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If you were to ask a modern musician what the quarter note means in Common Time the answer would be simple: “It lasts for one full beat, to be released at the beginning of the succeeding beat.” Ah, but eighteenth-century rhythm reading is not a simple “one-size-fits-all” affair. Just as spoken language has evolved over time, so has music notational language. The notation has remained much the same; it is how the notation is read that has changed. So, how is the quarter note quandary solved? Gazing at the issue through an eighteenth-century lens will answer the riddle.
Eighteenth-century style is one of clarity – expressive rhythmic clarity – that projects character or affekt through the notation at hand. And the crisp, articulate fortepiano is the perfectly suited instrument for executing the style. All rhythmic elements are chosen to reflect affekt; so much so that when certain elements are present a particular affekt is understood. The Rhythm Schemata diagram provides insight to the interacting elements:
Rhythm Schemata
Notice that affekt is at the center of the wheel. All notational decisions – appropriate tempo and meter, carefully crafted formal and phrase structure to allow for execution of rhetoric, and specific rhythm choices – are made to express the desired affekt.
Execution of the quarter note varies greatly depending on tempo and meter choices, which are directly related to period dances. For example, a march in duple meter commands a different affekt than a minuet in triple meter. Just like there are heavy and light meters, note values act in much the same way. A time signature with a 2 in the bottom denotes heavy affekt, one with a 4 lighter, and one with an 8 in the bottom lighter yet. Note value choices within the meter provide execution clues. For instance, a piece made up primarily of half and quarter notes would be heavier than one of eighth and sixteenth notes. A comparison of Beethoven’s Sonata, op. 10, no. 3 to his Sonata op. 14, no. 2 demonstrates how note values take on differing character based on these period practices. So, the quarter note may take on a variety of characters, and consequently lengths, based on affekt.
Today, legato is the ordinary way of playing. If a line is presented with no markings (staccato or legato), the performer assumes to play legato, holding every rhythm for the full value. Not so in eighteenth-century style. This is where the answer to the riddle lies: The quarter note is held for its full value only when it occurs under a slur or a tenuto marking. How long should it be held? Just when is it appropriate to release the quarter note? This is where affekt is essential (and why it is at the center of the wheel). Depending on affekt, a quarter note may be cut quite short (like a crisp timpani attack) or held for most of the beat (as in a forlorn oboe solo). One must turn to the nuances of notation – formal structure, meter, expression marks, dynamics, and beaming – for clues.
Taking specific steps will facilitate creating a rhythmically authentic and personal eighteenth-century style on the modern piano.
Begin with Urtext. It is essential to work from an authentic score to determine how best to follow the clues left by the composer rather than an interpretation offered by an editor.
During initial experiences work with a piece that contains simple textures and is quite bare (few slurs or dynamic markings). Simple dances from Mozart’s Klavierstücke, Beethoven’s German Dances, or Piano Sonata in C Major, K. 545 by Mozart are good starting places.
Do some digging: What dance is being described? Is the meter heavy or light? In context, are the note values heavy or light? Unearthing answers will impact the length of the quarter notes.
Hold the quarter notes for full value only when under a slur or tenuto.
Strive for a strong metrical pulse. The down-beat is extremely important in this style.
Allow the energy and expression (determined by the affekt) to influence carefully placed timing and rubato within metrical boundaries.
Sing each line; this will go a long way in deciding tasteful rhythmic length and timing.
The fortepiano’s strength is crispness and clarity of tone, the modern piano’s is to produce a long, legato line. Listen carefully and continually. Adjust to the feedback from the instrument to prevent a choppy tone and choked endings of phrases.
Hear the improvement in the sound aesthetic as you move through the following audio examples: 1) a frequently-heard modern rendition, 2) an interpretation on a Belt-Walter replica ca. 1780’s five-octave fortepiano, and 3) a reconciled and historically informed rendition on a modern piano. The energy and vibrancy provided by using period rhythm-reading strategies is markedly noticeable.
Clementi, Piano Sonatina in C Major, op. 36, no. 1/I, mm. 1-6.
Taking the time to view the score through an eighteenth-century lens and apply the period performance practices judiciously to modern playing provides the opportunity to discover an old language that may be recreated in a new way.
Featured image: “Fortepiano label” by Ching. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.
