7/16/2019 Todd - 19th Century Piano Music http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/todd-19th-century-piano-music 1/30 STUDIES IN Mu G ICAL ENRES AND REPERTORIES R. Larry Todd, General Editor Published: Nineteenth-Century' Piano Music R. Larry Todd, Editor Duke University Twentieth-Century' Piano Music David Burge Eastman School of Music In Preparation: Keyboard Music before 1700 Alexander Silbiger, Editor Duke L'niversitv Eighteenth-Century' Keyboard Music Robert L. Marshall, Editor Brandeis Cniversity Lieder: Composers, Forms, an d Styles Rufus Hallmark, Editor Queens College, CUNY ( NINETEENTH-CENTURY Edited by R. Larry Todd i . Duke Cniversity I' Schirmer Books A DIVISIOl': OF M A C ~ l I L L A ~ , INC. l'\ew York COLLIER MACMILLAl': CANADA Toronto MAXWELL MACMILLAN INTERNATIONAL New York Oxford Singapore Sydney
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In chapter 26 of Jane Austen's Emma (1S I 5), the heroine attends a high
tea at the home of neighbors. At some point, "a little bustle in the room
showed them that tea was over, an d the instrument in preparation."
Emma presently acceded to the "very pressing entreaties" of the others
and sat at the pianoforte to sing and play: "She knew the limitations of her
own powers too well to attempt more than she could perform with credit;
she wanted neither taste no r spirit in the little things which ar e generallyacceptable, an d could accompany he r own voice well." At a later gathering
(chapter 2S) young Frank Churchill begs the more able pianist Jane Fair-
fax to continue playing:
" I f you ar e very kind," said he, "it will be one of the waltzes we
danced last night; let me live them over again." . . .She played.
"What felicity it is to hear a tune again which has made one
happy! I f I mistake not, that was danced at Weymouth."
She looked up at him for a moment, coloured deeply, and
played something else.
Here, in the second decade of the nineteenth century, the instrument isunderstood to mean the piano. An d the piano was indeed, in a variety of
\\a)'s, th e instrument of the century. In Austen's novel we see it in its most
usual context, serving in a genteel domestic setting as both a solo and ac-
companying instrument for amateur music making. Th e performers are
mainly women, as piano playing-at no t too advanced a level-was on e of
the most desired feminine accomplishments. Th e levels of expertise ex-
pected of women even vary with stations in life. Emma, "handsome,
clever, an d rich," an d therefore having every prospect of a good mar
riage, is quite content to play less well than Jane Fairfax, whose circum
stances suggest a future as a teacher or governess. Th e latter is caught up,
however, in the poignant extramusical social forces at work in the second
the piano to collaborate with her admirer in reliving a scene where they
ha d evidently danced the waltz-that daring entertainment, recently im
ported from the Continent, which with its close-clasping contact was
barely acceptable to upper-level English sensibilities. Just as the dance it
self (no doubt originallv accompanied on the piano) provided an occasion
for intimacies usually forbidden, its music, re-created at the piano, al
lowed reference to them that would have been ou t of the question inproper conversation.
Wilkie Collins's The Woman inVi'hite
of almost half a century later(1860) has a similar scene. Laura Fairlie is in love with he r resident draw
ing teacher, Walter Hartrigh t; bu t through an arranged marriage she has
been promised to another man. Hartright accordingly makes plans to
move away. He later recounts the events of his last evening at the Fairlieestate (chapter 14):
"Shall 1 play some of those little melodies of Mozart's whichyou used to like so much?" she asked, opening the music ner
vously, an d looking dm m at it while she spoke.
Before 1 could thank her she hastened to the piano . . . . She
kept he r attention riveted on the music-music which she
knew by memory, which she had played over and over again, in
former times, without the book . . . . 1 only knew that she wasaware of my being close to her, by seeing the re d spot on the
cheek that was nearest to me fade out, and the face grow paleall over.
"1 am very sorry you are going," she said, he r voice almost
sinking to a whisper, he r eyes looking more and more intently
at the music, he r fingers flying over the keys of the piano with astrange feverish energy which 1 ha d never noticed in he r before. "I shall remember those kind words, Miss Fairlie, long afte r tomorrow has come an d gone."
Th e paleness grew whiter on her face, and she turned it farther away from me.
"Don't speak of tomorrow," she said. "Let the music speak tous of tonight, in a happier language than ours."
Here, too, piano playing is an evening entertainment provided by a young
unmarried woman. An d again it is more than an entertainment; in an ad
aptation of the nineteenth-century conceit of music as speaker of that
which cannot be spoken, Miss Fairlie's playing intimates to Mr. Hartright
he r feelings fo r him-in circumstances governed by social convention
that does not permit them even to address each other by first name.
Nineteenth-century novels an d plays, in England an d Germany in partic
ular, suggest that such little dramas were often played ou t in bourgeois
drawing rooms (see Illustration 1.1). In France, Stendhal wrote as early as
ISOI that "in ou r century it is absolutely essential that a girl know music;
The Piano and the Sineteenth Centw), 3
. 'ould think he r quite uneducated" (Guichard, 71). Butthennse on e \\ . ,() I I " t simph a trifling amusement or a mean-" on whatever eve, \\ as no , ,n1US
IC, f filll'n the idle hours of unmarried daughters (whose ver), gless way a g . . . h"
111, 'd . bl ign of gentility). MUSIC was woven mt o t e \idleness was. a ,eslra s . ' .. . t f' the sYstem of signs by which peo-r I ric of sOCIal mteractlOn, It \\ as par 0 . , . . h'a ) mmunicated with each other. And for the entire century t IS
pIe Cad routinel). around that familiar fixed object, symbol of both successcurre
and sensibility: the piano.
I , '1 1 Eno-ra\,]'ng from The Ladies' Companion and ,\ionlhl)' ,\iagazineLL:STRAT[() : \ . . , b '
How hugely the piano dominated the world of amateur music can be
suggested a few dry ( a ~ d n e a ~ - r a n d o m ) data from music publishing
an enterpnse overwhelmmgly dIrected toward th e home-music market.
Of the twenty-two musical publications of Artaria & Compo (some in col
l a b o : ~ t i o ~ with Tranquillo Mollo) of Vienna in 1800, all but two required
partICIpatIOn of th e piano (Weinmann, 51-56). In the same year some
seventy-three publications of new music were reviewed in the Recensionen
colum.ns of the fledgling Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung; sixty-three of
them mvolved (explicitly or implicitly) the piano.! A similar tally of "re
vues. critiques:' in the Revue et Gazette musicale of 1835 shows use of the pi
a.no 10 f o r . t Y - ~ I g h t .of fifty-five new releases. Th e exhaustive listings of mu
~ I c a l publIcatIOns 10 the Hofmeister Handbuch reveal similar figures later
10 the century. Of the many hundreds of instrumental offerings listed fo r
th e years 1844-51, about eighty-four percent involved the piano, as did
th e vast majority of vocal publications (Hofmeister, 1852: 1-219). Th e
proportions were still much the same in th e period 1892-97 (Hofmeister,
1900: ~ - 1 8 9 ) . In the 1770s the London publisher Kovello put out a cata
log of Its mammoth "Universal Circulating Music Library." Of the thou
sands of Continental and English musical publications listed-from full
scores (in many cases with parts) of operas, oratorios, and symphonies
dow? to flute solos-more than three-quarters require piano. Th e kind ofmusIC Europeans heard most often in the nineteenth century seems to
h a v ~ been generated largely by a single social practice, that of amateur
musIC performed around a piano at home.
the f:>iano was also an intensely public instrument. Its develop
ment 10 the eIghteenth century coincided exactly with the growth of a
bour.geois "public," and from its first known appearance in a solo role at a
publIc concert in mid-1768,2 it grew steadily in favor to become in a few
decades the only musical instrument that routinely was played alone be
f o r ~ a? u d i ~ n c e ..This burgeoning popularity of solo piano playing was a
malO mgredient 10 th e rise of that new breed of musician, the interna
tional concert virtuoso. Th e first wave of virtuosi, from about 1780 to
1820,i s s u ~ d
largely from those twin hothouses of pianistic activity, London and VIen.na. Participants were Muzio Clementi, Johann Baptist Cra
m e r ) a ~ Ladislav Dussek, John Field, the young Ludwig van Beethoven
(to a I I m I t e ~ ~ e g r e e ) , J o h a n n Nepomuk Hummel, an d Ignaz Moscheles.
