The New York Review of Books

To the Editors:

Charles Rosen’s article on the Early Music Movement [“The Shock of the Old”] in the July 19 issue is one of the most insightful treatments of the subject I have seen. While Rosen has admittedly always had little sympathy for the use of earlier instruments, his intelligent mind and deep, astute musicality always seem to lead him to brilliant insights and conclusions.

I would like to address what I see as two main problems with Rosen’s assessment of the present situation regarding instruments and performance practices. The first is his conception of what we (and I think I can speak as a fair representative of “Early Instrument” types) seem to think we are doing. Rosen’s article is liberally sprinkled with the word “authentic.” Towards the beginning of the article we find:

Fidelity is no longer enough: a performance must be authentic. The new rallying cry, authenticity, represents a goal simpler and grander than fidelity…. Fidelity demanded of performers a genuine sympathy with the composer’s style. Authenticity dispenses with all this guesswork and uncertainty. It does not ask what the composer wanted, but only what he got.

Near the end of the article we read:

It is clear that I think that the basic philosophy of Early Music is indefensible, above all in its abstraction of original sound from everything that gave it meaning….

I have been playing on old pianos for over twenty years; I have played with the orchestras of John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McCegan and Roger Norrington. On my series in New York “On Original Instruments” in Merkin Hall, I have tried to bring most of the important players of Early Music (capitals not from me; Rosen uses them, although I don’t think the practice originates with him) from both sides of the Atlantic to New York for concerts, singers as well as instrumentalists. I don’t recall that in my dealings with any of these musicians the word “authentic” was ever used to recommend a musical idea or consideration of performance, and I certainly don’t know a single serious Early Music player who espouses the “philosophy of…abstraction of original sound from everything that gave it meaning.” I certainly feel that what I am trying to do is in many ways different from what I was taught by virtually all of my teachers, for using new instruments and new setups between instruments stimulates one’s musical imagination in fresh ways, and I would be happy to find a convenient term to describe this new approach; it seems a difficult task. The whole matter is really quite simple: I play on pianos of the period because I think they serve the repertoire better.

To give a simple example:

The single measure slurs over each bar in this opening passage (indeed, over almost every bar in the movement) are specific expressive instructions on Mozart’s part; all 18th century sources are unequivocal in their meaning; in a two-note figure under a slur, the first note is longer and louder, the second is shorter and weaker. These were commonly referred to as “sighs.” (Note that in bar 4, the “sigh” is quickened.) In my opinion these sighs are the main stuff of this theme. Such a figure is simply not playable on a modern piano, for the modern piano, designed in the 1860s and 70s, has a very slowly developing tone designed for long, uninterrupted singing lines. On a modern piano, when one gets to the second note of the two-note figure, the first note has barely got going; if one plays the second note softer than the first by the necessary amount to make the “sighs,” it will be inaudible—so nobody does it. I have yet to hear anyone play this passage on a modern piano with anything but a “long, singing line,” in which the entire rhythmic lilt of the movement is undermined. As this piece is usually played today it would doubtless seem as strange to Mozart as The Blue Danube Waltz would seem to Strauss if played with no Viennese after-beat. In K. 332/i the rhythmic lilt is a basic part of the musical message, and for that reason I find it not very rewarding to play this movement on a modern piano, where expressivity of this type is restricted.

My second objection to Rosen’s opinions concerns his views on pianos and their development. Rosen seems to know a great deal about historic pianos; his factual assessment of their various qualities shows this. But his conclusions as to what they do for the music seem to me far from the mark. On page 48, for example, regarding Mozart piano concertos, Rosen states:

The problem of balance between piano and orchestra already existed in the eighteenth century. The violins and other string instruments were reduced to one on a part whenever they accompanied the piano, a traditional practice, deriving from the Baroque concerto grosso where a small group of solo instruments were contrasted with an orchestra. The real solution to the problem of balancing piano and orchestra was to build bigger and louder pianos. Piano construction changed constantly during Mozart’s, Beethoven’s, and Liszt’s lifetimes in response to the use of large concert halls, and above all to meet the demands of the music…. It is a familiar mistake to think that a composer writes only for the instruments available to him, a mistake basic to the hard-line Early Music dogma.

