SAINT-SAËNS: Piano Quintet op. 14, 1st movement: Discussion – Singing Through Instrumental Playing

In this video Ironwood members discuss and experiment with the French 19th-century performing practice—singing through instrumental playing—in a rehearsal session for Ironwood's recently released CD Romantic Dreams (ABC Classic 481 9887) prior to recording sessions in December 2019 and February 2020 in the ABC's Eugene Goosens Hall, Harris St, Ultimo, Sydney.

Exploring HIP in 19th-century French Music

For this project, Daniel Yeadon and Neal Peres Da Costa have led Ironwood in developing novel interpretations of these two delightful piano quintets drawing on 19th-century performing practices described in contemporary French written sources and preserved on early recordings of Franco-Belgian musicians. The project builds on Ironwood’s previous practice-led creative research, examining the expressive practices of 19th-century Austrian and German string players and pianists, culminating in its acclaimed ABC Classics recording of Brahms’ G minor Piano Quartet and F minor Piano Quintet—Brahms: Tones of Romantic Extravagance (2016). Ironwood’s interpretations on the present recording have been influenced to some extent by knowledge and practical experience of 19th-century Austro-German practices, particularly in the application of vibrato, portamento, piano arpeggiation, articulation, bowing, asynchrony of rhythm, and tempo flexibility. This is justifiable as, during the first half of the 19th century, there was close interaction and connection between French, German and Austrian musicians. Nevertheless, we have also explored practices that were more typically French and therefore directly applicable to French repertoire of the period.

During the first half of the 19th century, instrumental and vocal performance in France and Belgium developed steadfastly, largely as a result of the benchmark standards developed at the Paris Conservatoire (established 1795) and Brussels Conservatoire (established in 1813). In string playing, Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755-1824) is seen as the father of the Franco-Belgian school, with founding members including Pierre Rode (1774-1839), Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831), and Pierre Baillot (1771-1842). A tradition was handed down through the 19th century incorporating a new bowing style and an expansion of the range of special bowings. There was a movement away from a naturally articulated stroke of the Baroque bow towards a more legato style achieved with the newer Tourte bow (Walls, 2003). This style was recalled by violinist Carl Flesch (1873-1944), a later proponent of the Franco-Belgian School (Flesch, 1979). By the mid 19th century, the aesthetic values and expressive practices of the Franco-Belgian school were documented in detail in treatises such as Charles-Auguste de Bériot’s (1802-1870) Méthode de violon (Paris, 1858), including lengthy instructions about bowing style, vibrato, portamento (of varying types and intensities), rhythmic and tempo modification, and particularly vocality in performance: syllabification, prosody, and accentuation. And there were parallel texts in piano playing and singing including Sigismund Thalberg’s (1812-1871) L’Art du chant appliqué au piano op. 79 (Paris, 1853) and Manuel García’s (1805-1906) Ecole de García: traité complet de l'art du chant (Paris: 1840 and 1847), as well as Laura Cinti-Damoreux’s (1801-1863) Méthode de chant, composée pour ses classes du Conservatoire (Paris, 1849). The information in such treatises is greatly amplified by evidence in early sound recordings. From 1900 onwards the art of several of the most important Franco-Belgian instrumentalists and vocalists was captured on acoustic, electrical and piano roll recordings. These recordings preserve uniquely Franco-Belgian performance styles showing how expressive practices actually sounded, their quality and frequency, and provide models for emulation. Together, these forms of evidence demonstrate clearly that mid 19th-century Franco-Belgian style was substantially different to today’s modern mainstream classical style which developed during the first half of the 20th century (Phillip, 1992); this has given us the impetus to reconsider and reevaluate how we approach the performance of music of mid 19th-century French composers such as Farrenc and Saint-Saëns. In essence our interpretative approach in the two piano quintets has involved a close study of the key pedagogical treatises as well as close listening and emulation of select early recordings to develop a framework for the practical application of typically mid 19th-century expressive practices.