These ~ u s i C I a n s made their initial reputations as players-tIley com
posed, It was often assumed, mainly to fuel their performances-and to
gether they ~ I a z ~ d a kind of "concert circuit" whose principal loci were
London, Pans, VIenna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg.
Bu t it was Paris alone where political an d cultural conditions were
exactly right for th e distinctive virtuoso of the 1830s and 1840s. Paris of
th e 183?s retained h ~ p r ~ s t i g e it had acquired in th e days of the Sun King
as the dIctator of fashIOn 10 almost every sphere, from literature and the
ater to couture and cuisine (some noted chefs of th e old nobility, having
The Piano and the Nineteenth CenturJ 5
It their J'obs in the revolutions, operated expensive restau rants in the
os . I' .city). Th e revolutions of 1830 had effectively split Europe.mto two f:>o ItI-
cal entities: East of th e Rhine the old Holy Alliance was stIll able to mter
vene in th e affairs of individual nations; in France and th e other western
_ untries the hold of the reactionary powers was broken for good. UndercO I' I' d
I Julv monarchy, Paris became a place of unparalleled Ibera Ism an
t1e, ' . II IIliberty. Nonconformity of almost any ~ i n d ~ \ ' a s tolerated, and Vlrtua.
careers were open to talent, or , as the histonan E. J. Hobsbawm puts It, at
anY rate to energy, shrewdness, hard work, and greed" (Hobsbawm,.189).T l ~ e ascendant bourgeoisie of Paris deified the in?ividual achIever,
whether the achievement took place at the Bourse or 10 the concert hall.
An d artists of all sorts probably enjoyed a greater degree of social accept-
ahility than in any other European city. .'The virtuosi of Paris all came from somewhere to the east, havmg
joined a steady procession of intellectua.ls, artists, an ? fort.une s e e ~ ~ : swho arrived in the 1820s an d 1830s to seize opportumtIes scarcel} a\ all
ahle anvwhere else. Th e greatest of them, of course, were Frederic
Chopin'and Franz Liszt. We tend to remember two o t h e ~ s m ~ i ~ l y in con
nection with these: Frederic Kalkbrenner was for a tIme Chopm s teacher,
and Sigismond Thalberg (see Illustration 1.2) was Liszt's most threaten-
ILLl'STRATIO:-.I 1.2. "The Pianist Sigismond Thalberg," French engraving, ca.
ing competitor. Some, like Johann Peter Pixis, Henri Herz, Franz Hiin
t e ~ , an d A l ~ x a n d e r Dreyschock, ar e now little bu t names. But together
~ h l s ?"roup virtually redefined the ar t of piano playing. And though first
~ n s p l r e d at least partly by th e example of Paganini, they-and their
mstrument-gained in th e public imagination proprietary rights to th ename an d notion "virtuoso."
. Part of th e distinctive character of the virtuosi is their membership
m the recently evolved species of artists who addressed their efforts al
most exclusively to the new public audience. Cu t loose from the demandsfor ~ ' a . r i e d fare that noble or churchly patrons had always placed upon
m U ~ I C l a n s : they were free to specialize to an unprecedented degree in
their ow n mstrument. Liszt's daily regime (reported in a letter from 1832)
of "four to five hours of trills, sixths, octaves, tremolos, repeated notes,
cadenzas an d th e like" was a luxury possible only fo r the unbeholden. A
spectacular explosion of new keyboard techniques followed. Th e virtuosi
treated their audiences to inventive new figurations played at unheard-of
velocity an d to a thorough exploitation of the extremes of the piano's
range. Novel keyboard textures proliferated; two that became standard
were a figuration featuring rapid-fire repeated octaves an d chords di
vi?ed betwe.en the hands, an d Thalberg's sonorous midrange melody
with arpeggIOs above an d below. Contemporary reviewers noted a new
r e s o n ~ n c e an d fullness in piano sound, particularly in Thalberg's playing;
Henn Blanchard wrote in 1836, "1','0 on e has ever sung at th e piano like
Thalberg. The sound is sustained with nuances added through rinfor-
zando, such that vou believe you are hearing the expressive bow of [Alex
andre] Batta, gliding gracefully over the strings of his cello, or th e sweet
horn tones of [Jacques-Franc;:ois] Gallay, penetrating your being with agentle m e l a n c h o l y . " ~. Th e imagination an d industry of the virtuosi were one major factor
the ~ m e r g e n c e 0.£ a new b ~ a n d of pianism during this period; changes
th e m s t r ~ m e n t Itself (which th e pianists encouraged) were another.
Llszt an d 1 hal.berg made their reputations just as the modern piano
(roughly speakmg) appeared on the scene. There would have been little
point for Liszt to spend his hours on "repeated notes" (and the "repeated
o ~ ~ a v e " texture an d related figurations would have been a near impossi
bilIty) before the repetition action was perfected by the Erards in the
1820s. An d the !?rand piano with metal braces, introduced by English an d
~ r e n c ~ makers m the 1820s to accommodate increases in range an d ten
SIOn, lIterally made a new style of playing possible. Pianists could now em
ploy th e weight of their arms an d shoulders fo r added intensity an d reso
nance. Before .thi: time, a "weight technique" was ou t of the question-as
any modern plamst learns when he tries ou t even th e sturdiest Erard or
Broadwood from before about 1820. Thalberg's piano method and con
t ~ m p o r a r y reports imply that the new fullness of sound heard from the
plano was indebted to this technique.
The Piano and the Nineteenth Cenlw}' 7
Th e virtuosi of Paris and their instrument were easily assimilated
into the popular culture of th e city. Parisians of the time showed a strong
taste for every stripe of sensationalism in art and life, bu t they seemed es
pecially to favor the macabre or diabolical. Th e trial of the multiple mur
derer Lacenaire in 1835 an d his public execution in 1836 (referred to in
Hugo's Les Miserables) were the most talked-of events of the t ime-stiff
competition, surely, for the strong drama along similar lines that Scribe
and Meyerbeer were just then offering on the stage of the Opera. l Since
Paganini, the idea of th e virtuoso ha d taken on a special coloring that appealed to this taste for th e terrifying. Th e violinist's implausible technical
feats seemed, in a kind of inversion of the old notion of supernatural in
spiration, to hint at sinister otherworldly connections; "his dark and pene
trating eye, together with the sardonic smile which occasionally played
upon his lips, appeared to the vulgar, an d to certain diseased minds, un
mistakable evidences of a Satanic origin" (Fetis, 59). Liszt was not quick to
discourage similar suspicions about th e sources of his ow n extraordinary
powers; his mistress, th e Countess d' Agoult, wrote of his "distracted air,
unquiet an d like that of a phantom about to be summoned back to the
shades" (Perenvi, 80). An d he an d th e other pianists regularly attempted
to capture som'ething of the special chill an d excitement of the current
opera in their countless fantasies an d variations onits music.
Under the
hands of th e sorcerer-virtuoso, the piano became a miniature stage where
distinctive moments of the drama were again an d again reenacted.
Th e heady public world of the piano virtuoso existed in a kind of
symbiotic relationship with the private on e of domestic music making.
Th e two were connected by th e double umbilical chord of piano manufac
ture an d music publishing-those two indispensable service industries of
amateur music. Th e clear pioneer in establishing such a connection had
been Clementi, who made his reputation before 1800 as a cosmopolitan
virtuoso an d composer for piano, a reputation that in th e new century
reaped profits fo r Clementi & Co., piano manufacturers an d music pub
lishers of London (Plantinga, 293-95). Here we see the birth of that
Janus-like practice of the nineteenth century that marries music with
commerce: a famous pianist attaches his name to a certain make of instru
ment or line of musical publications an d shares in the profits from sales to
the domestic music market. Many of the best-known piano virtuosi of the
following generation participate'd in some such plan. Kalkbrenner pro
mCHed th e pianos manufactured by the firm of (the former composer) Ig
nace Pleyel; Herz entered into partnership with th e Parisian piano maker
Klepfer an d subsequently sold instruments under his own name. Piano
manufacturers early in the century inaugurated the modern practice of
providing free instruments to noted musicians (Beethoven received t\\'O
such, from Erard of Paris in 1803 an d Broadwood of London in 1818).
