My thoughts around interpretations, portamentos and vibratos in Mozart’s time
I suspect many of you have expected a “Baroque-style” performance and sound, because it says “historically informed performance”.
Today, I’d like to discuss WHAT we actually think the “Baroque style” is, and where it comes from.
We were born in the 20th or 21st centuries. In other words, almost all of us – musicians, music lovers and music critics grew up listening to recordings. That means, we all have been influenced to, more or less, by the recordings we have heard.
The biggest challenge for me in approaching Mozart or Beethoven has begun with following questions I had posed over 2 decades ago :
“Who made the norm and why such strict prohibitions in classic repertoires…? Where did the rubato, vibrato, portamento go that were used to be present until the beginning of 20th century? Who has actually forbidden those elements??”
Therefor I’ve been digging through a lot of books, but it is NOT to adjust my sound to historical facts, but rather to verify whether my internal intuition makes sense from historical point of view.
Many people find historical treatises “boring”, but they do not debate any difficult issues. On the contrary, it is extremely exciting for me to discover that people from centuries ago felt the same way as I do today!
Yet, whether it is “right or wrong” is really not my final interest. Because we only have books as information of interpretations in 18th century, and each one of us can find OWN truth accordingly.
As an example, I often remember my London debut in 2001 when I played Brahms VC, a music journalist asking me: “Why do you use so much portamento?”
For someone like me who became a violinist because I was unable to become a singer, it was fairly natural to imitate singers – whenever playing expressive intervals, I cannot just pass by, where a singer would normally use portamento or take a breath.
Now reflecting this from historical facts, the first thing that comes to my mind is a quote from Geminiani(1687-1762) : “To play the violin is, in a sense, to use an instrument to produce a sound comparable to the most perfect human voice.”
Charles Burney wrote in 1789 that “beautiful expressions by the masters are produced when the same finger is used on the same string to shift suddenly from a lower position to a higher position.”
Domenico Corri, who was also wrote about portamento in 1810, “portamento di voce is the perfection of the vocal music.”
There are Haydn’s fingerings, Mozart’s letters, Beethoven and Dragonetti or Schuppanzigh… There are enough documents which prove that PORTAMENTO by instrumentalists existed at the time and that composers even may have liked it.
If Salieri did not appreciate the portamento, that only proves that people in Mozart’s time were starting to overuse the portamenti.
Accordingly to Professor Clive Brown, “In the eye of many contemporaries, portamento seems to have been very strongly associated with the Italian style of performance”. Not only me but many would associate Mozart’s music strongly to Opera, an art which originated in Italy.
Therfor, I have given myself an official permission, as I always wanted, to use slides in Mozart or Beethoven. And so I deliberately think of fingerings that will produce even more slides than ever before – of course in the lyrical, expressive places, mostly in the slow movements.
However! I avoid sliding for the technical reasons.
Similarly, I think that rubato or tempo changes for technical reasons should be avoided.
The strength of our generation is, THANK to the strict education, we are CAPABLE to play everything in Tempo, without slides.
Similarly regarding vibrato, it is well known that Geminiani said to vibrate “as often as possible,” BUT if Leopold Mozart had said “it is wrong to use vibrato continuously,” or if Joachim warned orchestral players not to use vibrato, then paradoxically, this would be the proof that vibrato was usually used back then. I suppose rather, perhaps they were telling to be cautious because there were musicians who used it too much.
Surely, we should not vibrate continuously, nor on the inappropriate notes.
Prof.Brown says that the 20th century modernists (C.Flesch, W.Landowska, A.Schnabel, etc.) started to reject the traditions up to the 19th century one after another, and [those aspects of “beautiful performance” are so different from late 20th and 21st century mainstream practice].
He says that the marginalization of portamento as an expressive practice occurred early to mid 20th century.
Hence, THIS marginalisation coincided with the era when the recording industry started flourishing.
If we listen to the recordings of 19th century’s performers today, we may be surprised at how far we came from the aestetic of that time. That is nothing wrong. Fashion changes.
And I have all the respect for the existing recordings.
But I believe , that the challenge in OUR time, and the essential thing is not to cess posing questions, how to be profoundly true to ourseves and to OWN sensibility, and most importantly, dare to express and create something new coming from own heart.
