Abstract (6): The Musical Dialogue

Original title in Deutsch: Der musikalische Dialog, by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Portland: Amadeus Press, 1989. (English translation: Mary O’Neill)

Performance Traditions

p.43
In the performance of early music, tradition is as formative a factor as the manuscript of the work itself. Through countless performances over the course of decades and centuries, each piece of music undergoes a formation which in time acquires almost a definitive character … regarded as a kind of refinement, a crystallization of the conclusive interpretation, confirmed by years of listening.
A clear distinction must be made between works which have been performed in an unbroken line from the period in which they were written up until today, and other works which disappeared from concert programs for a shorter or longer period of time. The compositions of Beethoven, for example, have been played uninterruptedly since their first performances; the tradition of rendition, therefore, can be traced directly to the composer. In such cases, traditional opinion is probably correct. However, Mendelssohn's performances of Bach's oratorios were a completely new beginning after many decades of silence …

The Concerto

• At the beginning of the 17th century, concerto had the came meaning as "sinfonia," or "Concentus." The term comes from "conserere" or 'bringing together.' However, since the time of Praetorius, "concertare" (rivalry or competition) has been cited as the origin of the term.
• The essential feature of the concerto is the dialogue, the contest among different groups of sounds.
• The most important technical means used to clarify these forms of statement and reply are articulation (the distinct pronunciation of musical speech) and dynamics.
• Solo concertos of the Baroque period the slow movements are often conceived as instrumental songs or even as arias.
•• Bach's violin concertos were NOT written for virtuosos. […] An interpretation such as that used for violin concertos of the 19th century, in which the soloist is allowed to dominate the orchestra, is INCORRECT for the music of Bach. Here the soloist's role is not that of a brilliant virtuoso, but rather that of the lead singer of a chorus. In this way a dynamic situation emerges which makes both the dialogue form as well as the solo-tutti interplay comprehensible, as has already been said: the solo passages are piano, the tutti passages forte.

莫扎特與他的時代

「全知的」、多元面貌的莫扎特音樂

p.86
[…] it encompasses the fullness of life, from heartfelt anguish to the purest joy. It expresses the bitterest conflicts, often without offering a solution. It can be shockingly direct when it shows us our reflection in a mirror. This music is much more than beautiful. It is "dreadful" in the ancient sense of the word: sublime, all-seeing, all-knowing.

莫扎特的當代評價

p.84
Mozart was not an innovator in his art, as were Wagner and Monteverdi; he did not want to reform music … Everything that we believe we recognize as "typical Mozart" is also found in the works of his contemporaries. […] Like all composers of the 18th century, Mozart wrote only for his contemporaries, and among these only the "true connoisseurs." - the relatively small circle of musically trained connoisseurs comprised his true audience. Mozart's music addressed itself to this group, and his intention was to be understood by them. The desperate feeling of the artist who is not understood by his own age was never the lot of Mozart or his art. On the contrary, it is likely that the richness of his music could be fully understood only by his contemporaries.
p.86
… who knows his work primarily through his own interpretations, clearly felt that this music was different from anything else they had ever heard. The intensity of musical and emotional statements carried the listener to his utmost limits: anything more would be unendurable … Mozart was told that he should write "easier" music with a less complicated elaboration of the individual voices - that it was difficult to follow and understand his music, that he should not go so far in his harmonies (hard, dissonant tensions), etc.

弦樂器演奏法

p.88
At the time of Mozart, string players restricted themselves as much as possible to the lower positions; only for the high passages did they shift to the required position on the top string. The instruments thus sounded brighter and more distinctive. The woodwinds sounded more reed-like, the brass instruments much leaner and more colorful.

低音管與音色

p.89
Bassoonists should try to bring out the reed-like or string-like sound of their instruments through the use of corresponding reeds, so that it blends with the sound of the cellos. The sound of the modern bassoon tends to be hollow and isolated.

單簧管與音色

p.89
Clarinetists should definitely rediscover the rich color gradations of the various instruments. Mozart wrote for G, A, B-flat, B and C clarinets. I conducted the Overture to "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" using C clarinets and would not gladly do without this fresh color.