Larger establishments like Pleyel and Erard even maintained recital halls
where both player an d piano could be applauded. In much the same spirit
~ u s i c p u ~ l i s h e r s entered into business arrangements with famous pian
IStS. Maunce Schlesinger of Paris, for example, together with th e pianist
Thalberg held transcription rights to the music of current hits at the
C?pera. Thalberg would produce the piano arrangements and elabora
tIOns; Schlesinger did the printing and advertising-and stimulated fur
ther sales by orchestrating high praise for theirjoint effort in the columns
of his firm's house organ, the Revue et Gazette musicale. 5
Some contemporaries were quick to deplore the abuses of this com
pact between music an d mammon. Schumann's excoriations of the virtuosi an d their repertory ar e well known. (And Heine occasionally applied
the edge of his wit to the situation, as when he likened Kalkbrenner to "a
bon-bon that has fallen in the mud"tJ). All the grandiloquent fantasies an d
glittering variations, the vacuous morceaux de salon and souvenirs de . . . of
the virtuosi were particularly galling to Schumann and like-minded musi
cians, who saw the piano an d its music as belonging to the essence of a
"new poetic era" in music that ha d its beginnings in Beethoven. An d
w h e t ~ e r or no t we wish to quarrel with the music historiography of Schu
mann s "new era," there is no disputing the centrality of the piano in seri-
ous composition from Beethoven's time to his own. Surelv there has not
been another period in Western musical history when a sin'gle instrument
has been so dominant in the work of leading composers. Th e young
Beet.hoven's musical imagination was firmly rooted in the piano, an d until
~ I m e the last quartets the trcUectory of his style is most clearly traced
m hiS musIc fo r (o r with) it. Th e piano was Schubert's instrument, an d it
figures in most of his best music. Chopin and the young Liszt wrote for it
almost exclusively, as did Schumann during his first decade as a com-
poser. In th e oeuvre of Weber an d Mendelssohn the piano is a less tyran
nical force, bu t yet a very solid presence. An d of course the number f t h eperiod's Kleinmeister (so judged by posteritv) who devoted themselves
mainly to the piano is legion. In addition to ;he aforementioned Dussek
Field, Hummel, Moscheles, an d the entire crew of Parisian virtuosi
m i g h ~ cite ~ n ~ y the beginning of an easily assembled list: Ludwig B e r ~ e r ,Henn Bertml,]. B. Cramer, Carl Czemy, I. F. Dobrzynski, an d Heinrich
Enckhausen.
As piano soared to a position of dominance in the late eighteenth
an d early nmeteenth centuries, it left in its wake a number of new musical
genres. Earliest of hese was the accompanied keyboard sonata, whose rise
to prominence starting in the 1 770s closely paralleled that of the new in-
strument. While the accompanied keyboard sonata arose from a demand
fo r easy ,?usic fo r amateurs, its offspring in the nineteenth century are all
the s ~ e C l e s of chamber music with piano-sonatas for piano an d on e
othe.r mstrument, piano trios, quartets, and the like. How persistently th e
patnmony of these pieces asserted itself can be gathered from a remark
Schumann made in 1836 while reviewing some new piano trios by minor
composers; the sort of ensemble needed to perform them, he said, is "a
The Piano and the Nineteenth CrnlUl), 9
tiery player at the keyboard, and two understanding friends who accom-
pany softly" (Neue Zeitschriftfur Musik [hereafter NZMj5 [1836]: 4). An d
\estiges of that ancestry can still be felt in the leading role the piano plays
in chamber music as late as that of Brahms and Dvorak.
Th e life of another genre associated with the piano, the Lied with
keyboard accompaniment, followed a somewhat similar trajectory. It too
started in the eighteenth century as music written explicitly for amateurs.
Th e necessary ease of performance was in this case made into a virtue as
north-German theorists pointed to th e Lied as the very embodiment ofthe hallowed ideal of "folklikeness."i Most often accompanying the Lied
until the 1 780s or so was that favorite German household instrument, the
clavichord. But during th e 1790s in South Germany there arose within
the genre a new subtype, the dramatic ballad, whose style stronglv sug-
gests the presence of the ascendant pianoforte. Vivid programmatic ef-
fects in the accompaniments an d keyboard interludes to Johann Rudolf
Zumsteeg's Colma or Lenore-depicting such things as waterfalls, storms,
and galloping horses-seem like a veritable celebration of the capabilities
of th e new instrument. Beginning about two decades later the humble
Lied was transformed into high ar t at the hands of Franz Schubert. In all
the rich new variety of style and expression effected by that transfor
mation-whether purely lvrical, dramatic, or narrative-the centrality ofthe sound of th e piano remained a constant.
In the nineteenth century, the piano became the "utility" instrument
pa r excellence it remains today. It inherited the mantle of the ubiquitous
continuo instrument of the previous two centuries, accompanying almost
any sort of music sung or played on other instruments.H An d keyboard
instruments ha d always been invaluable for teaching music; they layout
before the student a graphic display of the tonal system, and they make
acceptable sounds at the touch of an unpracticed finger. During the nine
teenth century studying music became synonymous in many quarters
with studying th e piano; as early as the 1820s the "music masters" retained
by English boarding schools were simply understood to be piano teachers.
Pianos have always been used, too, for "trying things out," or "show-
ing how a piece goes." Th e nineteenth century leaves us countless vig-
nettes illustrating this. On e might think, for example, of the scene from
late 1805 in which Beethoven's friends, gathered at the home of Prince
Lichnowsky, tried to persuade the recalcitrant composer to shorten the
first act of Fidelio; the tenor Joseph August Rockel recalled (in a conversa-
tion with Thayer in 1861), "As the whole opera was to be gone through,
we went directly to work. Princess L. played on the grand piano the great
score of the opera and Clement, sitting in a corner of the room, accompa
nied with his violin the whole opera by heart . . . " (Forbes, 389). Wagner,
as we know, habitually played his new music at the piano for his friends,
an d (to leap ahead a bit) Debussy first heard Stravinsky's Le Sacre du prin-
temps when he played it with the composer as a four-hand piano duet
(Lockspeiser, 2: 181). Th e practice among nineteenth-century composers
of making short scores, or "particells," of music for large forces is surely
related to this habit of playing things over at the piano; Brahms's routine
production of two-piano versions of his orchestral music represents a
kind of formalized extension of the habit.
Thus far we have been speaking of the nineteenth century as a single
chronological entity, as an integral stretch of time within which on e can
point ou t certain fairly coherent musical and cultural developments hav
ing to do with the piano. Th e question as to how well the century in factcoheres-and how well ou r observations may be coordinated with its
musical-cultural topography-is of course a \ " ~ x e d one. Perhaps we may
indulge in a brief excursus in order to examine this point.
In his essay "Neuromantik"'J of 1974 Carl Dahlhaus muses about
various ways of partitioning the century from a music-historical perspec
tive. Should 1830, the time of the July Revolution, be seen as a historical
caesura in music as well as in politics? Berlioz and YIeyerbeer, he feels,
seem sufficiently different from Beethoven an d Rossini to justify such a
procedure, bu t "in Germany, on the other hand, the relationship between
Weber an d the young Wagner (the composer of romantic operas, which it
is willful to reinterpret as 'music dramas'), or that between Beethoven an d
Schubert on the one hand . . . and Schumann and Mendelssohn on the
other, is too close to allow talk of two ages or the end of a musical era" (19CiVl 3 [1979]: 104).
Th e year 1830 as a dividing line will vary in distinctness, Dahlhaus
says (reasonably enough), according to where' we place ou r emphasis. I fwe think of music mainly as on e participant in a social an d political nexus,
that division is fairly convincing; it is much less so if music is considered in
an d of tself. An d if our focus is on events in France (where musical devel
opments seem closely related to social and political changes), a caesura
around 1830 is easier to defend than it is in the Germanvs where such a
connection appears much more tenuous. Dahlhaus again distinguishes
between music as an autonomous activity and as a participant in a culture
or Zeitgeist when he sUrYeys the century's midpoint Gust after the next rev
olutions) as another possible line of division in music history. Th e continuity between Berlioz an d Liszt, Schumann and Brahms, an d the younger
and older vVagner, he concludes, is sufficient to discredit any such caesura
established on purely musical grounds. But the century seems rather
neatly divided in half, he maintains (and this appears to be' the main point
of his essay), in respect to the coordination of music with its intellectual
an d cultural environment: "Early nineteenth-century music could be said
to be ~ m ~ n t i c in an age of o m a ~ t i c i s m , which r o d ~ c e d romantic poetry
and pamtmg and even romantic physics and chemistry, whereas the neo
romanticism of the later part of the century was romantic in an unroman
tic age, dominated bv positivism an d realism" (19 CH 3 [1979]: 99).