This reasoning is faulty. One need only read Mozart’s three famous letters to his father from Augsburg in October, 1777, to see that he considered Stein’s pianos to be exemplary. Nowhere does he complain of their being not loud enough (to be sure, Beethoven does later on). And while it is true that pianos changed considerably after around 1800, it is not true that they changed much during the last quarter of the 18th century. Mozart was not writing for a later, louder piano any more than a composer today writes a flute concerto for some imaginary flute of the future that may be as loud as a trumpet! Indeed, Mozart’s skill in utilizing the solo fortepiano in a way to make it balance with the orchestra is one of the most ingenious and brilliant aspects of these works. Let me cite just a few examples.

In K. 175, Mozart’s first original concerto, Mozart gives the piano the same forte tune at its solo entrance the orchestra had at the opening, and it doesn’t work very well: the piano sounds puny. He never did this again. Every first movement having a piano theme at the beginning of the opening orchestral ritornello has the fortepiano state that theme at its solo entrance. In later concertos the louder and more splendid the opening bars of the first ritornello, the smaller and almost more timid will be the solo piano entrance. In the two grand C Major concertos, for example (K. 467 & K. 503), the piano comes in “in the wrong place,” as if by accident, and of course piano. In the two minorkey concertos, K. 466 and K. 491, the piano states its own, new theme, again piano. The fortepiano that Mozart knew, a not very loud instrument, had to develop its brilliancy as it went along. This is one of the most important psychological aspects of these works.

It is true, as Rosen says, that we have sets of parts from the late 18th century showing that when the solo piano plays the strings are reduced. That may well have started out as a balancing measure, but by the time we get to the mature concertos, Mozart’s genius turns this to great advantage. What we get then, is the grand symphonious sound of the tuttis, vs. the chamber music sound of the solo passages, with piano, individual winds and individual strings trading off roles. And the ubiquitous scale and trill at the end of every exposition and every reprise in every first movement is in part a signal: HERE COMES THE BIG SOUND AGAIN! For even more essential than the sound quality of Mozart’s instrument in these concertos is the actual quantity of volume! To use a “bigger, louder piano,” as Rosen suggests, is to do considerable damage to the balance so carefully worked out by Mozart for those instruments he knew. (In this regard one can only deplore the now virtually ubiquitous practice of using a Mozart-era size orchestra of 25 or 30 in combination with a modern piano. When using a modern piano, it seems to me one should use a fairly hefty string section to compensate for the much louder solo instrument.)

Now in Rosen’s defense I must admit to having played Mozart concertos with original instruments in a way in which the solo piano was somewhat submerged. There are two problems Rosen touches on, and both exist. One is the use of an 18th century fortepiano of limited volume in a large hall; the other is the balance with the orchestra. I have played solo fortepiano concerts in some large halls where it seems to be quite satisfactory, and I have played in small halls that were unsatisfactory; a great deal depends on the acoustics of the hall in question, not merely the size. I have played Mozart concertos in situations where I think the piano has been covered. I think I finally have solved the problem, curiously enough by going back to what I believe Mozart to have done in most cases: sit in the middle of the band, facing out towards the audience, with the lid of the piano removed.¹ It took me a long time to realize the advantages of this setup, for it would seem only logical that the piano, out in front with the lid on, would project into the hall better than from the middle of the orchestra with the lid removed. And so it would. What I had not taken into account was the simple fact that with the piano in front (even if the instrument is a modern piano, incidentally) the winds can hear almost nothing and can thus hoot away to their heart’s content, virtually swamping the fortepiano. With the piano seated in the middle of the orchestra, everybody hears everybody else, and several things seem to happen at once:

In the “chamber music” sections there is genuine chamber music, for everyone can really hear each other. During the orchestral tuttis the fortepiano continuo has real significance, for I sit right next to the cellos and we really have the feeling of “jamming” together. In my Mozart Concerto recordings with John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists the piano was in the orchestra with the lid off, and I know that Steven Lubin’s Mozart recordings followed the same procedure.

But balance between any individuals or groups must be worked out on the basis of what is desired to be heard as forefront and background, and what is feasible among the playing forces. If one attends a violin-piano recital, on conventional modern instruments, the question of balance can exist on several levels. Firstly, one can only hope that those days will soon disappear forever where a famous violinist brings along an “accompanist” to play a program of sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms and César Franck—works designated by their respective composers for Piano and Violin. All of us have heard recitals of this kind, and often the pianist is praised the following day by the review for “not being too obtrusive.” I have also heard concerts by pianist and violinist of equal standing where the violinist was drowned out by the pianist who had failed to learn, not to “accompany,” but to reduce the sound of his instrument to make it an equal partner of the violin.