Microsoft Word - Piano Book.docx

(Jacob Rumans) #1

A.J. Hipkins in his article ‘Sordini’ in Sir G.Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians
(referred to in an article in the Musical Times of 1 August 1895) stated that the
pianissimo pedal, patented by John Broadwood in 1783, was indicated by the Italian
word sordino and he gave an example from Thalberg’s opus 41.


There was a possible argument that ‘senza sordino’ in the first movement meant ‘without
the mute stop’ but if it were to mean this Beethoven surely would have written ‘ma’ (but)
not ‘e’ (and). It is clear, from his usage in the final movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata,
and in other sonatas of about this time, that Beethoven used ‘senza sordino’ and ‘con
sordino’ (the singular form of ‘senza sordini’ and ‘con sordini’) to mean ‘without
dampers’ and ‘with dampers’.


Rowland states: “ ‘Senza sordini’ and ‘con sordini’ (meaning ‘without dampers’ and
‘with dampers’) were the terms customarily used in Vienna for the damper-raising levers
in the early years of the nineteenth century and occur in works by several other
composers.”


It is clear from the above and from Schindler’s comments that Beethoven, in his
directions, was not referring to a mute stop.


It is also clear from Czerny’s remark that ‘the prescribed pedal [my italics] must be re-
employed at each note in the bass’ that he was not referring to the mute stop as it would
be completely pointless to re-employ the mute stop in that way. Czerny was, of course,
referring to the pedal operated by the pianist’s right foot, which by the times he was
writing, in 1830 and 1846, had long since replaced the knee levers as the usual device for
raising the dampers.


Paradoxically, the mute stop theory would have assisted the argument for the traditional
pedalling as it would have meant that Beethoven gave no directions concerning the
raising of the dampers and the correct method of using the knee levers, and later the
sustaining pedal, would have become a matter of discretion for the pianist. Having been
discredited, however, the mute stop theory must be consigned to the dustbin of history
and has no relevance to the present discussion.


Author’s personal odyssey


In 1960 I studied the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata from the W. H. Paling edition edited by May
Willis and used the traditional pedalling in the first movement, as indicated by the editor.
Later that year I saw for the first time Tovey’s edition of the Beethoven piano sonatas and
continued my study of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata using that edition. In among Tovey’s
annotations I read his view to the effect that the raising of the dampers throughout the
first movement was probably correct for the Beethoven piano and I embraced the theory
intellectually, extending it to the use of the unchanged pedal on the modern piano.

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