In this essay Dahlhaus does not tell us very clearly which of the rich
variety of intellectual currents that have been ~ a l l e d "{-omanticism" he is
The Piano and the Nineteenth Centw) 1 1
putting forth as a dominant force of the earlier nineteenth century and as
a congenial host to music. 10 But his citation of Hoffmann, Wackenroder,
and Schopenhauer as its representatives-and the "positivism" and "real
ism" of the later century as its antipodes-suggests that he has in mind the
transcendental idealism and the belief in the primacy of a noumenal
,\"Orld that these writers share. I f this is the case, surely he should have
made use of the other distinction, having to do with national an d regional
differences, that he ha d applied to the problem of the century's subdivi
sions. This latter-day idealism, this grappling with the Kantian metaphysical legacy that we see during the first decades of the century in Scho
penhauer, Schelling, an d Fichte, an d in literary guise in writers as diverse
as Hoffmann and Kleist, was a powerful preoccupation in Germany. But
it will hardly do to attribute the same to the French, English, and Italians,
among whom metaphysics after the German model was little in favor. In
about 1830 Auguste Comte described a developmental process operative
in all branches of human knowledge in which a "metaphysical" stage has
already been succeeded by a "positivist" on e characteristic of the physical
sciences. At the same time in England-where philosophy ha d shown a
strong empiricial an d practical bent since the days of Hume and Locke
leading thinkers like John Stuart Mill shared Comte's enthusiasm for
bringing to social, political, and moral concerns something of the method
ology an d certainty of science.
Bu t however skewed Dahlhaus's formulation may appear, there
seems to be some rough justice in viewing European intellectual history of
the nineteenth century as marked by a more than usually pronounced du
alism. An idealist impulse, most popular in Germany in the earlier part of
the century, aspired to levels of consciousness and knowledge inaccessible
to the ordinary operations of human rationality; it distrusted the compila
tion and ordering of sense-data in science as superficial, an d valued emo
tion, intuition, flights of imagination, and poetic sensibility-and art and
music-as avenues to true understanding. Th e opposed "positivist" view,
present from the first bu t gathering momentum as the century pro
gressed, placed great faith in the ascendant science and technology of a
burgeoning industrial age, in the forces that were transforming, seeminglv overnight, the life of the continent: manufacture and travel pow
ered by steam, outdoor lighting by gas and electricity, invention of aston
ishing machines to do things that had always been done by hand. Such
triumphs in the later century suggested that the ways of thinking offered
by science provided a model of certainty and demonstrated results that all
branches of knowledge would do well to follow. And they contributed to
an intellectual climate in which belief in a transcendental cognitive func
tion of art, or a proposition such as Schopenhauer's, that music is an "im
mediate representation of the Will," was judged idle at best.
='Jineteenth-century music and a belief in its importance always re
mained tied to the idealistic outlook. At various points around its periph
ery, as in the late-centurY scholarship of Friedrich Chrvsander or the
acoustical researches of Hermann von Helmholtz, musical concerns
brushed shoulders with a new dominant scientism in European thought.
Bu t music itself, with its maddeningly elusive substance and its frequent
lack of clear reference to anything else, remained the most immaterial
an d (in E. T. A. Hoffmann's formulation) "the most romantic of all th e
arts." Thus the serious cultivation of music in the later century could seem
unresponsive to prevailing modes of thinking an d feeling, a quaint an d
irrelevant activity in a world of science, technology, industry, machines,
capitalism (with advertising), an d empire.Th e piano, however, as an instrument an d as an institution, partici
pated comfortably in both of these nineteenth-century worlds. On the one
hand it inherited and expanded th e role of the eighteenth-century Ger
man clavichord: it was th e instrument of choice for private playing, for
the celebration of sensibility an d feeling in intimate settings. Whether it
was the poignant, vaguely reedy sound of the Viennese piano (still used by
Schumann in the 1830s), or the velvety, incandescent timbre of the En
glish or French instrument (to become the piano sound of the second half
of th e century), the sonority of this instrument was inextricably bound up
with th e notion of "musical expression." This was true partly because it
was what everyone played; in the nineteenth-century mind "music" and
"music played on th e piano" tended to merge. Bu t the piano was also sin
gularly well adapted fo r "expression." This percussion instrument appar
ently was not seen as seriously deficient in melodic capabilities; with a little
coaxing, it was thought (even before Thalberg), the piano could fairly
"sing."11 An d its enormous range and variability as to volume and t e x t u r ~p e r ~ i t t e d musical statements running the gamut from overpowering
passIOn to the quietest lyricism.
But the piano was also a machine (surely it is the only machine from
the nineteenth century in regular use toward the close of the twentieth).
Especially in the earlier 1800s, its overall design an d its hundreds of mov
ing parts were a consistent object of that craze for technological innova
tion that characterized the century.12 It also became something of a crea
ture of the Industrial Revolution, participating fully in the gradual
change that saw the efforts of individual craftsmen replaced by th e specialized labor an d high production of a factory (by the 1820s Broadwood
of London produced more than 1,000 squares an d 400 grands a year l3 ).
An d of course the piano was a commodity, at once a highly complicated
piece of equipment and a handsome item of furniture, one whose desir
ability could be enhanced by that inevitable companion of capitalist indus
try, public advertising. This musical instrument seemed to find its way
well enough in a world of technology and commerce.
Th e role of the piano in the musical life of the century was not en
tirely uniform. In western Europe the cult of the keyboard virtuoso de
clined after midcentury-perhaps because there were so manv other
things to be amazed at. Th e tradition persisted longer in the a s t e r ~ coun-
The Piano and the Nineteenth CenlUi)' 13
tries, especially in Russia an d Poland (which have continued through the
first half of the present century to produce more than their share of virtu
osi). And there is no denying that a great deal more piano music of real
consequence was written in the first half ofthe nineteenth century than in
the second. Th e decline of the piano as a vehicle for the musical thoughts
of th e leading composers seems to have paralleled the general fall from
grace of sonata-type pieces. 11 For the orchestra the void was filled ,\'ith
new types of large-scale works, such as the programmatic overture and
symphonic poem, in which a musical experience was expected to bestrongly shaped by extramusical associations. That nothing comparable
appeared in piano music may have been du e to a feeling that in this arena,
after the shorter keyboard works of Schumann, Liszt, an d many others,
such associations were already an old story. Th e single role in which th e
piano enjoyed uncontested dominance from the beginning of the century
to its en d was in its use as a domestic musical instrument. An d this formed
the basis, surely, for much of its remarkable career overall. Most of the
best musicians of the century were pianists, an d most became so early in
life, at home, where th e instrument of the century held sway.
Notes1. Lieder were sometimes published with no mention of an accompaniment
in the title. Th e reviews in question, however, make it clear that all collections of
Lieder under consideration that year had piano accompaniments.
2. In a concert at the Thatched House in London, played bv]. C. Bach. It was
announced in the Public Advertiser, 2 June 1768. '''''hat Bach seems to have plaved
that evening was a square piano-a most unlikely instrument for public perfor
mance. Later in the same vear the piano made its Paris debut in a solo role at the
Concerts spirituels.
3. Revue et Gazette musicale 3 (1836): 178. "Singing at the piano" was a kind of
trademark ofThalberg's. His piano method was entitled L'Art du chant applique au
piano.
4. In the collective imagination, violent action in the streets an d in the theater
tended to mingle. Reflecting on the current preoccupation with crime in the city,the Vicomte de Launay wrote in 1843, "For the past month the sole topic of con
versation has been the nightly assaults, holdups, daring robberies. . . . Evening
parties all en d like the beginning ofthe fourth act of Les Huguenots, with the bless
ing of the daggers. Friends an d relatives are not allowed to go home \\'ithout a
regular arms inspection" (Chevalier, 3).
