Friday 13th September 2024

What did orchestral music (overture, symphonies and concertos) by Weber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn sound like at performances in the first half of the nineteenth century? And how did singers of this era bring out the emotions of songs texts? Without a time-machine we may never find the answers to these questions. But, one thing is certain: before the twentieth century singers and instrumentalists performed musical works in imaginatively expressive ways that clearly projected the music’s narrative (whether expressed in words or not) to the audience. Through myriad expressive techniques including inflections of tone and timing, musicians took their listeners on scintillating journeys, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting, at times calm, sorrowful or languid in mood, at others frantic or angry.

These expressive techniques are well documented sources (both theatrical and musical) of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, revealing a Classical-Romantic ‘continuum’ of expressive practices (that slowly evolved over several centuries). These practices were applied judiciously at the will of the highly-skilled musician. At one end of the continuum we might consider the advice of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (1714–1788) who, in 1753, listed the constituents of successful musical delivery as “the loudness and softness of the notes, their accentuation, Schnellen [a finger technique on the clavichord], portamento [audible sliding effects], staccato [shortening of notes], vibrato [audible trembling effects], arpeggiation [playing notes one after the other that are aligned in the notation], sustaining [smooth or legato], holding back [getting slower], and pushing forward [getting faster]. Such practices were scarcely to be found in composer’s scores but were expected to be added by the performer. Bach warns that “Whoever either does not use these things at all or who uses them at the wrong time has a bad performance style. ” At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Johann Anton André—famous for his publication of Mozart’s music—bothered to indicate in his songs frequent changes of tempo (giving metronome figures) and various signs indicating rhythmic nuance to underscore the everchanging meaning of the text. At the other end of the continuum we might can consider the words of the German cellist Hugo Becker (1863– 1941) who explained in 1929: “Animato [getting faster] is the marking for that feeling that makes us talk faster when relating events that affect us very strongly […] Meno or più tranquillo [less or more tranquil], on the other hand, should check the flow of the narrative; it can be used either as a calming effect, or to underline the meaning of a particular place, in order to bring out something musically significant. ” Such evidence points to the use of narrative practices to tell stories in spellbinding ways.

The Classical-Romantic continuum was all but expunged during the first half of the twentieth century with the rise of modernism, a time of unprecedented change across the arts and other disciplines, in which the expressive artistry that had characterised late nineteenth-century performance was steadfastly rejected. By 1950, this resulted in styles of classical music performance that interpreted the composer’s notation in a very literal way, leaving little or no room for improvised musical creativity from the performer. Now, the palate of expression available to artists was severely restricted to the extent that performers became “a disappearing transmitter of canonic works and [composers’] identities” to borrow the words of Anna Scott. This, together with the effects of globalization, led to a homogeneity in classical music performance. The result is that we have fixed ideas of how Mendelssohn’s or Beethoven’s works should sound.But we can reimagine what has been forgotten. For early sound recordings (made at the turn of the twentieth century) preserve the artistry of many revered musicians, some of whom were trained in the middle of the nineteenth century or a little before. These recordings allow us to experience how musicians within a half century of the passing of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert expressed musical stories. We hear their performance practices “unearthed from a time capsule” to quote David Kjar. They provide rich opportunities for us to learn from bygone artists by emulating (imitating) and embodying their interpretations to make them our own: not for the sake of creating museum performances, but to inspire fresh and novel approaches, paving the way for reimagining music of the past creatively and with appropriately improvisatory spirit.