You’re right the piano may be a special case. Pianists often engage in agogic trickery to substitute for other effects that are difficult or impossible to achieve. Bernstein has marshaled enough evidence to convince me that hairpins may sometimes indicate rubato, sometimes with dynamics, sometimes alone. But I am not convinced that this is always the correct way to interpret hairpins, even in the piano music of the composers he cites.
NTT: This is extremely familiar to me - I think I've sight read it at some point! My first idea is that it's a Mozart sonata with a late K number, but the hint specifically says "opus"... and my backup guess is that it's one of the late opus bagatelles of Beethoven!
1) Bernstein is very convincing here and mounts good evidence. And the theory is very interesting! The same can be said of Wim Winters, but the difference is that Bernstein is not insane.
2) The passages he uses to expound his hairpin theory are most convincing because they are slow. This is where it gets tricky, because I can think of several examples in the music of Brahms and the Schumanns where the tempo is quick and clearly meant to be a sort of "moto perpetuo" where doing a little rubato in the middle of a phrase would make no sense whatsoever.
3) The other problem with this theory is that it ignores the existence of instruments other than the piano. I had always learned that if you want to be really correct in your notation, you reserve the hairpin for a *single note* that gets louder or softer. For a passage with several notes, you use "cresc." or "dim."
Of course, the piano is incapable of a hairpin crescendo on a single note, and yet, composers have been known to write them. This just adds to the mystery!
In the end, my take is that we can spend decades looking back to historical documents for evidence about this or that notational marker, but in the end, the musician's job is to play musically and with conviction. That's exactly what Bernstein does here, whether or not it's supported by a fusty old letter or it's what the composers intended exactly.
NTT: I'll go out on a limb with just one composer: Beethoven
A piano solo (perhaps something like a Sonata?) vs. a section from one of his Piano Concertos.
I can't offer a detailed stylistic analysis to back this up. But I've performed all of his wind ensemble pieces, symphonies, and piano concertos. And his Horn Sonata, which in particular has some piano writing that this excerpt brings to mind.
Schroeder sums up my answer quite succinctly 😉: Beethoven is IT. Clear and simple!!
You’re right the piano may be a special case. Pianists often engage in agogic trickery to substitute for other effects that are difficult or impossible to achieve. Bernstein has marshaled enough evidence to convince me that hairpins may sometimes indicate rubato, sometimes with dynamics, sometimes alone. But I am not convinced that this is always the correct way to interpret hairpins, even in the piano music of the composers he cites.
Sorry I failed to thread this correctly…
NTT: This is extremely familiar to me - I think I've sight read it at some point! My first idea is that it's a Mozart sonata with a late K number, but the hint specifically says "opus"... and my backup guess is that it's one of the late opus bagatelles of Beethoven!
Not from a Serious European, but here is another revisionist opinion regarding notation, with Brahms as a central figure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRLBBJLX-dQ&t=1124s
Wow! A few thoughts:
1) Bernstein is very convincing here and mounts good evidence. And the theory is very interesting! The same can be said of Wim Winters, but the difference is that Bernstein is not insane.
2) The passages he uses to expound his hairpin theory are most convincing because they are slow. This is where it gets tricky, because I can think of several examples in the music of Brahms and the Schumanns where the tempo is quick and clearly meant to be a sort of "moto perpetuo" where doing a little rubato in the middle of a phrase would make no sense whatsoever.
3) The other problem with this theory is that it ignores the existence of instruments other than the piano. I had always learned that if you want to be really correct in your notation, you reserve the hairpin for a *single note* that gets louder or softer. For a passage with several notes, you use "cresc." or "dim."
Of course, the piano is incapable of a hairpin crescendo on a single note, and yet, composers have been known to write them. This just adds to the mystery!
In the end, my take is that we can spend decades looking back to historical documents for evidence about this or that notational marker, but in the end, the musician's job is to play musically and with conviction. That's exactly what Bernstein does here, whether or not it's supported by a fusty old letter or it's what the composers intended exactly.
Thanks, Michael. That's fascinating. And quite timely, as I have pages full of Brahms hairpins in his 2nd Symphony we're now rehearsing.
NTT: I'll go out on a limb with just one composer: Beethoven
A piano solo (perhaps something like a Sonata?) vs. a section from one of his Piano Concertos.
I can't offer a detailed stylistic analysis to back this up. But I've performed all of his wind ensemble pieces, symphonies, and piano concertos. And his Horn Sonata, which in particular has some piano writing that this excerpt brings to mind.
Schroeder sums up my answer quite succinctly 😉: Beethoven is IT. Clear and simple!!
http://absadmin.users.sonic.net/schulz/pages/page7.html