Of all the string treatises written in the 19th century, De Bériot’s violin treatise contains the most extensive advice on bowing and other expressive practices. It is clear from De Bériot’s explanations (De Bériot, 1858, part 2, pp. 76-85) of bow divisions that players utilised the middle and tip of the bow much more than in modern mainstream classical string playing and that it was relatively unusual for the bow to leave the string, even in lively passages containing short notes or those marked staccato. The treatise contains extensive instructions on how to play detached bow strokes, which are divided into three categories: continuous, ‘muted’ (from the French word ‘mat’) and elastic. descriptions imply varying degrees of pressure release at the end of each stroke, appropriate to specific contexts such as concerto playing or the navigation of different tempi. Continuous strokes are used for broad legato playing. Muted strokes include: relatively long détaché (separated) strokes in the middle of the bow, to be executed on the string with some separation; and relatively short martelé (hammered) strokes towards the tip of the bow, also on the string with small lively wrist movements. Both détaché and martelé strokes are relatively fast and energetic. ‘Muted’ seems to refer to the control required at the end of each stroke in order to shorten notes while remaining on the string. Elastic strokes are executed a third of the way down the bow for moderate tempi, further towards the tip for faster tempi, and these encompass something akin to a sautillé (from the French word to jump or leap). De Bériot refers to the bow “imperceptibly leaving” the string, rather than jumping or leaping off the string. There is a sense here that the string causes the lift of the bow above a certain critical speed, rather than the player consciously bringing it off the string. Carl Flesch advises that the sautillé stroke is most effectively created when the player is passive and the bow is active.

Other expressive devices explored by De Bériot include vibrato and portamento. De Bériot gives the reader the impression that vibrato was used considerably more sparingly in the mid 19th century: “Vibrato refers to a certain undulation or quivering on long notes, which in singing depicts the emotions of the soul. Vibrato is an asset for the artist who knows how to use it sparingly and to good effect, and a fault when used excessively. When the habit is developed involuntarily, it can result in an unmanageable wobble, of distressing monotony… Vibrato should only be used when the drama in the action demands it. The artist should be wary of this dangerous art, which once acquired, must be used with the utmost sobriety” (De Bériot, 1858, part 3, p. 220). De Bériot gives examples of the ideal use of vibrato in contrasting excerpts of music, suggesting that serene characters are played with steady and calm sound production and minimal vibrato, whereas passionate episodes are played with vibrato to reflect the agitation of the soul (De Bériot, 1858, part 3, p. 221). This advice may reflect De Bériot’s reserved personality just as much as a trend in 19th-century musical aesthetic, but it is nonetheless fascinating to read these words of caution from a time that we now tend to associate predominantly with heart-on sleeve vibrato-laden musical interpretations.

Interestingly, De Bériot also cautions against an excessive use of portamento: “Violinists who make excessive use of portamento are generally guilty of the same fault when it comes to vibrato. One inevitably leads to the other. Excessive portamento and vibrato make for a mannered, exaggerated performance style, imparting more expression to the music than it should” (De Bériot, 1858, part 3, p. 214). However, De Bériot’s extensive survey of the use of portamento leaves one in no doubt that he considered it to be an intrinsic form of musical expression. And, as with all written advice, it is impossible to gauge the quality (exact effect) and quantity (frequency) of such practices; for that, sound recordings are imperative (Peres Da Costa, 2012). De Bériot describes portamento as a continuous slide between two notes, and he also justifies the occasional use of a short anticipatory note before the main arrival note (De Bériot, 1858, part 3, p. 214). This practice can often be heard in the earliest recordings of singers of all nationalities, and is reflected in the mid 19th-century singing treatises. Examples of portamento provided by De Bériot illustrate its use in a lively and light context at one end of the spectrum, and then tender, plaintive, sorrowful and heartbreaking contexts at the other De Bériot, 1858, part 3 pp. 215-219 ). De Bériot makes no specific reference to the Austro-German style of portamento, associated with an initial slide on the finger of the departing note, before transferring to the new finger midway through the slide.

Another essential aspect of performance explored in detail by De Bériot is the ‘prosody’ of the bow. Describing prosody in literature as “the art of pronouncing each word with its proper stress and quantity”(ref), he highlights the importance of maintaining a sense of speech when interpreting a phrase: “In choosing the best bowings to make the melody speak—in one's own music, or reading music where markings have been neglected, or playing vocal music from memory—we must follow the variety of speech inflections suggested by the actual or imaginary words, as expressed in the melody” ( De Bériot, 1858, part 3, p. 212). Awareness of text, whether real or imaginary, was of the utmost importance to composers of the Baroque and Classical eras, and performers in their keen sense of rhetoric, but it perhaps comes as a surprise that this principle was carried through into the Romantic era. Nowadays, we tend to assume that Romantic musicians had a preoccupation with long musical lines at the expense of local expressive nuancing.