5. Th e fullest account of the piano in its nineteenth-century social an d com
mercial setting is still Arthur Loesser, l'Hen, Women and Pianos (New York, 1954).
6. Heinrich Heine, Samtliche Werke (Leipzig, 1915),9:280.
7. Among the earliest to espouse this doctrine of the Lied was Christian Gott
lieb Krause in Von der musikalischen Poesie (Berlin, 1753). Some of the stylistic traits
prescribed there, such as a\-oidance of melisma an d word repetitioll, adhered to
8. Th e piano was literallv used as a continuo instrument in England from
Haydn's second London sojourn of 1794-95, when he "conducted" his sympho
nies from the piano, until at least the mid-1820s, when Clementi did the same.
9. In Zwischen Romantik, 5-21. Whittall's translation of this essay also appears
in 19th Century Music (hereafter 19 CM) 3 (1979): 97-105.
10. Is it an admiration for the "primitive" and the "simplicity of nature" such as
we see in English writers of the 17 40s an d in some places in Rousseau;; Or is it an
allegiance to "universalityof content" (hence to diversity an d complexity), to that
expression of the entire range of human experience widely attributed to Shake
speare an d warmly endorsed by Friedrich Schlegel in his famous Fragment 116 of
the Athenaeum? Does it have to do with a nostalgia for the past, especially the Mid
dle Ages, a taste for knightly adventure an d Gothic architecture? Or does it repre
sent (as in Schlegel's characterization of "die romantische Poesie") "das
eigenthilmlich-Moderne"? Does it suggest a devotion to a specifically Christian
tradition (as in Chateaubriand and the romantic adherents of Schleiermacher)
wherein th e position of mankind is assumed to be fallen an d helpless' Or does it
imply the primitivist trust in a basic goodness of "unspoiled human nature" es
poused bv other "romantics"? Seldom inattentive to methodological or historio
graphical puzzles, Dahlhaus offers in Die Musik des 19. jahrhunderts, 13-21, some
discussion of the difficultiesof arriving at a unified conception of romanticism, at
least in its application to music.
11. Beethoven wrote to the piano maker Streicher in an undated letter from
ca. 1794-96, "You are one of the few who realize an d perceive that, provided on ecan feel th e music, one can also make the pianoforte sing" (Anderson, 1 26).
12. Rosamond Harding has listed about 1,290 patents relating to pianos issued
between 1800 an d 1855 (Harding, 317 -58).
13. See Adlam an d Ehrlich. Th e same firm in 1851 employed specialists in
dampers, hammers, keys, strings, soundboards, metal plates, wrest pins, bent
sides, brass bridges, an d many other parts (see Loesser, 388-89).
14. In 1839 Schumann observed that the only composers writing sonatas were
young unknowns for whom the genre was merely a formal exercise, an d that most
contemporary symphonies were imitative of early Beethoven or even of Haydn
and Mozart (NZM 10 [1839]: 134 an d II [1839]: I). Hofmeister's Handbuch der
musikalischen Litteratur for 1892-97 lists virtually no new piano sonatas or svm
phonies.
Selected Bibliography
Adlam, Derek, an d Ehrlich, Cyril. "Broadwood." The iVew Grove Dictionary ofMusic
and Musicians. London, 1980.
Anderson, Emily, ed. The Letters ofBeethoven. London, 1961.
Chevalier, Louis. Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris duri ng the FirstHalf
of he Nineteenth Century. Translated by F. ]ellinek. Princeton, 1973.
Dahlhaus, Carl. Zwischen Romantik und Moderne: vier Stu dien zu r Musikgeschichte des
spateren 19. jahrhunderts. Munich, 1974. Translated by Mary Whittall, Be-
tween Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nine-
Th e study of "performance practice"l is today a musical orthodoxy. On e
would be hard pressed to find an American institution of higher
education-whether conservatory, school of music, or university
without at least one course offered under the rubric of performance prac
tice. Institutions now offer degrees in performance practice or degrees in
which the study of performance practice plays a prominent role. This ave
nu e of inquiry is no longer sustained solely by devotees of early music or
of period instruments; finding a mainline conductor under fifty who will
scoff publicly at the enterprise of performance practice-however
broadly defined-becomes more difficult each year.2
Like patriotism, performance practice has many definitions. For too
many academics it has gone little further than determining the number of
singers to a part, though change is brewing. A few decades ago, profes
sional performers looked upon th e elements of period performance with
generalized contempt or patronizing dismissal. Today they are likely to
a c k ~ l O w l e d g e the advisability of reliable editions, the benefits of knowing
penod styles, and the viability of period-instrument performances
though often adding in the same breath that it does not matter which edi
tion is used, which period practices are incorporated, or which instrument
played, as long as the performance has that ill-defined quality of inspira
tion.
There are encouraging signs that the traditional chasm between th e
study of music in academia (the source of most writings about perfor
mance practice) an d the professional music world (where actions neces-
16
Orthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions 17
sarily speak louder than words) is shrinking. There have always been a
few p ~ r s o n . s w ~ o . straddle both worlds-professional performers who
teach u.mverSltIeS, scholars who are called upon to advise professional
orgamzatlons-but the level of interaction has never lived up to its poten
tial. In th.e concert world, the recent inroads by period-instrument per
t o r ~ e r s mt o the standard repertoire-and the performance-practice
claims ?ften advanced by those performers or their recording
compames-have produced rejoicing in some quarters, bewilderment
and dismay in others, an d angry rejoinders from still others.3
.Th e ~ s u e of performance practice comes into sharp focus when we
conSider n m e t e e n t ~ - c e n t u r y piano music. 4 Th e nineteenth-century pi
an o was a self-suffiCient, all-conquering machine; about the union of hu
ma n an d machine Liszt wrote in 1838: "[The piano] embraces the range
of an orchestra; the ten fingers of a single man suffice to render the har
monies produced by the combined forces of more than 100 concerted
i n s t r u ~ e n t s . . . . We make arpeggios like the harp, prolonged notes like
wmd mstruments, staccatos an d a thousand other effects which once
seemed the special prerogative of such and such an instrument."-1 On no
o t ~ e r i . n s ~ r u m e n t except. t.h.e organ (where issues of portability an d reper
toire limited the possibilities) could one person impose his or he r will
more c ~ m p l e t e l y on the music. Nineteenth-century piano music is the
r ~ p e r t O l r e where p ~ ~ s o n a l styles and approaches have traditionally beennewed .m?st l e g l t ~ m . a t e - a n d indeed, most necessary. Paganini, true,
was a vlOlimst, but It IS no surprise that virtually all of those who re
sponded to his wizardry-Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Rach
maninoff, an d others-were pianists.
. The common thread uniting almost all performance-practice stud
Ies over the last century in both Europe and America is their eminent
practicality. Th e issues are largely those of immediate execution: Should I
play this passage connected or detached? Is it appropriate to use the
damper ~ e d a l here? What is the ideal tempo? Certainly this approach
c h a r . a c ~ e n z e s the t,:o most recent and comprehensive studies of keyboard
musIC m the claSSical era. Sandra Rosenblum's Performance Practices in
Class.ic Piano 1vl.usic a t ~ e r s together a wealth of information regarding dynamiCS, pedaling,. artICulation, fingering, ornamentation, an d tempo in
the keyboard musIC of Haydn, Mozart, Clementi, an d Beethoven. William
S. Newman's unfortunately titled Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano
,Wusic His Way examines much of the same material as it applies to
Beethoven's music, while giving weight to secondary studies such as those
of Hermann Beck on Beethoven's tempos.
Both of these rich studies contain much that is valuable, indeed es
sential, fo r any p e r ~ o r m e r of these repertoires, yet both are examples of
what anthropologist Mary Douglas has called "member's accounts"
(Douglas, 276-318). In Douglas's analysis, any expert or insider within a
particular discipline will almost always frame its issues from a perspective
that includes a series of unarticulated assumptions. These assumptions,
argues Douglas, will inevitably color the conclusions reached by that
"member."
