Notes Become Music

A Guidebook from the Viennese Piano Tradition

Walter Fleischmann, Robert Crow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367202262
• eBook ISBN: 9780429535888
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Notes Become Music: A Guidebook from the Viennese Piano Tradition addresses the many unwritten nuances of dynamics, articulation and agogics as an expression of fundamental principles of a common European musical language. It treats the score as an incomplete musical shorthand that outlines the compositional and interpretive imperatives implicit within it, drawing on historical records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and detailed comparisons of works to underline the author's presentation of Viennese tradition.

This book is not primarily concerned with questions of style or interpretation. Rather, it explains the many facets of musical notation that were taken for granted by composers who assumed a knowledge of the piano tradition of their day. Notes Become Music informs not only those students in countries where the central European music tradition is still unfamiliar, but also a younger generation of Europeans who have grown up without a living connection to their musical past.

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Introduction

Musical Principles and the Limits of Notation

Music is an affective experience. It is an emotional world imagined in all its nuances by the composer, though he is unable to commit it to paper in its entirety even with the most sophisticated notation. Precisely the many details and subtle differences that express the character of the piece can only be inadequately hinted at in the notation. What is left is a mere representation of pitches, an imperfect description of the length of notes and their interconnection (articulation) and an under-differentiated indication of their loudness. Lacking the breath that brings the whole to life, the musical score can convey no more than a sterile succession of notes. Here is plainly a need for a clarification of those unwritten principles of musical language to which humans are subject and by which the composer is naturally also bound. These principles, lying within the area of dynamics, articulation and tempo-variation (agogics), must be considered if music’s shadow-picture in the notation is to be transformed into living music.

In this present book, it is only possible to illustrate principles, possibilities and limitations and to correct mistakes and misunderstandings. However, such considerations in no way amount to an interpretation. They simply provide a general framework within which it is up to the pianist, through his imaginative musical conception of a many-faceted, sensitive and spirited performance, to bring the musical work to life.

Though the various aspects of a performance are here treated separately according to the parameters of dynamics, articulation and agogics, they always belong together and can only be regarded as a whole. Observing the principles described here in no way reduces the possibility of different interpretations. On the contrary, it helps the performer to a subtler depiction of the musical content. Unfortunately, our notation fails to reflect such subtleties. Here is a summary of its shortcomings:

1. Dynamics are indicated by a series of stepwise gradations (ppp, pp, p, mp, mf, f, etc.) which fail to represent subtler intermediary values. For the most part, only a single dynamic range such as p (iano) or f (orte) is specified for one or more phrases, without touching upon more subtle nuances within the phrase. A crescendo or diminuendo may be indicated from time to time—but not always—although the music itself is in constant need of dynamic differentiation.
   Vertical dynamics within chords and in different voices are not notated at all in piano writing up to the end of the nineteenth century (though such indications are indeed present in orchestral and chamber-music scores), nor is there a way of notating the difference between stronger and weaker beats. Through the frequent presence of an incomplete bar at the beginning of a piece—the upbeat or anacrusis—we only know that an emphasis immediately after the bar line is implied.
2. Notation recognises only fixed durations that amount to half of their nearest respective value—half note, quarter note, eighth note and so on, and their respective dotted values which extend these durations by half. Apart from this, the only possible way to represent more finely differentiated durations is by connecting the various values with ligatures (ties). In addition, there are triplets—the division of a duration into three equal, shorter values—as well as quintuplets, sextuplets or any number of notes indicated in small print, which are to be played during the duration of the prescribed value. Music itself, however, continually displays a significantly subtler range of note-values, demanding a shortening or lengthening of notes that would be too time-consuming and complicated for a composer to notate and would also make reading more difficult. It is left up to the interpreter of the music to arrive intuitively at an appropriate grasp of such aspects of the work.
   Progressive gradation from the shortest of touch to the sustaining of a note for its full notated value (for example a quarter note) is represented in our notation in only three steps (legato, portato, staccato)—staccatissimo is seldom indicated.
3. Music is notated metrically—with mathematical precision—whereas a musical performance demands a constant, subtly differentiated deviation from this exactness, even if no accelerando, ritardando or rubato is indicated. However, such specifications, even with additional instructions such as poco, or molto, tell us nothing of how, or to what extent, this is to be done. Neither is a lengthening or shortening of dotted note-values, or an irregular distribution of quarter notes within the bar—as for example in waltzes—recorded in our notation. One only need listen to a (metrically exact) recording of a composition made with a computer to realise how sterile and unmusical such metric and rhythmic precision sounds.