We have all attended concerts where a performer dazzled us with technique that seemed hardly humanly possible – a phenomenon that has been a part of musical performances throughout history. In a 1783 anecdotal memory by Johann Matthias Gesner, the ability of J. S. Bach’s playing was described to “effect what not many Orpheuses, nor […]
How does one capture the Classical style sound aesthetic when approaching performance of eighteenth-century repertoire on the modern piano? Although it is important to know of the period instruments and their associated physical sound qualities, knowing how period musicians approached their art emotionally and intellectually will provide even deeper insight into discovering how to recreate the sound aesthetic.
A nagging suspicion grows that many writers, overawed and dazzled by Bach, still tacitly assume a direct correlation between his immense genius and his stature as a person. At best this can make them unusually tolerant of his faults, which are there for all to see: a certain tetchiness, contrariness and self importance, timidity in meeting intellectual challenges, and a fawning attitude toward royal personages and to authority in general that mixes suspicion with gain-seeking. But why should it be assumed that great music emanates from a great human being? Music may inspire and uplift us, but it does not have to be the manifestation of an inspiring (as opposed to an inspired) individual. In some cases there may be such correspondence, but we are not obliged to presume that it is so. It is very possible that "the teller may be so much slighter or less attractive than the tale." [source] The very fact that Bach's music was conceived and organized with the brilliance of a great mind does not directly give us any clues as to his personality. Indeed, knowledge of the one can lead to a misplaced knowingness about the other. At least with him there is not the slightest risk, as with so many of the great Romantics (Byron, Berlioz, Heine spring to mind), that we might discover almost too much about him or, as in the case of Richard Wagner, be led to an uncomfortable correlation between the creative and the pathological.
0 Comments on "But why should it be assumed that great music emanates from a great human being?" as of 3/9/2016 6:18:00 PM
In celebration of The BBC Proms 120th anniversary we have created a comprehensive reading list of books, journals, and online resources that celebrate the eight- week British summer season of orchestral music, live performances, and late-night music and poetry.
I hurry us deep into the belly ofthe church, away from the wind that tumbles in behind, toward Herr Palinski,who is still playing Bach like a four-armed man, like Berlin—both sides—islistening. Slowly Meryem eases in, lets me sit with her in a lonesome pew. She tilts her head and looks up, as ifthe music is coming from high in the church’s hollows, or from the tenacious stain of windows. Herducky yellow boots flop sideways. Her back scoops my ribs.
— from the Berlin novel, for Tamra Tuller/Philomel
2 Comments on Bach and Berlin, a sliver from a work in progress, last added: 4/10/2012
At first glance, you may think the bricklayers of Lüneburg knocked back a few too many lagers before work. Many of the multi-colored brick buildings lean and sway, and some turrets are bent like trees in a hurricane.
It’s not the fault of the bricklayers but of the shifting ground in this former salt-mining town. The mining caused the ground to sink in different areas, resulting in the kooky dips in the streets and buildings. The buildings of Lüneburg are stunning examples of Hanseatic architecture, known for its intricate brickwork.
Over the course of my two-day visit there, I was so enthralled with the town that I must’ve taken 200 photos. I never knew bricks could have this much personality.
As usual these days, I’ve got patchwork on the brain when I look at anything. Like this:
Fodder for a quilt?
The contraption below seems to be for lifting items to the top floor. Note the curled brick on the right.
There were a lot of aqua doors, which I loved against the red brick. I’m into any variation of blue-ish with orange-ish.
Here below you can really see the bending. Note the rounded brick used in the little columns and arches.
I loved this sign:
And a special surprise: I stumbled upon a church sign (St. Michaelis) saying J.S. Bach had sung here for two years as a boy. Bach is my favorite composer, so this totally made my day.
Lüneburg is not far from Hannover—about an hour by car or by train. I can’t believe it took me this long to check it out, but I hope to go again soon.
For another great short trip from Hannover, check out Celle.
*Information for this post was gathered from wikipedia.
This news of Michael Steinberg’s death comes as a terrible blow, a truly sad moment that we had all hoped would never arrive. Yet it leads us to reflect upon the strength, passion, and grace of Michael’s character, the intelligence and infectious joy with which he approached music and his writing, and the integrity and clear mindedness which he carried throughout his life and illness. His gift to the world extends well beyond his rich and innumerable insights into the classical music repertoire, which invite generations of enthralled readers to enter into and explore this glorious art form. Micheal’s greatest gift, I believe, was his ability to show us, through his eyes, the beauty and the goodness of our own familiar world.
