The Secret Life of
Musical Notation: Defying Interpretive
Traditions
- Amadeus Press
From Chapter Two
- "...of Sforzandi" (p.
70)
[...]
Working with one of my students on
the middle movement of Haydn’s
Sonata in E-flat Major Hob. XVI/49
brought back memories of the time
in which I learned the piece, during
my teenage years. I was now looking
at the Adagio with new eyes, thanks
to a greater concern about the complexities
of musical notation, but I clearly
remembered how its opening measures
proposed interpretive elements that
I had not completely understood at
an earlier stage. Essays written
in the 18th century, including Leopold
Mozart’s "Gründliche
Violinschule" (Complete School
of Violin Playing), published in
1756, assert that two-note slurs
should follow a principle of stress
and release – the latter being
always softer.1 This concept found
the same application in keyboard
playing, and was still at the core
of interpretive principles as the
century neared its end – Daniel
Gottlieb Türk, for example,
wrote about it in his "Clavierschule" of
1789, only months before Haydn composed
the Sonata in question. In light
of these precedents, several instances
in the middle movement appeared quite
enigmatic:
Example 2.1 - F.J. Haydn: Sonata
in E-flat Major Hob. XVI/49 - II.
Adagio e cantabile - mm. 1-10
What emerges from the melodic line
of these measures is rather unusual:
the placement of the symbol "fz" on
the resolving notes of the two-note
slurs in measures 3 and 7 seems to
contradict what some of the eminent
musicians of the time had affirmed
in their writings about such instances.
In my youth, I found great pleasure
in learning this movement, but I
recall distinctly the uncomfortable
feeling that had derived from placing
dynamic stresses on notes that I
knew were supposed to sound softer
than the ones that preceded them.
In view of this apparent contradiction,
I remember wondering whether I had
the moral authority to ignore either
the "sforzandi" or the
slurs, but submitted to the notion
that Haydn must have had a valid
reason to include such strong gestures
in the contemplative, lyrical opening
page of the Adagio. At that time,
the mechanical reproduction of notation
was such a relevant interpretive
aspect of my musical life that the
idea of finding alternative meanings
for "sforzandi" did not
even cross my mind. According tacit
assent to interpretive traditions,
as I had been trained to do, I applied
the emphases.
[...]
Decades of traditions have inclined
us to dismiss any idea that the music
of composers who lived in the baroque
and classical eras should be played
with abandon, or that the agogic
fluctuations found in works from
the nineteenth century should also
apply to those that preceded them.
It occurred to me that “romantic” is
a label that was posthumously attached
to the nineteenth century to refer
to a specific period of time. But
artists in that period did not describe
themselves “romantics,” any
more than people in the era that
we call Victorian referred to themselves
as “Victorians.” They
thought of themselves as “modern,” as
we likewise think of ourselves today.
The term “romantic era” aptly
alludes to a time in which emotion
and intuition achieved full recognition
in their centrality in the aesthetic
experience and fruition of art. The
contemporary connotation has more
to do with love, passion, fervor,
and other sentiments that can be
communicated in music with extroverted
effect. I sensed that this more recent
categorization perhaps lies at the
base of a modern misunderstanding:
if these most ardent feelings were
conveyed through art during the Romantic
era, then one might conceive anything
that preceded that period, by default,
as being subject to a lesser degree
of freedom and bound to be emotionally
more contained. Some modern commentators
have even advanced the idea that
the sparer interpretive notation
in music from the 1700s corroborates
a greater objectivity. One of their
claims, for example, is that the
rare appearance of agogic markings
in the works of composers such as
Haydn or Mozart would confirm that
tempo changes in these pieces should
be treated with circumspection. Were
the same interpretive criterion valid
in the performance of Baroque music,
I thought, Bach’s music should
then be subject to no inflection
whatsoever. Quite to the contrary,
it was none other than Carl Philipp
Emanuel Bach who disproved this supposition
in his "Essay on the True Art
of Keyboard Playing," a major
portion of which he devoted to the
illustration of what constitutes
a convincing premise: from the appropriate
mood of a piece to the inflection
suited to conveying it, he attested
that inflective freedom and tempo
fluctuations are fundamental principles
of interpretation.
As Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach defined
it, the degree of expression necessary
to convey emotions through music
was based on parameters that our
modern ears would deem objectionable.
Inflective freedom and tempo fluctuations
comprise some of the most powerful
means of expression available – whether
we apply them to the inherent dichotomies
between sections within musical structures
or as slight, localized modulations
to produce what today we define as “musicality.” I
wondered how Chopin must have played
Bach, Haydn, or Mozart. Though their
works were written for harpsichord
or fortepiano, this is unlikely to
have informed a different approach
to expression in his music making.
His interpretive insight probably
stemmed from principles of inflection
that applied generally to music as
a language. The notion that Bach,
Haydn and Mozart were not Romantic
composers must have never occurred
to Chopin: he probably played their
music with fervor, unaware that within
a century, demarcations of style
would restrain the interpreter’s
inspiration.
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From
Chapter Two - "...of Sforzandi" (p.
70)
[...]
Working with one of my students on
the middle movement of Haydn’s
Sonata in E-flat Major Hob. XVI/49
brought back memories...
From
Chapter Three - "...of Rinforzandi" (p.
103)
When asked
to describe the role of a rinforzando
that has been placed at the end
of a crescendo whose destination
is an fff, quite a few musicians...
From
Chapter Three - "...of Rinforzandi" (p.
115)
[...]
Mozart did introduce rallentando,
and the earliest traceable examples
emerge in 1785 in pieces such as
the Fantasie in c minor, K. 475 and...
From
Chapter Five - "...of Stretti" (p.
181)
Rather accidentally,
the subject of this chapter took
shape as I was comparing pedal markings...
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