The character of a piece of music, its musical expression, in fact those very qualities that constitute the essence of the music, namely its emotional content, can only be expressed through subtleties and nuances in its rendition, and these can only be hinted at through notation in an inadequate way. It is precisely at the point where expressive playing begins to take shape that our notation fails. If we were to play a piece as we see it written, it would make no musical sense at all. Such music would not move us. A potentially well-meaning attempt to avoid all mistakes through a strictly literal adherence to the demands of the notation would amount to a grave misunderstanding of what is meant by authenticity, or faithfulness to the musical text. This does not imply a faithfulness to the letter, but rather the endeavour to understand and accurately to re-create the content and expression of a work.

Manners of delivery in music and speech are closely related. Their origins lie equally within man’s spiritual and emotional being. They are based upon man’s need for a degree of differentiation that shapes the progression of sounds in music as in speech in accordance with the requirements of their meaning and emotional content. This gives rise to certain principles that both musician and speaker follow. We need offer only one example of the close relationship between both these areas of expression:

Depending on its emotional content, speech may be whispered, delivered more quietly or loudly, even to the extent of being shouted. It can sound friendly, vehement, angry and so on. In music, the situation is no different. It is an emotional experience with the same variety of expressive possibilities. It is the art of the interpreter to reproduce this experience.

In addition, in music as in speech, we are familiar with differences of emphasis and sound duration. Stresses within words and within a sentence correspond in music to accentuation within a motive and within the phrase as a whole. Speech offers another analogy to music in its short and long syllables, which may be further elongated in moments of heightened emotion, for example in the expression of astonishment. This vital need for differentiation in speech is evidently inherent in humans, and without it, language would be incomprehensible. We recognise similar principles in music, such as the differentiation of strong and weak beats, that clearly owe their origin to aspects of human physiology, such as breathing in and out, systole and diastole phases of the heartbeat, right and left steps in walking. Such principles are simply part of human nature, and it is imperative that we take them into consideration, both in playing music and in speaking. To disregard them in the interpretation of a piece of music has nothing to do with the freedom of an individual ‘creative’ performance: it is pure haphazardness.

Music consists of melody, harmony and rhythm. Depending on the demands of the music, a pianist can at times bring out the rhythm, while at other times he may give greater emphasis to the harmony or the melody. The three parameters form an indivisible unity in the musical composition—one aspect or another is simply accorded with greater weight. One very often hears a kind of playing that is too much reduced to its rhythmic aspect: the performer pays too little attention to what is going on melodically and harmonically and the music becomes overly simplistic. Here is an example from a work of Schumann that illustrates this point.¹ In the first movement of his Sonata in F-sharp minor op. 11, bars 74–84, is this moving passage:

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Ex. 1.1

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One often hears the passage reduced to nothing but its rhythm, as in AUDIO FILE 2.

Apart from tempo, the interpreter has at his disposal dynamics, articulation and agogics to convey the emotional content of a composition. As in speech, an essential natural vitality in the representation of musical content constantly demands all three modes of expression.

Note

1. The musical examples are representative of countless passages that contain similar problems. For a better understanding of the explanations offered and to prevent possible misunderstandings, a number of the musical examples have been recorded as accompanying audio files. They in no way represent the only possible interpretation.

2
Dynamics

In the same way that in speech each syllable is not equally weighted, music is also characterised by moments of varied emphasis, namely the strong and weak beats of the bar. The main emphasis occurs directly after the bar line. This is most evident in the many pieces beginning with an incomplete bar (upbeat or anacrusis) in which the first note is unaccented, and the intended emphasis is placed after the bar line. In a 4/4 bar, the first quarter note is therefore generally given the strongest emphasis and the third a little less, while the second and fourth quarters receive the least accentuation (deviations from this rule can occur as the result of shifts in harmonic tension). In his violin school,¹ Leopold Mozart describes a pattern of emphases within the 4/4 bar that corresponds to the following schema:

Ex. 2.1

In 3/4 and 2/4 time, only the first quarter note is emphasised, in 6/8 time the first and fourth eighth notes. (Deviations from this pattern of emphases occur with the hemiola, indicated by colouration in Renaissance music. In 3/4 time, for example, two bars are combined and the emphasis falls not on the first of the three quarter notes but on every second quarter. The same principle is true for the hemiola in 3/8 and compound duple time.)

However, a still finer differentiation should be observed in a slow tempo by playing the intermediary eighths or sixteenths even more quietly. In performance, these differences appear as a fluid ebb and flow of dynamics and not as accents that stand out from the rest of the notes.

A further aspect of simple duple and quadruple time should be observed. In so-called alla breve time (2/2), the underlying beat is no longer the quarter note but rather the half. In a piece in alla breve time, the musical ductus has a broader arch, owing to the reduction in points of emphasis. For example, Schuber...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Translator’s Note
• List of Musical Examples
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Musical Principles and the Limits of Notation
• 2 Dynamics
• 3 Articulation
• 4 Agogics
• 5 Pedal
• 6 Notation
• 7 Conclusion
• Index of Quoted Composers and Works
• Subject Index