Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales
In his Advice to Young Musicians, the composer Robert Schumann wrote,
“Consider it an abomination to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.”
At face value, these are pretty strong words, implying we cultivate a reverence for music notation and rigidity in performance. In his exposition of Schumann’s thoughts, however, the cellist Steven Isserlis wisely suggests,
“Schumann’s general point here is that we must avoid inappropriate additions or alterations to the musical text… Some composers have left us specific instructions, which we have to follow to the letter; others, particularly in earlier periods, have left most of the interpretative decisions to us. In much baroque music it is almost essential to add ornamentation at times; composers would have expected it.”
Slaves to the score?
However seriously (or otherwise) we take Schumann’s views on this topic, it remains true that as a composer, music critic, musician’s friend, and husband to one of the most acclaimed pianists of the nineteenth century, he was something of an “influencer”.
And while Schumann’s apparent antipathy towards deviation from the score may have taken a while to gain traction, by the mid-twentieth century, all but the most plucky classical pianists had abandoned the practice of adding their own creative embellishments and alterations. Not only so, but unfortunately many had discernibly given up on spontaneity and improvisation.
Obviously, I wouldn’t want to singularly blame Schumann for the sterile approach to performance that gradually became the norm. His own music has made a special impact on my piano journey. And his aphorism admonishing us to adhere faithfully to the score clearly has importance when approaching Schumann’s own highly detailed, individualistic works.
But even here, Schumann’s comments seem to be significantly at odds with the prevailing performing practises of his pianist friends and contemporaries. As Steven Isserlis speculates,
“I wonder whether this was a dig at Liszt, who at one point in his career was (in)famous for superimposing trills and tremolandi on the works of other composers?”
The simple truth is that nineteenth century virtuosi excelled at embellishing other peoples’ music, and at improvising their own. Few treated notation as an immutable artistic record, or venerated the score in isolation.
Take Chopin, whose constant tinkering with his compositions suggests he didn’t regard their scores as being written on tablets of stone.
Similarly, decades after Robert’s death, Clara Schumann created “instructive editions” of his piano works, with (ahem) alterations to his original markings.
As I explained in my review of her edition’s recent reissue,
“We want the printed score to reproduce as closely as possible the notation as written by the composer, evidenced by the autograph manuscript if one survives, and the published first edition. However, in the mid-nineteenth century there was a shift towards producing “instructive editions” which often considerably embellished on the original work, ostensibly to provide educational support for domestic musicians and their teachers.”
We must surely treasure Clara’s instructive editions, just as we equally value the efforts of today’s scholars in preparing urtext scores that strip away later performance traditions. Paradoxically, these can be mutually enlightening and enlivening.
But any insistence on slavishly adhering to the minutiae of a score is flawed, and seems historically uninformed. Let’s try to remember that until fairly recent times, it was the norm for classical pianists to improvise their own preludes at the start of their recitals, and then to put their own indelible stamp on the repertoire that followed.
Surely, the time has come to rediscover these hugely important interpretative and creative performance arts.
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