Other unnotated performing practices that were absolutely essential to artistic performance during the 19th century fall under the categories of rhythm and tempo flexibility. Many of the French treatises outlined above provide discussion of ways in which trained vocalists and instrumentalists were expected to give a rhetorical delivery by both flexible placement of notes (changing their notated values) and modification of tempo. These means were used to enhance word stress, or in the case of purely instrumental music, to deliver the notes as if there were words, as well as to provide energy appropriate to individual musical thoughts. This could be done in myriad ways: lengthening important notes and shortening others; playing a succession of equal-valued notes—for example quavers and semiquavers unequally (continuing the 18th-century practice of notes inégales), creating a multitude of rhythmic effects ranging from gently lilting inequality (long-short) to triplet-like or back-dotted figures; over- and under-dotting dotted figures; playing slurred pairs of equal-valued notes with the first note lengthened and the second note shortened (a practice strongly advised in 18th-century treatises such as by Leopold Mozart and Johann Joachim Quantz); lengthening single notes to give them particular emphasis (agogic accentuation); getting noticeably faster or slower, for example faster with an increase in volume (crescendo) and slower with a decrease (diminuendo); changing tempo noticeably in particular sections to reflect a change of mood or when a section called for special nuance (for example marked sostenuto, espressivo, con anima); and a host of other effects. It is interesting to note that Hummel (who taught Farrenc) gave advice in 1827 about the frequency with which tempo modification should occur (though he did not originally mark these) in the first movement— Allegro moderato of his A minor Piano Concerto op. 47. Every few bars or so he annotates words indicating differing tempi changes (albeit warning that these should be subtle) that suit the ever-changing moods of the music (Hummel, 1827, vol. 3, pp. 429-433). Of course, it is not possible to know how these practices would actually have sounded. Similar types of tempo modifications can clearly be heard in performances preserved on early recordings of musicians trained in the 19th century. These often sound quite radical (exaggerated) compared with what we are used to hearing today. Such practices became outlawed during the first half of the 20th century and are conspicuously absent in mainstream classical performance today which tends to uphold the 20th-century modernist approach of adherence to the markings in the score (Peres Da Costa, 2012).

In selecting string recordings to listen to closely and to emulate, we  the grand violin family tree, dating back to Viotti (b. 1755). We traced the lineage of the pupils of Viotti who wrote significant treatises—particularly Baillot and De Bériot—down through the generations to violinists who made recordings in the early 20th century. We also identified the string players who were strongly associated with Farrenc and Saint-Saëns during their lifetimes; the majority of these trained at the Paris Conservatoire and many of them taught there. Two violinists emerged as particularly significant within Saint-Saëns’ life—Pablo de Sarasate and Eugène Ysaÿe.

From De Bériot to Ysaÿe

De Bériot (b. 1802) taught Henri Vieuxtemps (b. 1820) who was born and trained in Belgium and was one of the most prominent exponents of the Franco-Belgian school in the mid 19th century. He taught Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) who knew Saint-Saëns well and was the dedicatee of one of Saint-Saëns’ string quartets. Ysaÿe made a considerable number of recordings in the early 20th century. Three of the most striking are of Schubert’s Ave Maria, Vieuxtemps’ Rondino and Fauré’s Berceuse, all recorded in 1913/4. In all of these we hear extensive use of portamento in both Austro-German and Franco-Belgian styles, ascending and descending through intervals between a 2nd and an octave, and with the occasional use of an anticipatory grace note before the main arrival note. We also hear a varied use of vibrato, from none at all to one with a high frequency and a narrow amplitude, employed predominantly on long notes. Rhythmic nuancing is integral to the interpretation, in line with De Bériot’s explanation of prosody. A broader-scale tempo flexibility is also apparent, resembling the audible tempo modifications on many other early 20th-century recordings.