On behalf of all at Oxford University Press, I extend our deepest condolences to Jorja, to Michael’s family, and to his friends and communities. He will, most sincerely, be missed. To celebrate Michael’s life and amazing career, please enjoy this excerpt from his book For the Love of Music: Invitations to Listening, co-written with Larry Rothe. More information about his amazing contributions to music and scholarship can be found at the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle.
I fell in love with music in a murky alley when I was eleven. Sometimes I ask friends when and where and how it happened to them, and they recount childhood memories of hearing a beautiful cousin play a Chopin etude, of being stunned by a broadcast of the Saint Matthew Passion, or sent into reveries lying under the family piano while Mother practiced Songs without Words. My own fall was less romantic.
More precisely, I was seduced and then proceeded to fall in love. It was Fantasia…that did me in. I saw it just once, at the Cosmopolitan, a dingy movie house in Cambridge, England, and although this was more than sixty-five years ago, I remember it more vividly than most of the movies I’ve seen in the last sixty-five weeks. I saw it just once because as a schoolboy on threepence a week in pocket money…I couldn’t afford to go again. Besides, the guardians of Good Taste would not have encouraged, let alone subsidized, a return visit. But I also realized I did not need to see it again because the most important part was available for free. Behind the sweet little fleabag where Fantasia was playing, there was this alley where I could stand every day after school, stand undisturbed, and listen to the soundtrack of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Stravinsky…
…Not that Fantasia was my first encounter with “classical” music. I had done the first phase of my growing up in Breslau in a cultivated, affluent, German Jewish household with a Bechstein grand and a good radio (but no record player, not an uncommon lack for the day)… Going to concerts in Breslau was out because by the time I was old enough to be taken, public events of that sort were forbidden to Jews. Not knowing what I was missing, I was much more bothered by not being able to go iceskating or to the zoo anymore. So, while there was a general sense at home that music was A Good Thing, and a few names and titles were familiar…I had nearly nothing by way of actual musical sounds to tie to them…
At ten I went to England on a Kindertransport. There I spent most of the year in boarding school, the rest with the highly literate, politically aware, and quite unmusical English family that had taken me in. Even so, the paterfamilias maintained a surprising totemic reverence for two symphonies, Beethoven’s Ninth and Elgar’s Second, actually suspending his obsessive gardening when they showed up on the radio, which we still called “the wireless.” Otherwise, [their] indifference to music was complete…
All of this meant that I had to find my way to music on my own. Or, rather, it found me. Fantasia came to the rescue at the right moment, and after that it was a question of learning how to still my growing hunger… I discovered record stores, which in those days had tiny listening rooms in which one could try those imposing, shiny, black, dangerously fragile disks. (When I revisited Cambridge for the first time more than twenty years later I wanted to go into Miller’s to thank them for what, unwittingly and probably not happily, they had done for me on my journey toward music, but I am sorry to say I didn’t actually do it.)…Miller’s was a treasure trove, and I took pains to learn the schedules of the various salespeople so that no one of them would see me too often and I would not wear out my thinly based welcome…
…What have I learned? In the alley behind the Cosmo I learned…that I did not need Mickey Mouse or those bra-clad centaurettes or even the beautiful images of darting violin bows…to make the music enjoyable. I learned that music repaid repeated listening. Most music anyway… I learned to pay attention, because if I missed something it was gone… I learned that my focus changed from details to at least something like the whole, from the raisins to the cake. And I learned that there was a lot to hear in some of those pieces and that they did not cease to be full of surprises. I could of course not have articulated any of this then…
…What else did I eventually learn? To pay heed to my first reactions but also not to take them too seriously and certainly not to assume that they have permanent value. Not to think too much at the beginning and not to think at all about what I thought I was maybe supposed to be thinking. To be patient or—better—suspenseful, to wait and see how the piece or I might change (the former is of course an illusion)… That in the end the only study of music is music, that good program notes and pre-concert talks are helpful ways of showing you the door in the wall and of turning on some extra lights, but that the only thing that really matters is what happens privately between you and the music. That, as with any other form of falling in love, no one can do it for you and no one can draw you a map. That listening to music is not like getting a haircut or a manicure, but that it is something for you to do. That music, like any worthwhile partner in love, is demanding, sometimes exasperatingly, exhaustingly demanding. That—and here I borrow a perfect formulation from Karen Armstrong’s memoir, The Spiral Staircase—”you have to give it your full attention, wait patiently upon it, and make an empty space for it in your mind.” That it is a demon that can pursue us as relentlessly as the Hound of Heaven. That its capacity to give is as near to infinite as anything in this world, and that what it offers us is always and inescapably in exact proportion to what we ourselves give.
