example of musicologists in an argument

[pianistimo]

rm: "i certainly agree that in the autograph scores of mozart...the word 'cembalo' is used as the italian term ovbiously for piano until late on.  my theories about salzburg in the 1770's are based on what i read in leopold mozart's letters and other members of his family, but mostly leopold mozart.  to the best of my knowledge, when writing letters about instruments, he never uses the word 'cembalo.'

ebs: "but 'clavecin.'  it was the same as 'cembalo.'

rm: "but i do not think he uses that either, perhaps occasionally when he is in france. but from salzburg itself he uses the word 'clavier' frequently.

ebs: "which is also a generic term."

rm: "yes, which could mean anything. and he frequently uses more specific terms, such as pianoforte or pianforte.  i think he does not say fortepiano until a little later, but obviously they mean the same thing, and he quite often says 'clavichord' as well.  now what we are really in disagreement about here, i think, is the interpretation of leopold's word 'flugel.'

(how's that for changing the subject?)

[jas]

Where did you get that from? It's quite interesting.

[pianistimo]

cont.

ebs:  before we come to that let us just go back a little bit more.  i think the fact that the hammer-harpsichord was called 'cembalo,' and the scribes usually did not take the labor of writing 'cembalo con martinelli' or 'cembalo senze pene,' it was quite clear that a cembalo was a wing shaped instrument which could either be a 'kielflugel' or a 'hammerflugel.'  and if we really understand this, then we have to be careful whenever we come across the terms 'cembalo' or 'flugel' in the 18th century, right from the beginning.  we cannot say whether it was a 'kielflugel' or a 'hammerflugel,' whether it was a cembalo 'senza' or 'con martinelli.'

rm: "i agree with you, on this point."

ebs: "a 'flugel' was sold in vienna already in 1725, which was a 'cembalo con martelli.'

rm: "of course i recognize that there could have been pianos in salzburg in the 1770's.

ebs:  "there must have been."

rm:  "i would not go that far.  we simply do not know that, and the documentary evidence that we have, sparse though it is, seems to suggest otherwise, but it does come back to the interpretation of the word flugel.  now, i know that there is a certain amount of evidence that 'flugel' was sometimes used to mean 'pianoforte.'  there is an interesting quotation there, which ebs has drawn to my attention.  this is from koch's work of 1802.  he says 'die eigentliche form des fortepiano ist die des flugels, daher es auch oft ein flugel genannt wird.'  now, you can interpret that in many ways, and if i might try to make an english translation, it would be:  "the usual form of the fortepiano is that of the harpsichord, for which reason it is often called a 'harpsichord.' there is not my mind a certain suggestion there that when he says 'called a harpsichord' he really means 'miscalled a harpsichord' by people who do not know any better.  there is an example of this actually in the deutsch documentary biography, mozart's concert in dresden on 14 april 1789.  the local dresden paper said that mozart had been playing on the 'flugel,' but the 'musikalische realizeitung,' which should have known a little better, said later on that he was playing on the 'fortepiano.'  i think that is a case where a newspaper reporter who is not a musician may well use the word 'flugel' and misuse it.

[pianistimo]

i got this from the back of a journal article by richard maunder entitled "performance problems in mozart's keyboard concertos."  it makes me laugh even though i know it's serious.  the arguments are between richard maunder, eva badura-skoda, christoph wolff, dexter edge, and robert levin.

[pianistimo]

cont.

ebs: "why 'misuse' it?  now we come to the point which frederick neumann so well explored in all his books on ornamentation.  we have one wonderful treatise where you find answers to everything and everybody, therefore everybody is quoting it, regardless of whether it is meant for composers from berlin, or from madrid, or from italy, or somewhere else. in saxony and in berlin the term 'pianoforte' was, of course, used much earlier because it came from there.  nowhere in south germany do you find 'pianoforte' before 1750, and when i found this in a document in 1763, the one thing which really surprised me was the appearance of the term and not the fact that the fortepiano itself was used for the concert in the burgtheater.

rm:  "i should like to make one comment still on this question of terminology, and it is one sentence from a letter that leopold mozart wrote on the 13 november 1777.  he is reporting a letter that he has had from a man, whose name i forget, in frankfurt, who was an agent for frideriici's instruments.  the sentence read, 'er hat nebst sienem grossen Fridericischen Flugl/ wie unserer/ mit 2 manual, ein ganz neus grosses Fortepiano.'  now, it seems to me that he is drawing a clear distinction between these two types of instruments, on the one hand, the 'flugel' and on the o ther hand the 'fortepiano.'

ebs:  "they are both from a certain year.  what happened before?"

rm:  "well, the quotation about the concert at the lodrons, where nannerl refused to play because she was not allowed to play on the best instrument, comes from a year later than that."

ebs: "mozart must have been able to practice a lot of fortepianos before 1777. everyone who for the very first time comes from a harpsichord or even a clavichord to a fortepiano cannot handle the instrument properly.  i know how long it takes harpischordists, and prof. fadini can confirm this, to learn how to handle a fortepiano properly.  therefore, bach in 1747 and mozart in 1777 must have been in acquaintance with the piano before they could sit down and play wonderfully on it, bach in potsdam and mozart in augsburg.

rm:  "mozart  played a piano in munich in 1775."

 

[pianistimo]

cont.

ebs:  "yes, but he also played pianos earlier, because he says in his letter quoted so often from october 1777: ' until now i liked the pianofortes of spaeth best, and now i like the one of stein best.'  this alone speaks for the fact that he had played pianos before."

more later -

[da jake]

Sir Clancy Barnesworth: You see, Lord Shrewsbury's recent edition of the Bach Preludes and Fugues contain some questionable textual emendations.
Professor Pierre:  The scholarship of his ornamentation is also highly dubious.
Sir CB: Dat is evident and I concur.
PP: Quite. *adjusts monocle*
Sir CB: *sips tea* You know... your wife was a lousy lay.
PP: I BEG YOUR PARDON, SIR?
Sir CB: What? Did I say something?
PP: *takes off glove slaps Sir CB* I BID YOU GOOD DAY SIR. *storms out*