From Baillot to Sarasate and Thibaud

Baillot taught Françoix Habeneck (b. 1781) who taught Jean Delphin Alard (b. 1815). All three of these influential violinists wrote treatises. Alard taught Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908) at the Paris Conservatoire while Saint-Saëns was also studying there. Significantly, Sarasate played in the first performance of the Saint-Saëns Piano Quintet op. 41 in 1875. Sarasate made a few recordings, including of his own compositions. Miramar is notable for its relatively sparing use of vibrato, a few carefully placed portamenti, and noticeable local rhythmic freedom and agogic emphasis, also according with De Bériot’s prosody. One can discern that Sarasate plays predominantly on the string and between the middle and upper tip of the bow.

Another branch of the Baillot family tree leads to Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953) who was amongst many famous violinists taught by Martin Marsick (1847-1924) at the Paris Conservatoire, including Flesch, George Enescu (1881-1955) and Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944). Thibaud’s recordings include Debussy’s Girl with the flaxen hair (1927, with pianist Harold Craxton (1885-1971)), Franck’s Violin Sonata (1929, with Alfred Cortot (1877-1962)), Fauré’s Violin Sonata (1927, with Cortot) and Debussy’s Violin Sonata (1929, with Cortot). In Thibaud’s playing we hear frequent use of both German and Franco-Belgian portamento in French repertoire. Equally distinctive is his vibrato which is narrow and fast by modern standards. Also apparent is constant rhythmic flexibility and a relatively free approach to tempo in relation to the score. Even though Thibaud’s recordings were made a couple of generations after the première of Saint-Saëns’ Piano Quintet in A minor, they evidence many of the expressive features revered by De Bériot.

© Daniel Yeadon and Neal Peres Da Costa

Piano Practices

In common with string and wind players and vocalists, 19th-century pianists employed both rhythm and tempo flexibility and other unnotated expressive devices to heighten expression, to enhance the mood of the music, to delineate musical structures, and generally, to breath life into the music score in ways not marked by the composer. Of course, pianists did not have the possibility of using portamento or vibrato, however, they did have at their disposal chordal arpeggiation and asynchrony between melody and accompaniment, expressive devices that were absolutely normal in 19th-century piano playing and that had been in existence since the early 17th century or earlier (Peres Da Costa, 2012). Unnotated arpeggiation was used to enhance texture, to delay and therefore bring out melody notes, and to give special energy to accents, while asynchrony (achieved by playing one hand after the other) was used to make expressive important melody notes most often by delaying them or infrequently by playing them earlier than the corresponding accompaniment. There are many references to these practices in 19th-century texts, but most significant to this project is Kalkbrenner’s written advice (with annotated example) in 1831 that “in passages of double notes, octaves, or chords, the long notes must be arpeggiated; those that precede must not be” (Kalkbrenner, 1831, 12). No less significant is the advice about asynchrony given by Thalberg in 1853: “It will be indispensable to avoid, in playing, the ridiculous habit and in bad taste, of withholding with exaggeration the production of the notes of the melody a long time after those of the bass [have been sounded]; and this producing, from the beginning to the end of a composition the effect of continuous syncopations. In a slow melody written in notes of long duration, it produces a good effect, above all on the first delivery of each measure, or at the commencement of each period or phrase, to sound the melody note after the bass, but only with an interval nearly imperceptible” (Thalberg, 1853, series 1, unpaginated 2). The fact that both Kalkbrenner and Thalberg went to the trouble of writing about these practices in such prescriptive ways points not only to their importance, but equally to the fact that many pianists will have been employing these in ways that exceed their advice. Other information significant to this project comes from the Paris Conservatoire pianist Louis Adam (1758-1848) who, in 1804, advised that when slurred staccato (portato) articulation was marked over melody notes, this could be interpreted by playing each melody note slightly after the corresponding bass note which greatly enhances the expression of the melody line (Adam, 1804, 156). This is in line with similar advice by Moscheles (who taught Farrenc) that “when dots are used with slurs [portato] over double notes and chords, these should be struck very slightly in the Arpeggio manner, giving them the same length of time as a dot under a slur requires” (Moscheles, 1827, Bk 1, 6). It is fortuitous that we have several recordings (both piano rolls and acoustic recordings) of Saint-Saëns playing both his own works and those of Chopin and Beethoven. These reveal that he frequently used unnotated arpeggiation and asynchrony as well as rhythmic and tempo modification to great expressive effect but in ways that sound remarkable, uncontrolled, and even excessive by today’s standards.

© Neal Peres Da Costa