of a device to raise all the dampers at once. This may, of course, be too isolated a case to
enable one to draw any general conclusion as to Mozart’s use, if any, of such a device.
It has been said, on the one hand, that one should not use the pedal in the performance of
Mozart’s works on the modern piano. It has also been said, on the other hand, that in
Mozart one can use pedal harmonically through chordal passages, arpeggios and even
through melodies containing rests. There are as many intermediate views as there are
pianists.
No authoritative answer may ever be found, but it would seem on stylistic grounds that
the use of pedal in Mozart on the modern piano should be somewhat sparing and that, in
any event, it should not be used to create effects.
Haydn (1732-1809)
Haydn was born over twenty years before Mozart and outlived him by ten years. In their
joint lifetime they had a close musical and personal friendship.
Haydn’s early keyboard sonatas seem to have been composed with the harpsichord in
mind. As the sound of a harpsichord is quite evanescent, a device for raising the
dampers generally was apparently never fitted to harpsichords. When Haydn started
using crescendo and diminuendo markings in his keyboard sonatas they were composed
with the piano in mind.
Haydn generally did not indicate the use of the pedal in his piano sonatas but there is an
exception, in his last sonata, H. XVI/50 from 1794-1795, where a long pedal effect is
indicated by the marking ‘open pedal - - - ’.
Apart from this it is possible to use carefully changed pedal in many places in the Haydn
sonatas but it would seem that overall he tends to write without a pedalled sonority in
mind.
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
Clementi’s treatise ‘Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Pianoforte’ was published in
London in 1810. There is no mention of pedalling in the first edition of that treatise and,
according to Czerny, Clementi was not known for an extreme use of the pedal during his
performing career. Clementi did, however, rewrite many of his earlier piano works,
inserting pedal markings as well as extending compasses. In his Sonata opus 40 no. 1 a
single pedal marking stretches across 16 bars of music. Lengthy pedallings sometimes
involved the blurring of two harmonies. This was especially so in Clementi’s flater
works, such as in the slow movement of his Sonata ‘Diudone Abbandonata’.
Steibelt (1765-1823)