This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Techniques of expression in Viennese string music (1780-1830) : reconstructing fingering and bowing practices Moran, John Gregory The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 23. Sep. 2021 Techniques of Expression in Viennese String Music (1780-1830): A Reconstruction of Fingering and Bowing Practices John Gregory Moran King's College University of London PhD 2000 LcL bs Abstract Though Viennese classical music for strings is central to the standard repertory and is steadily attracting more performances by 'historically informed' players, awareness of the practices of the Viennese players amongst whom Haydn and Beethoven worked remains limited. Studies of the string playing practices ostensibly appropriate to Beethoven have generally been based on instrumental treatises representative of other traditions, either later in time or geographically remote. This thesis attempts to reconstruct the unique traits of the fingering and bowing practices surrounding Haydn and Beethoven in Vienna through the surviving evidence most closely connected with them and the players for whom they composed. The sources include Haydn's and Beethoven's string fingerings and slurs; the music of players with whom these composers were associated, including Krumpholz, Wranitzky, Schuppanzigh, Mayseder, the Krafts, and Linke; and the rarely considered technical studies and string treatises of Vienna, including those by Kauer, Pith!, Pirlinger, and Schweigl. This thesis begins with a survey of the string players in the circles of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and especially Beethoven, discussing their significance and playing styles, contrasting Viennese practices with the more progressive approaches of Paris. The diversity of Viennese fingering practices forms the basis for the second chapter's examination of the wealth of information which can be conveyed by apparently simple fingerings. Haydn's and Beethoven's original fingerings, together accounting for approximately three hundred passages, are the subjects of chapters three and four. The fifth chapter considers tone production and the myth of the 'phrasing' slur in string writing, while the sixth is an investigation of what constituted the basic repertory of bow strokes. The final chapter, a case study of a set of marked parts to Beethoven's op. 59, no. 3 quartet, shows how the various methods of reconstruction developed in this thesis can be brought together in the context of a complete work. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 4 Note on translations and terminology 6 Introduction 7 The State of String Playing in Vienna (1780-1830) Virtuoso as Maverick 22 Cultural Atmosphere 31 Foundations of Vienna's String Playing 43 Outside Influences 51 Viennese Treatises 59 2. Diverse Fingering Practices Overview: Basic Assumptions 66 Documenting Players' Practices 73 Analysing Players' Practices 78 3. Haydn's Effective Use of String Fingerings 101 4. Beethoven's Engagement with String Fingerings 124 5. Tone Production and the Myth of the Phrasing Slur 159 6. The Repertory of Bow Strokes 182 7. A Marked Set of Parts to Beethoven's op. 59, no. 3: A Case Study The Source 196 Bowings 202 Fingerings 212 Other Interpretative Markings and Rehearsal Procedures 215 Bibliography 221 3 Acknowledgements I owe much gratitude to my supervisor Laurence Dreyfus for his insightful advice and unwavering support. I also owe great thanks to Cliff Eisen for advice, pointers, and comments on major sections of this thesis in draft form and to Irene Auerbach for keeping track of me and the many deadlines along the way. Two friends, Nancy Snider and Steve Creswell, fellow string players both, have assisted enormously by reading and commenting on chapters of this thesis. It would have not been possible for me to have undertaken this work without the support of a British Academy studentship for the years 1994-97. Numerous people have generously helped by answering my queries and suggesting avenues of enquiry. They are Clive Brown, Robin Stowell, Richard Maunder, Peter Trevelyan, Neal Zaslaw, Barry Cooper, Chris Banks, Sieghard Brandenburg, Otto Biba, Herfried Homburg, Franziska Rinckens, Dimitry Markevitch, Bill Meredith, Robin Wallace, Lewis Lockwood, and Brent Wissick. I am also indebted to the staffs of the following libraries and archives who allowed me access to the valuable sources which form the basis of my research: the British Library, the Royal College of Music Library, Senate House Library, and Westminster Central Music Library (London); the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien, the Archive der Wiener Philharmoniker, and the Osterreichische Staatsbibliothek (Vienna); the Beethoven-Archiv of the Beethoven-Haus (Bonn); the Louis Spohr-Gedenk- und Forschungsstatte/Museum der Geschichte des Violinspiels (Kassel); the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris); the Library of Congress (Washington); the Pierpont Morgan Library and the New York Public Library (New York); the Newberry Library (Chicago); the Sibley Library (Eastman School of Music); the libraries of Duke University, the University of Maryland, 4 and Rice University; and the Arlington County Public Library (Virginia). Last I would like to thank my entire family for their support, especially my parents, Chuck and Carol Moran, who have generously provided child care and much other needed assistance and my violinist wife Risa Browder who has read the entire paper several times at each stage of its development, has spent hours and hours trying out fingerings and bowings, and has given valuable feedback on violin technique. 5 Note on translations and terminology Unless otherwise specified, translations are my own. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-centry texts are given with their original, at times irregular, orthography and punctuation. Cuts in such material are indicated by an ellipsis (...), while other alterations are indicated in square brackets. Terminology is used as it is understood by string players. The term 'shift' is synonymous with 'position change' and means a movement of the left hand either up (towards the bridge) or down (towards the scroll) along the fingerboard from one hand position to another. Shifting can be done quietly or audibly. A shift which causes an audible glissando is called a 'slide'. Standard string fingering practice is used in assigning numbers to the fingers: 1 = index finger; 2 = middle finger; 3 ring finger; and 4 = little finger. '0' designates an open (unstopped) string or a harmonic, but can also, following contemporaneous practice, be used to indicate the thumb in cello fingerings, which is always clear from the context. Pitch names follow the Helmholtz system, middle c = c', except when referring to the names of open strings, where upper case letters are used regardless of the octave of the note. Clefs in music examples match the clefs of the source, so generally treble clef in a cello part sounds one octave lower than notated. Special notice is given where cello parts in treble clef are to be read at pitch. 6 Introduction The past twenty years have witnessed a surge of interest in the performance of the string music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven by practitioners of the early music movement, but still little is known about the fingering and bowing practices of the group of players who first performed this music and for whom much of it was written. Performers and scholars have been happy to substitute the more copiously documented practices of the French school of the same period for those of the string players of Beethoven's Vienna. Starting in the late eighteenth century Viennese composers, working in direct contact with Vienna's best string players, began to show an unprecedented interest in exploiting string technique to amplify the expression in their music. The unique atmosphere of Vienna at this time permitted a free exchange of ideas between players and composers and left a significant corpus of string music with more explicit indications of fingerings and bowings than at any previous time. This thesis attempts to redress the gap in the literature by examining the extant sources with an eye towards reconstructing the practices of Vienna's players. The significant interest in Viennese string music has generated a rich secondary literature and secured for this music a central position in the modern canon, but