Rosenblum and Kewman write from a perspective that rests upon
two contradictory assumptions. Th e first is the assumption that period in
struments are valuable resources-a view widely held in academic an d
early music circles. Both studies devote about five percent of heir text to a
description of the fortepiano an d its early evolution. Both authors regard
period instruments appreciatively an d sympathetically; Newman observes that the few people who have had the opportunity to "live" with
period pianos agree that "differences between past and modern pianos
can profoundly affect the music played on them" (Newman, 46). For Ro
senblum, "the early instruments . . . afford us the best way of penetrating
the spirit of the contemporary repertoire" (Rosenblum 54).
But undermining these glowing endorsements is a second assump
t ion-that pianists play (and will continue to play) this repertoire almost
exclusively on modern pianos an d that it is therefore no t feasible (or nec
essary) to pay much heed to period instruments. This is the only conclu
sion both studies allow. On e could lift the sections on the fortepiano from
their surroundings, scrap them, and find that they were barely missed in
the other ninety-five percent. There is nary a mention of period instru
ments in the lengthy discussions of tempo, articulation, and ornamenta
tion, an d only pro forma mention under pedaling an d dynamics. Young
pianists coming for the first time to the Beethoven sonatas and looking to
either study for guidance in the most fundamental decision they must
make-their choice of instrument-will find a curious dissonance be
tween the virtues accorded the fortepiano an d their irrelevance to virtu
ally all of the discussion that follows.
What produces this contradiction is that neither Rosenblum no r
:\'ewman addresses th e fundamental issue of identifying th e late
twentieth-century audience. We can be sure the audience is different
from the ones before which Haydn, Mozart, an d Beethoven played. I t s a
different audience from that in the nineteenth century, when the piano
was still evolving. I t s a different audience from that in the first half of ou rcentury, when an aristocratic layer of European (and, in America, trans
planted European) society bred on "high culture" viewed the Beethoven
sonatas as the pianist'S (and the listener's) bible. Today that audience no
longer exists. Th e last survivors of the old European culture ar e slowly
dying off, just as surely as Rosenthal, Hofmann, Cortot, Gieseking, Ru
binstein, an d now Horowitz have died off. Outside a few cities like l\'ew
York, London, and Vienna one would be hard pressed to assemble a siz
able group oflisteners under forty for whom the Beethoven sonatas are in
any way central to their listening experience.6
Both Rosenblum an d Newman are, I would argue, writing about
performance practice for that vanishing "high culture" audience with
OTthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions 19
which they grew up. Even if we acknowledge that this audience can no
longer be counted on, why, we might ask, should the audience have anv
bearing on the issues of pedaling or non legato? Th e answer is that issues o'f
interpretation cannot ultimately be separated from the issue of OT whom
on e is interpreting. Th e audience supplies no t only the support system for
any performing tradition bu t also the framework in which that perform
ing tradition is defined. Ignoring the audience leads to the kind of contra
diction outlined above.
Rather than offering another essay in the practical-survey genre-atbest, incomplete, an d at worst, misleading-I propose instead to frame
the i s s u e ~ surrounding performance practice in nineteenth-century pi
an o musIC more broadly than has hitherto been the case. Until these
broader issues are aired, foreground discussions of practical problems
have limited value. Once these issues have been understood, the practicalproblems begin to sort themselves out.
The Shift in PerformanceTraditions
My principal argument is straightforward: Th e nineteenth century
was an era that valued color, contrast, and variety above all else. Yet, most
of th e developments over the last hundred years in the piano as an instru
ment, as well as in the performance of its remarkably rich repertoire, have
served to diminish the very color, contrast, and variety so central to the
style itself. For the kind of variety we profess to cherish, we have to look
back to the nineteenth century itself. To recapture this variety, we will
need to rethink ou r approach to this repertoire from the ground up.
Th e fleshing ou t of this argument requires, to begin with, a brief
consideration of how performance practice developed. Performance
practice sprang up as a separate discipline in the second half of the nine
teenth century when a repertory of unknown music (largely from the
Middle Ages an d Renaissance) necessitated the r e d i s c o v ~ r y of perfor
mance techniques that had lain dormant for centuries. Those who would
perform this repertory ha d no choice bu t to be practical. They had first of
all to rediscover the instruments that were used-or, more often, to.create:easonable facsimiles. Then they ha d to learn what they could about sing
mg styles; how to decipher the music, especially its incompletely notated
rhythms; how to "orchestrate" works whose instrumentation was by
definition unspecified; how to lay the text under the music; an d about the
central role of im provisation.
Those who led the way in these endeavors had at least one consola
tion: They began at the same place as their audience. While this might not
appear to be much of an advantage, the fact that the audience was learn
ing hear this music at the same time that performers were learning to
play It gave performers the freedom to experiment. It made audiences
more tolerant of technical lapses. There were no virtuosos or recordings
[O n the Erard]: "You can thump it and bash it, it makes no difference: the sound is always beautiful an d the ear doesn't askfor anything more since it hears a full, resonant tone."
"Broadwood, [who is the] real [London] Pleyel." (Eigeldi nger,26)
It would be a mistake to conclude from Chopin's remarks that he wished
for Erard to be put out of business and for the Pleyel to be installed as th e
dominant instrument in Parisian musical life. Though he had his preferences, Chopin assumed, like every other artist of th e time, that his prefer
ence represented only on e of many.
I f the description is his own, Liszt compared Chopin's Pleyel to a
glass harmonica: "I t permitted hi m to draw therefrom sounds that might
recall one of those harmonicas of which romantic Germany held th e mo
nopoly an d which her ancient masters so ingeniously constructed by join
in g water an d crystal."12 Th e tone of such an instrument is sweet bu t pene
trating, with overtones outweighing the fundamental. I t was also a highly
idiosyncratic sound, invoked by Liszt without a trace of criticism.
Elsewhere I have outlined the evolution of the Romantic piano
(Winter, 1989). Here it will be instructive to look more closely at th e dif
ferences between the two individual manufacturers alluded to so pointedly by Chopin an d Liszt. A full-size Erard concert grand from this period
was generally about 253 cm. long. In a catalog published in 1878 Erard
was still producing instruments of this size (see Illustration 2.1). Th e total
tension on th e massive wooden frame was about 11,000 kgs., or in excess
of twelve tons.
Almost without exception, the Pleyel grands of this period were be
tween 200 an d 230 cms. in length; hence the bass strings were 25-50 cms.
shorter (see Illustration 2.2).13 Moreover, th e total tension ranged some
where between 6,500 an d 9,000 kgs., as much as forty percent less than an
Erard. In practical terms th e Pleyel was a drawing-room instrument,
while the Erard was designed for a concert stage. No one in the nineteenth
century would have viewed the more intimate Pleyel as inherently inferior
to the more robust Erard.
An Erard and a Pleyel differed significantly in the striking points. IiWhereas th e Pleyel varied from 812 to just over 9 in the bass, a typical
Erard might range from 9 1/2 to almost 10. This difference afforded the
Erard a more brilliant, penetrating bass, heard to good advantage, fo r ex
ample, in th e coda of Liszt's transcription of Schumann's Widmung (Illus
tration 2.3 shows the original Kistner edition). Although lasting only a few
moments (I assume the octave to be pedaled through the end of the mea
sure), the thunderousfffoctave in measure 66 is the climax of the entire
transcription. In performance it functions quite literally as a lightning
rod, absorbing all of the work's accumulated passion (con somma passionel.
Since it enters alone, clarity is essential; on a modern instrument th e effect
is thick an d muffled.
ILLCSTRATION 2.1. "Concert Grand Piano 1\ '0. 3 -7 1/4 octaves from A to c, / withErard double escapement action, harmonic bar, new system of agraffes an d
metal frame; / an instrument exceptional for the power and roundness of itstone. / Length: 2 meters 53 [cm.]-Width 1 meter [46 cm.]." Reprinted in Dossier
Erard (Geneva, 1980), which includes the Erard sales catalog of 1878.
ILLCSTRATION 2.2. Chopin's Pleyel grand of ca. 1845 in the Warsaw Conserva
manufactured today, bu t almost all are manufactured against a single
sound ideal. How, we must ask ourselves, can we celebrate the varieties of
color in nineteenth-century piano music when the instruments them
selves have been purged of so much of that color?