莫扎特時代的管弦樂法

p.89
When we say "Mozart orchestra" or "Mozart orchestration" today, we think of a smaller ensemble. The orchestrations of the age of Mozart, however, were extremely varied, much more varied than the most extreme orchestrations today. On November 4, 1777, Mozart wrote from Mannheim:
The orchestra is very good AND LARGE. On each side ten to eleven violins, four violas, two oboes, two flutes and two clarinets, two horns, four cellos, four bassoons and four contrabasses, plus trumpets and kettledrums.
This number corresponds roughly to a mid-sized "Mozart orchestration" today, although there are a few interesting differences: the first and second violins are equally strong in number … we recall that Mozart often called for the second violins to play very important counter-melodies in a lower register, which can be brought out clearly only with some difficulty.
p.90
On April 11, 1781, Mozart wrote from Vienna:
… the Symphony went magnificently and met with every success. There were 40 violins, the wind instruments all doubled, 10 violas, 10 contrabasses, 8 cellos and 6 bassoons.
… [obviously,] Mozart desired the largest possible orchestration, including doubling of the winds. Today this would be denounced as a great sacrilege against the "true Mozart tradition."
Clearly, the orchestrations available to Mozart could differ greatly. The smallest was 3–3–2–2–2 in 1787 at the Prague Opera for "Don Giovanni"; in the Vienna Opera: 6–6–4–3–3 in 1782 for "Entführung"; in Milan: 12–12–6–2–6 in 1770 for "Mitridate" (the two cellos were reenforced by four bassoons); in Vienna for several benefit concerts: 20–20–10–8–10 after 1781. By way of comparison, a few figures for Haydn: in Eisenstadt and Esterháza: 3–3–2–2–2 from 1760 to about 1770, later there were four more violins; in 1794 at the King's Theater in London: 12–12–6–4–5 (here too, the woodwinds were doubled).

莫扎特時代的中提琴

p.89
The small viola group [of the Mannheim orchestra] is surprising … we can understand this only if we assume that the sound of the violas of that day was much stronger than that of today's instruments … The smallest viola I own was built in 1805, and its body is 37 cm long. (By way of comparison, a violin is approximately 35 cm long). The largest, from the 17th century, is 56 cm long! Today a viola with a body length of 41 cm is considered a large instrument … At the time of Mozart, very large violas with a powerful, sonorous sound were usually played in the orchestra. Unfortunately […] they were brutally cut [during the course of the 19th century] in order to make them easier to play. With the disappearance of the very large viola, an important and interesting color vanished from the string section.

響度

p.91
6 violins do not sound twice as loud as 3, bur only 10% louder! Only an unrealistically large violin section actually sound twice as loud. Enlarging the string section does not result simply in a more intense sound. To put it differently, even a precise attack of a section is never perfectly together. Through the minimally staggered entrance of the individual instruments, a soft, very intense attack comes about in the ideal situation, because the colors of each individual entry do not occur precisely together, but come one behind the other, thereby enriching the overall attack. The impression of a rich sonority therefore emerges.

弦樂器的和弦演奏

p.117
On a string instrument, only two strings can be played simultaneously, without forcing. Three and four-part chords today are usually played divisi: each violinist plays only 1 or 2 tones of the chord, so that all tones can be produced at the same time. But this was by no means Mozart's intention. As a brilliant orchestrator who himself played the violin quite well, he expressly demanded that every musician play the entire chord, arpeggiating it. The resulting slight imprecisions in the attack, the very fast sequence of the chord tones, causes a powerful rolling attack, which has a much more dynamic effect than divided chords which are played as precisely and cleanly as possible.

梅呂哀舞曲

The Minuet of All

p.101
… the retardation in tempo with the passage of time is quite obvious. It reached its peak in what is probably the most famous of all minuets, i.e. that in Mozart's Don Giovanni […] This minuet, in its rigid tempo, became for us the prototype of the minuet in general […] the end point of a development that took place over the course of almost 150 years. It was composed at a time when the minuet as a dance form had already gone out of fashion, but had been transformed, in sonatas and symphonies, into an art music movement.
p.102f.
An anecdote Saint Simon tells about Louis XIV: Louis supposedly was accustomed to dancing 12 minuets each evening before retiring for the night. In advanced age, when he had become corpulent and ponderous, he ordered the minuets to be played much more slowly (and therefore also composed differently!), and so the new, slower tempo soon became fashionable.
… all descriptions of the dance agree that in the minuet, 2 measures always belong together in terms of the dance, i.e. that each group of steps combines 2 measures into a kind of overriding 6/4 time. This characteristic is "built into" every good minuet and should be clear in any competent performance. There are quite a number of ways of accomplishing this:
(1) the 1st measure is stressed and the 2nd fades away, etc.;
(2) the same thing, shifted by one measure;
(3) the 1st measure has an up-beat crescendo while the 2nd diminishes;
(4) the same, reversed.
In the stylized minuets of string quartets and symphonies, the composers often injected irregular shifts of these schematic progressions.
At the time of Mozart, the minuet was normally played after the trio, again with both repeats. This practice is not only evident in many notes written by Mozart, but also in the writings of other contemporary composers who always expressly mentioned it at those places where they wanted the reprise without repetition; "menuetto da capo senza repliche."