0 Comments on A Fond Farewell to Michael Steinberg as of 7/28/2009 11:14:00 AM
David Bach is the best-selling author of the eight books in the Finish Rich series as well as Fight for Your Money and The Automatic Millionaire. In his latest book, The Finish Rich Dictionary, Bach defines 1001 essential financial terms and provides 10 essays packed with financial advice ranging from skipping your morning latte to avoiding common money mistakes. Below, we’ve excerpted Bach’s steps for creating a financial plan that will really work.
Make sure your goals are based on your values. By identifying your top five values, you can then base your goals on them. The more you base your goals on your values, the more likely it is that you will achieve them. After all, can you think of anything better or more exciting around which to plan your spending and investing than the things that really matter to you? And what could matter more than the values by which you and your partner want to live and grow? Ideally, each of these top five values should lead you to a specific key goal. You’ll write down a value and then, right next to it, a related goal on which you want to focus your time and energy.
Make your goals specific, detailed, and with a finish line. Wanting something and getting it are two different things. In order to achieve a goal, you must know precisely what it is that you’re after. In other words, you need to take those vague ideas and thoughts you have about what sort of life you’d like and make them specific. Your goal could be to buy a dream house by a lake. Or it could be getting your credit card bills paid off over the next 12 months, going to Hawaii on a dream vacation sometime in the next two years, or cleaning out the house from top to bottom in the next three months.
Put your top five goals in writing. Study after study has shown that writing down your goals makes it much more likely that you’ll achieve them. Writing down goals does something to you subconsciously that often brings the goal to you. For one thing, writing down your goals helps you make them more specific. For another, it makes your goals seem more real to you.
Start taking action toward your goals within 48 hours. If you don’t get moving immediately toward your goal, even if only in a small way, chances are you’ll never get moving at all. Even if it will take years to achieve a particular goal, there are still things you can do to start moving toward that goal right away. And you can do it within the next 48 hours. By taking this sort of specific, immediate action, your goal becomes even more real to you and, thus, even more exciting.
Enlist help. There’s no such thing as a “self-made” person. No one ever reaches a really important goal without some sort of help from some other person. It’s important to share your dreams and goals with the people you love and trust, but it also doesn’t hurt to share them with strangers, too. You never know—the person you’re sitting next to at a dinner party or a lecture may be in the perfect position to help you make your dream a reality. If you keep your goals to yourself, you could miss your big chance.
Get a rough idea of how much it will cost to achieve your goals. You need to get a sense of what it will take in dollars and cents to achieve your various goals. This will enable you to do two things: (1) understand how realistic (or unrealistic) your goals may be, and (2) get yourself started on a systematic savings and investment plan to accumulate the money you’ll need to achieve them. Some goals will take almost no time to save for, and some goals may take a lot of time and investing to reach. Since it’s important to know which is which, part of creating a Purpose-Focused Financial Plan involves estimating how much money you think you will ultimately need to pay for your top five goals. So ask yourself, What is this goal going to cost? How much do I need to start putting aside each week or month to help me get there?
If you live with a partner, make sure your goals match both your values. What’s the point of being with someone if you don’t share your most intimate dreams and thoughts with them? If you’ve got kids, share your dreams with them, too. Ask them what they’d like to see the family doing over the next three years. Ask them about their values, and then work together on a family list of five things that you all want to accomplish together.
1 Comments on How to Create a Financial Plan, last added: 2/17/2009
Shaun Connell -- Financial Planning said, on 2/17/2009 1:50:00 PM
Everyone should learn financial planning, even if they hire someone to make sure they stay on right path. Financial planners won’t always be there for you, meaning you need some level of an in-depth understanding of finance.
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4 Comments on The Drunken Bricks of Lueneburg, last added: 9/9/2011
Two words....more, please. :)
I'm right there...I love this.