The Nature of Romantic Color
Regardless of how varied the sound qualities of earlier instruments,
all shared certain features that separate them from the sound ideal of our
modern instruments. Chief among these was registral variety. When An
dreas Streicher suggested in his 1801 guide to the firm's fortepianos that
the "tuning fork should be at exactly the same pitch as the wind instru
ments at any given place," he was acting on the clear understanding that
the forte piano replicated a wind band on the keyboard. Viennese music
abounds with passages in which the rapid ascent or descent through regis
ters is the point of the phrase. A typical example is the opening of
Beethoven's Piano Sonata in B-flat op. 22 (Example 2.2a). Th e opening
gesture in measures 1- 2 lies in the fullest register of the Viennese instru
ment. Th e rapid climb in measures 3- 4 is of little direct musical interest,
but on a fortepiano the color grows more brilliant with each successive
quarter note. In measures 10-11 (Example 2.2b) Beethoven makes an
EXAMPLE 2.2a. Beethoven, Piano Sonata in Bb major, Op. 22/1 (mm. 1-4)
EXAMPLE 2.2b. Beethoven, Piano Sonata in Bb major, Op. 22/1 (mm. 10-11)
- ~ - ~
r
l
Orthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions 31
even more dramatic ascent, at the top of which he plummets precipitously
to the bottom of the instrument's range. Th e first two beats of measure 11
encompass both the highest an d lowest notes on Beethoven's i n s t r ~ m e n t(£1 an d FF). Th e brilliance bordering on r i t t l e r : e s ~ at the top of thIS pas
sage contrasts sharply with the power an d clarity m. b . a s ~ a.nd tenor.
The dramatic effect on a contemporary Walter or Stem IS dimmished on a
modern piano built with the goal ofregistral homogeneity. .
These kinds of effects ar e built into the very grammar of VIennese
keyboard music. When Robert Schumann wrote the highly charged oper:ing movement of his Kreisleriana op. 16 in 1838 (Example 2.3), he replI
cated in Romantic terms what Beethoven had done almost four decades
earlier.
EXAMPLE 2.3. Robert Schumann, Kreisleriana, Op. 16/1 (mm. 1-8)
plex meters, beginning with a theme and first variation in , a second
variation in , a third variation in g, and, in the fourth variation, a return
to , which carries through the remainder of the movement. 2ti Indeed,
just this idiosyncratic use of meter exasperated a contemporary English
revIewer:
We have devoted a full hour to this enigma, an d cannot solve it.But no sphinx ever imagined such a riddle as the time pre
sents . . . . Th e general practice of writing notes apparently
very short, then doubling their length by the word Adagio, ison e of the abuses in music that loudly cries for reform; but the
system of notation pursued in this Arietta is confusion worseconfounded, an d goes on . . . to the extent of thirteen pages.27
At the foreground level in which the reviewer was mired, confusion is in-
deed a possible outcome. How does the performer relate the sixteenth
note triplets of the theme an d var. 1, for example, to the thirty-second
note duplets ofvar. 2 or to the sixty-fourth-note duplets ofvar. 3?
Had the overwrought reviewer taken note of the second factor, his
burden would have been substantially lightened. For Beethoven devoted
considerable care to the tempo relationships among the variations an d
within the movement as a whole. When the meter changes (between vars.1 an d 2 an d vars. 2 and 3), Beethoven specifies L'istesso tempo ("the same
tempo"). Since the note values change considerably between var. 1 an d
var. 2, we might ask what "tempo" is to be "the same." Th e issue is whether
Beethoven was referring to the slower background pulse (in which case
the three-sixteenth units of var. 1correspond to the two-sixteenth units of
var. 2) or to the foreground sixteenth note (in which case the background
pulse of var. 2 will be one-third faster than the pulse of var. 1; Example
2.12).
EXAMPLE 2.12. Beethoven, Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. Il l /II (mm. 33-34)
L'istesso tempo
sf
mana sinistra
Assuming the pianist pays any heed to Beethoven's directive, the so-
lution arrived at will profoundly influence the performance. Th e assump
tion of a regular background pulse suggests a unified tempo throughout.
Th e assumption of a regular foreground pulse suggests a freer approach
to the individual variations. Var. 2 will, in effect, be "faster" than var. 1,
an d some way will have to be found to reconcile the tempo of var. 4 with
the separate tempos of the theme an d var. 3.Beethoven's notation, it seems to me, argues for the L'istesso tempo
applying to the slower background pulse. In the auto!?Taph (Aut. 198,
Berlin DSB) the marking is placed clearly above the entire four-note up
beat to the first bar. Moreover, the meter of the theme an d var. 1 is
first an d foremost a background triple meter and secondarily a triple
foreground (the same way is a duple meter with a triple foreground). It
makes more sense to assume that a composer is referring to his back-ground meter rather than to its subdivisions.
Other factors support the notion of a unified tempo. When the
fourth variation returns abruptly to the meter of the opening (m. 65),
there is no Tempo primo, as would be necessary had Beethoven meant a
general increase in tempo in var. 2 (the alternative-that Beethoven in-
tended the last half of the movement to unfold one-third faster than the
opening-seems even more far-fetched). Second, the entire movement
has only one specific tempo indication, the Adagio at its head. Th e molto
semplice e cantabile appended to Adagio is on e more indication that
Beethoven did not foresee a great many tempo shifts within the individual
variations themselves. 28 He does not label the variations separately, un
derscoring their continuity. There is no t a single ritard or accelerandowithin the movement. Th e only two directions that could possibly be con-
strued as tempo-modifying are the leggiermente at measures 72 and 89 in
the double fourth variation an d the espressivo at measure 120 (the bridge
to the reconstituted theme). Although modern performers often treat
these terms as tempo-modifying (espressivo as broadening the tempo, leg-
giermente as pushing it), there is no evidence in t u t o ~ s from Beethoven:s
time or in his music that either term mandated a noticeable tempo modI-
fication.We have, then, a paradoxical combination of highly complex
rhythms an d a serenely regular pulse-just the kind of a r a d ~ x that u r ~ sup regularly in late Beethoven. Given the transcendent e n v l r ~ n m e n t Inwhich
thismovement unfolds-on the
heelsof
astormy opemng
move-ment and disappearing into the ether rather than reaching a traditional
climax-we might justifiably refer to this underlying regularity as a kind
of "cosmic pulse" that brings order to all the chaos (rhythm) that accompa-
nies life. Whether or no t one accepts this characterization, Beethoven's
intention seems to have been to weld highly diverse musical ideas together
with a common pulse, harmonies, and phrase structure. Care, of course,
must be given to the realization of this underlying pulse. Th e general
tempo will ideally do justice to the most animated version, var. 3. Th e
junctures between variations must be made smoothly so that the continu
ity of the pulse is maintained. Within the semplice directive, variations in
tempo ought to reinforce rather than undercut the sense of pulse.
44 Orthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions Orthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions 45
NOTE: Only measures not affected by ritards or tempo changes have been calibrated. Italic
measures are statements of the descending motto theme. The 1m lebhaften Tempo ("In alively tempo") has been included to see how tempo change without a metronome markingis treated.
We might be tempted to read into Rubinstein's broad tempos a dis
dain on th e part of an older generation for metronome markings that a
new generation takes more seriously. This may be true, but the younger
generation backs of f from Schumann's marking after the briefest of skir
mishes. All five performances slow down the motto theme after its initial
statement, as if agreed that "softer is slower." Four of five slow down for
th e descent in measures 49-52, and all without exception speed up in the
ascending continuation. All five recordings pick nearly identical tempos
for th e pensive derivative of the motto theme at measures 62ff. Four out
of five pick virtually identical tempos for the 1m lebhaften Tempo. Th e per
formances by Simon an d Goode are largely indistinguishable with regard
48 Orthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions T Orthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions 49
Given the strongly personal tradition within which nineteenth
century piano music evolved, I am going to conclude with what may seem
a contradictory position. For the very reason that personal interpretation
plays such a vital role, the performance of nineteenth-century piano mu
sic demands the widest possible knowledge of performance practices. Th e
notion that, in forging an interpretation, the performer of any repertoire
relies first an d foremost on innate creativity is one of the most seductive
fictions in the music business. Those performers of nineteenth-century
piano music who cling to this view today sound more like all those who
share that view than like the individual interpreters they aspire to be-a
conclusion strongly supported no t just by the recordings we have sur
veyed bu t also by the output of an entire industry.