Minuet-Trio combination

p.105
The minuet-trio pair originated in French music of the 17th century. Very often an entire chain of minuets was linked together in the manner of a rondeau, with the 1st minuet being repeated intermittently throughout. Since the 2nd, 3rd and later minuets had to form as great a contrast as possible (in timbre and music) with the 1st, they were often scored for 3 solo wind players, and thus called Trio […] a simple, cheerful minuet called for a subtle, melancholy trio; every conceivable contrast in musical colors was desired, as were contrasts in style as well. By the time of Mozart it had become an accepted tradition to use the minuet and trio to explore a very broad range of musical possibilities.
[…] need not to feel that we must try to force them into an apparently "correct", unified tempo. The trio should be played in a comfortable yodeler tempo, which it requires, and the minuet in a quick "one."

作曲手法與特色

莫扎特對對比性的酷愛

p.87
Mozart, [Hans Georg] Nägeli claimed, had an excessive love of contrast; he was "the most styleless of the outstanding authors," he was "both shepherd and warrior, sycophant and hothead … soft melodies frequently alternate with sharply cutting tonal interplay, grace of movement with impetuosity. Great was his genius, but also great were his genial errors of creating effects through contrast." It was "unartistic … when something can be made effective only through its opposite … This stylistic nonsense can be pointed out in many instances in many of his works."

Chiaro-oscuro

p.87
"Chiaro-oscuro," the black/white contrast, which in music normally refers to dynamics, was recognizably one of Mozart's greatest strengths. He used it, much more comprehensively than his contemporaries, for expressive contrasts.

D大調交響曲（KV 385）的速度標記

p.94
… as in the case of the Haffner Symphony K. 385, the composer explains in words what he means. Mozart wrote to his father on August 7, 1782:
The first allegro (allegro con spirito C) must be quite fiery - the last (presto C) as fast as possible.
But such an investigation neither can nor should be divorced from the musical event. A sense of musicality, an instinct for music, should ultimately rule out the type of mistakes which could arise from purely theoretical consideration.

G小調交響曲（KV 550）的速度標記

p.94
The 1st and last movements of this work were originally both marked allegro assai 2/2. The composer later corrected the mark of the 1st movement to molto Allegro 2/2. Mozart evidently considered it important to point out very clearly the difference in tempo of the 2 movements … otherwise, the correction would not have been necessary. The question of whether allegro assai 2/2 or molto allegro 2/2 means the faster tempo cannot be answered definitively on the basis of linguistic consideration alone. Even in the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century, this was a debated issue. Although there was never a doubt concerning the meaning of "molto" ('very'), "assai" also could and can still be translated as "very," but, like the French "assez," it also meant "rather" or "sufficiently." Thus it was frequently used to indicate just a slight acceleration or underscoring of "allegro."

最後三首交響曲及其速度標記

p.95
Mozart's last 3 symphonies, which he wrote in July 1788 in one outpouring or creativity without a commission and apparently without an overt reason, seem to me to comprise an intimately linked cycle. In this context, the G minor Symphony has a retarding effect as concerns its tempo, i.e. each movement is metrically somewhat slower then the previous one. In the Jupiter Symphony which concludes the cycle, the reverse is true: here each movement is somewhat faster then the previous one, a composed accelerando to the finale, as it were.

Andante

p.96
Andante, a concept which has been in use since the end of the 17th century, simply means walking, signifying a moderate, somewhat swinging, tempo, something with other tempo words, it means an acceleration (e.g. largo andante - a largo in a walking tempo) … It is very important to know where the andante is found in Mozart's palette of tempos, and above all whether modifications accelerate or retard this tempo. For Mozart, as generally in the 18th century, andante is still included among the faster tempos. Thus andantino, "a little andante," like meno andante, signifies slower; più andante or molto andante mean faster.

