the dot" ; Early and anticipatory turn realization ; Beethoven's ambiguous placement of the turn sign -- The inverted turn -- The trilled turn -- The double appoggiatura -- The slide -- The arpeggio -- Improvised ornamentation -- 8. "Mixed meters" and dotted rhythms. Mixed meters. The theory ; Application of the theory -- Double-dotting and overdotting. The theory ; Application of the theory -- 9. Choice of tempo. Elements in tempo change. Interaction of meter, note values, and tempo headings ; Practical results of these customs ; Additional elements in tempo choice -- The basic tempo groups. Contemporary descriptions ; Which was the slowest tempo? ; Diminutive terms, andante and andantino ; The changing allegro ; The meaning of assai -- Increasing individualization of tempo -- The metronome. Beethoven and the metronome ; Problems related to Beethoven's metronomizations ; Universal problems of metronomization ; The "Hammerklavier" sonata -- Six metronomizations of Beethoven's sonatas. The haslinger Gesamtausgabe, Czeryny and Moscheles as metronomizers ; The Gesamtausgabe and Czerny's other metronomizations compared ; Tempo trends in Europe ; Czerny's metronomizations of the 1840s and 1850s ; Moscheles's metronomizations, comparison with Czerny's ; Conclusion -- Fast and "moderate" minuets ; Beethoven's "moderate" minuets: his metronomizations, extrapolated tempos, and present practice ; Extrapolation of other tempos. For Beethoven ; For Clementi -- 10. Flexibility of rhythm and tempo. Introduction -- Rhetorical accentuation by agogic means. Agogic accentuation of notes ; Rhetorical rests ; The fermata -- Ritardando and accelerando -- Sectional change of mood and tempo -- Eighteenth-century tempo rubato. Freely shifting contrametric rubato ; Contrametric rubato by uniform displacement ; Contrametric rubato in the piano works of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven ; Descriptions of contrametric rubato in French tutors -- Tempo flexibility as tempo rubato. Early evidence of agogic rubato ; Agogic rubato in the piano works of Haydn, Mozart, and Clementi ; Agogic rubato in the piano works of Beethoven -- Schindler and Czerny on tempo flexibility in Beethoven's piano music -- 11. Performing Beethoven's Bagatelle op. 126, no. 5. Use of the instrument ; Dynamics and accentuation ; Slurs, articulation, and fingering ; Pedaling ; Tempo choice and tempo flexibility ; Repeat of the middle section ; Critical report. |
| Abstract |
Performance today on either the pianoforte or the fortepiano can be at once joyful, musicianly, expressive, and historically informed. From this point of view, the author examines the principles of performing the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and their contemporaries as revealed in a variety of historical sources: their autographs and letters, early editions of their music, original instruments, and contemporary tutors and journals. She applies these findings to such elements of performance as dynamics, accentuation, pedaling, articulation and touch, technique and fingering, ornaments and embellishments, choice of tempo, and tempo flexibility. Familiarity with the Classic conventions provides a framework for interpretation and an understanding of the choices available within the style, the amount of freedom a performer has, and which areas are ambiguous. This detailed study, copiously illustrated with musical examples, is invaluable for professional and amateur performers, serious piano students and their teachers and students of performance practices by Scarlatti and Clementi. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 487-496) and index. |
| LCCN | 87045437 |
| ISBN | 0253343143 |