Regardless of the degree of talent with which any individual per
former is blessed, the musical environment in which he or she is nurtured
has a powerful impact on individual performance styles. Th e develop
ment of an individual style depends to a great extent on performers' real
ization an d understanding of what has shaped an d molded them. In
spired performances result from choices that are conscious an d deliberate
as well as instinctive an d intuitive. Youthful artists by an d large have these
choices made for them; mature artists have identified what influences un
derlie their approaches, an d they accept responsibility for these as well as
fo r those of their own making.There has never been a better time for us to rethink ou r perfor
mances of repertoire that has become so familiar it almost plays itself. Ou r
audience is increasingly one that is coming to Beethoven, Chopin, an d
Liszt as young adults, without having been weaned from a "high culture"
tradition. That tradition, which so many of us revere, can no longer be
counted on to deliver a fresh generation of listeners. This new breed of
listener is not satisfied watching reenactments of ritualized performances,
however perfectly carried out. Modern culture offers too many consumer
options for us to rest on a belief-regardless of how sincere-in the self
evident worth, much less superiority, of this repertoire. Th e new audi
ence may no t have the sophistication upon which musicians in previous
generations relied, but it has a nose that can smell the difference between
an adventure an d a rerun.
Th e strength of the period-instrument movement to date lies not in
its largely spurious claims to authenticity, bu t precisely in its spirit of ad
venture. This adventurism has too frequently permitted period
instrument performers to get away with standards that would attract only
scorn in the modern instrument world. Th e great majority of recordings
on nineteenth-centurypianos to date have simply transplanted well-worn
interpretations from a previous er a onto well-worn instruments from an
even earlier era. In the long ru n that orientation will sustain neither the
old no r the new audience. Modern performers are equally guilty in their
claim to have a corner on inspiration. Th e momentum of previous gener-
II
ations becomes the inertia of the present generation, an d too many of the
r ~ ~ o r d i n g s we issue today offer eloquent testimony to the t a l e n e s ~ of ourVISIOn.
Perhaps the most difficult part in rethinking pieces that we know so
well is acknowledging the degree to which we have settled for playing by
rote. It may be impossible to banish the smothering effect of countless re
cordings from ou r collective memory, bu t we can retrain ourselves to look
at scores with an open an d unbiased mind. We can regain a sense of exper
imentation (dare one say improvisation?) that lay at the basis of so many
individual performance styles in the nineteenth century. There is absu'
lutely no reason why modern instrument performers cannot regain
ground they feel they have lost by forging interpretations from scratch
an d by exposing the posturing of much of the period-instrument move
ment.35
We need passionate defenders of the modern piano's fitness for
expressing the Romantic repertoire, armed not just with slogans but with
specifics.36
Th e shibboleths that both sides have applied to the other have
long since lost their force. Performance practice belongs to every pianist
willing to take seriously the claims of a Chopin mazurka or Brahms inter
mezzo, of their times, an d of ours.
Notes1. "Performing practice" in Great Britain, where gerunds are still commonlv
used. '
2. Th e current fashionableness of performance practice was illustrated by a
PBS broadcast in July 1989 of the New York Mostly Mozart Festival. Following a
performance of Mozart's Lim Symphony, K. 425, host Martin Bookspan com
mented approvingly an d at length on conductor Gerard Schwarz's use of th e pre
scribed Andante tempo in the Siciliano slowmovement rather than the Poco Ada
gio tempo that prevailed under numerous unnamed conductors from "the past."
Probably few listeners ha d any idea of what Bookspan was talking about, but the
message was clear: Mr. Schwarz is hip to performance practice.
3. For one view of th e current relationship between performance practiceand period instruments, see Winter, "Debunking."
4. This essay focuses on the nineteenth-century repertoire for the virtuosopianist. It does not explore the domestic piano-music market that sprang up dur
Ing the 1840s and 1850s. By mid-century, the amateur pianist had replaced the
amateur string player who ha d been the paradigm during the era of Haydn, Mo
zart, an d Beethoven. This shift was significant, for the amateur pianist did not
need to have any sense of intonation, of how to blend pitches with other instru
ments, or of how to tune-al l prerequisites for the string player.
5. Letter to Adolphe Pictet first published in Revue et Gazette musicale de Paril6
(1838): 58.
6. Some will argue that this old European constituency is being replaced by an
Asian or Asian/American audience, but-whatever the validity of his claim-this
repertoire is new music for the Asian audience rather than part of its traditional
"high culture."
52 Orthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions 1 Orthodoxies, Paradoxes, and Contradictions 53
Leicht (all three in Breslau, today Wrodaw, Poland), Kisting, Stocker, Schone
mann, an d Perau (all four in Berlin) in Germany; Broadwood, Erard, Bechstein,
Boisselot, Beregszaszy, Streicher, Bosendorfer, an d Steinway at the Altenburg in
Weimar; Bechstein, Erard, Bosendorfer, an d Chickering. These twenty-nine
types probably represent an incomplete list of the instruments Liszt must have
known. I am indebted to Geraldine Keeling, who is preparing a full-length study
of Liszt's pianos, for details concerning Liszt's use of pianos.
11. Reliance on color is fa r less true of such periods as the Baroque. It is no
accident that an earlv album of electronic music was "Switched-on Bach." Bach's
music exists in large'measure independently of any particular color, which also
explains the popularity of transcriptions in the first half of the eighteenth cen
tury. "Switched-on Chopin" is inconceivable.
12. Liszt, trans. 1963: 90. Th e kind of glass harmonica with which Liszt would
most likely have been familiar was the pedal-operated type introduced by Ben
jamin Franklin in 1761 and popular in Europe to about 1830. Th e passage is oftenquoted without identifying the allusion, as in Maurice Hinson, "Pedaling the Pi
ano Works of Chopin," in Banowetz, 180.
13. Th e only exception I have encountered in the study of more than two
dozen Pleyels from the first half of the century is a privately owned instrument in
Brentwood, California, from the mid-1840s and measuring about 245 cm.
14. Fo r a fresh look at this design element, see Winter, 1988 ("Striking"): 286-
87.
15. Th e evidence for this construction is usually obscured on surviving instru
ments because the hammers have invariably been recovered in straight felt.
16. Erard closed down his London factory in 1890 rather than surrender to the
homogenization of taste.
17. Richard Burnett-who understands exactly how to handle the phrase
performs Schubert's D 421, no. 1 on an 1826 Viennese fortepiano by ConradGraf (Amon Ra CD-SAR 7). This original instrument shows its age, especially in
the treble, bu t enough of its earlier beauty remains for us to imagine how it might
once have sounded.
18. Not all Viennese instruments were capable of a true una corda effect, bu t all
of them moved to at least two strings, and all of them altered the tone color signifi
cantly. Many pianists do not realize that using the shift on most modern grands
only moves th e hammer to a different location on all three strings.
19. Richter can be heard on Angel RL-32078; Perahia, on CBS MK42124.
20. See, for example, Harding and Ehrlich.
21. For the most up-to-date bibliography, see Banowetz. The most illuminat
ing article on the subject of Romantic pedaling to date is Rosen.
22. Colorful examples of their application can be heard on two recordings by
Richard Burnett (Amon Ra SAR 6 and Amon Ra SAR 7).
23. Th e middle, or "sostenuto," pedal was introduced by the Marseille maker
Boisselot as early as the Paris Exposition of 1844. After improvements in 1862 by
Claude Montal, Steinway patented its own version in 1875. This pedal sustains
notes being held at the moment the pedal is depressed. Many firms, such as Bech
stein, never adopted the sostenuto pedal.
24. Smithsonian ND 033.
25. Translated into English as Doctor Faustus by H. T. Lowe-Porter an d pub
lished by Alfred A. Knopf (New York, 1948). Mann's account of th e lecture is on
pp. 51-56 of the paperback edition.
26. To stress the movement's seamlessness, Beethoven does not label the varia
tions separately; the nomenclature is used here for convenience.
27. This review from The Harmonicon (London, August 1823) is quoted in Ni
cholas Slonimsky's Lexicon of MU5icai Invective (Seattle, 1969; reprint of 1953 edi
tion),43.
28. This marking is more significant for having been added after the Adagio
was entered.
29. Passing reference to tempo relationships in the Ariella-and large-scale ig
noring of their consequences--can be found in Goldstein, 266.
30. Angel GRM 4005 (COLH 63). The fourteen other recordings surveyed are