4/4 vs 2/2

p.98
The entire [2nd] finale [of "Le Nozze di Figaro"] is constructed in 4/4, i.e. in four-quarter time - not in alla breve 2/2. This is important because in very fast tempos, an error at this point destroys the entire scheme of emphasis. (This happens all too often, unfortunately, e.g. in the overture to "Figaro", which is clearly written in and intended to be played in presto 4/4, but is almost always played in 2/2, i.e. much too fast, something for which the tempo-sensitive listener pays the price at the prestissimo 4/4 conclusion of the second finale.) The molto andante 3/8 in this finale is usually taken much too slowly, resulting in a stiff minuet, instead of subdued, ironic laughter. For Mozart, molto andante is simply faster than the andante, not slower!

運音記號（articulation marks）

p.113
In general, until after 1800 the treatises hold that notes with a line are to be played very short, while notes with a dot over them are to be held somewhat longer. […] In Mozart's case, articulation marks evidently have more to do with expression than with technical directions for playing. By their nature, they belong inseparably to the themes in which they occur, and explain the idea of the desired "pronunciation."
Mozart uses the vertical line to mean two different things. As an accent mark (like a light sforzato), it is placed on long notes (e.g. Jupiter Symphony, Finale, measures 233ff,) or on the first note in tone repititions, or when individual notes are to be brought out … The second meaning [of the vertical line] is just the opposite: it signifies a marked shortening and greatest lightness.

Articulation marks used by Mozart

[This is a re-posted article, originally published by this publication on June 12, 2017]

Appendix (1)

The list for the Andante using by Mozart, from slower to faster, p.92.

• Andantino sostenuto - walking, slightly restrained) i.e., even slower than andantino, which is already close to the adagio, used by Mozart primarily for sad pieces.
• Andantino - slight walking motion
• Andante ma Adagio 3/4 - moving forward, but quietly; always seems to be added during the working process to delineate a tempo in both directions.
• Andante un poco Adagio 3/4 - walking, but somewhat quiet
• Andante ma un poco sostenuto 6/8 - walking, but holding back somewhat.
• Andante ma sostenuto - walking, but holding back
• Andantino grazioso - somewhat moving ahead, graceful
• Andante moderato 3/4 - moderate walking; Mozart used this marking for his German songs.
• Un poco Andante 3/4 - moderate walking
• Andante maestoso 3/4 - majestic, walking
• Andante 3/4 - walking, in the sense of moving forward, not too slowly.
• Andante grazioso 3/4 - gracefully walking; could be with a slight spring.
• Un poco più Andante - somewaht faster; no matter what tempo was previously indicated.
• Più Andante - faster
• Andante con moto - moving, walking
• Molto Andante C - with great urgency
• Andante agitato - excitedly walking

Appendix (2)

The list for the Allegro using by Mozart, from slower to faster, p.93.

• Grazioso un poco Allegretto - graceful and somewhat fast
• Allegretto ma moderato 6/8 - somewhat fast, but moderate
• Allegretto maestoso 3/4 - somewhat fast, majestic
• Allegretto C - somewhat fast; this tempo is very close to the Andante with which Mozart not infrequently links it verbally, e.g. Andante piùtosto Allegretto, where "piùtosto" can be translated as "rather" or "somewhat".
• Allegretto vivo C - somewhat fast and lively
• Un poco Allegro 2/4 - somewhat fast
• Allegro moderato - moderately fast
• Allegro comodo - comfortable, but fast
• Allegro maestoso C - majestic, fast; almost always prescribed for dotted rhythms, a sign of majesty.
• Allegro aperto C - open allegro; this hard-to-define concept seems to imply a certain naivete, an easy intelligibility. There is nothing to hide, no secret. The tempo is somewhat controlled.
• Allegro vivace C - lively, fast; in movements marked vivace, the liveliness refers to the figures in small note values, which should not be played too quickly, so that they may be enlivened in detail. This originated in the first half of the 18th century.
• Allegro risoluto C - energetic, fast
• Allegro - merry, cheerful; the meaning of the Italian vernacular is always decisive for a term, even though in many movements allegro simply means "fast," without reference to the emotional quality.
• Allegro spiritoso - witty and gay; here the actual meaning of allegro is heightened by the adjective "spiritoso".
• Allegro vivace assai - fast and quite lively
• Allegro assai - rather fast, or sufficiently fast; for some composers, very fast as well.
• Allegro con brio - spirited or fiery
• Allegro agitato - agitated, restless, excitedly fast
• Molto Allegro - very fast; in Mozart's usage, this is the fastest allegro tempo, approching presto.