How to teach Haydn and Mozart

[jenilyn]

I have kind of a difficult quesion.  How do you teach your students to produce that simple sound that Haydn and Mozart require?  I try to tell my students to think "light and simple", but it ends up coming out like a romantic piece.

[point of grace]

lol
i think we all have that question and that it is not easy to solve...
you can try asking your teacher, and if not just make them study it the sloooooooooowwwest they can to solve tempo problems and to sound more like mozart!

no pedal, no rubatto...

[counterpoint]

no pedal, no rubatto...

I wonder, who has invented that nonsense... 


"Worinn aber besteht der gute Vortrag? in nichts anderm als der Fertigkeit, musikalische Gedancken nach ihrem wahren Inhalte und Affect singend oder spielend dem Gehör empfindlich zu machen.  Man kan durch die Verschiedenheit desselben einerley Gedancken dem Ohre so veränderlich machen, daß man kaum mehr empfindet, daß es einerley Gedancken gewesen sind. Die Gegenstände des Vortrags sind die Stärcke und Schwäche der Töne, ihr Druck, Schnellen, Ziehen, Stossen, Beben, Brechen, Halten, Schleppen und Fortgehen.  Wer diese Dinge gar nicht, oder zur unrechten Zeit gebrauchet, der hat einen schlechten Vortrag."

CPE Bach Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1753)


roughly translated


"What is it, that makes a good performance? nothing else than the skill to
give the ear the sensation of the musical ideas following their true meaning
and affect by singing or playing the music.
Different performances can change a single, identical musical phrase in a
way, that the ear hardly will recognize as the same musical phrase.
The means of the performance are the strength or weakness of the notes,
their pressure, velocity, stretching, bumping, trembling, breaking, holding,
dragging and rushing. He who does not use these means or who does use
them in the wrong places has a bad performance."

[point of grace]

I wonder, who has invented that nonsense... 


"Worinn aber besteht der gute Vortrag? in nichts anderm als der Fertigkeit, musikalische Gedancken nach ihrem wahren Inhalte und Affect singend oder spielend dem Gehör empfindlich zu machen.  Man kan durch die Verschiedenheit desselben einerley Gedancken dem Ohre so veränderlich machen, daß man kaum mehr empfindet, daß es einerley Gedancken gewesen sind. Die Gegenstände des Vortrags sind die Stärcke und Schwäche der Töne, ihr Druck, Schnellen, Ziehen, Stossen, Beben, Brechen, Halten, Schleppen und Fortgehen.  Wer diese Dinge gar nicht, oder zur unrechten Zeit gebrauchet, der hat einen schlechten Vortrag."

CPE Bach Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1753)


roughly translated


"What is it, that makes a good performance? nothing else than the skill to
give the ear the sensation of the musical ideas following their true meaning
and affect by singing or playing the music.
Different performances can change a single, identical musical phrase in a
way, that the ear hardly will recognize as the same musical phrase.
The means of the performance are the strength or weakness of the notes,
their pressure, velocity, stretching, bumping, trembling, breaking, holding,
dragging and rushing. He who does not use these means or who does use
them in the wrong places has a bad performance."

??

[dan101]

These composers are easy to sight-read, but hard to perform. Much of the difficulty has to do with the light, non-legato touch. Students should know that achieving a nice touch in Mozart and Haydn takes patience and a lot of scale practice.

[danny elfboy]

I have kind of a difficult quesion.  How do you teach your students to produce that simple sound that Haydn and Mozart require? 

First focus on hand separate practice.
Then the right hand should always be loader than the left hand.
When it says legato instruct to play a staccato-legato by raising the hand or the fingers slighly between each stroke. Emphasize a lot the contract between the pp and the ff especially when they appear in the same bar. When there are similar pattern or sound one following the other apply a contrast between crescendo in the first and the decrescendo in the second. Raise very often the hand at the end of each phrase to emphasize the thetic imput. Chords must be soft and a little tenuto and not harsh. Even when leguta singular notes on the melody should sound well defined in a sort of staccato-legato. It is helpful to write p below the notes and a small dot above each note to mark those notes as to be played with this effect.

[counterpoint]

Mozart has composed enough operas, so let's go to the opera, then you will hear, how Mozart should sound.

Haydn has composed over 100 wonderful symphonies and over 80 string quartets, there's much to learn from them.

[danny elfboy]

Mozart has composed enough operas, so let's go to the opera, then you will hear, how Mozart should sound.

But the operatic Mozart sounded a lot different than the pianistic Mozart.
If nothing because the instrument Mozart has to deal with were almost a completely different intrument on its own compared to the modern pianos. The Mozart (sound) at the piano is not to capture the essence of Mozart style but to capture the essence and possibilities of early pianos. Since Mozart composed piano music designed for instruments that had a strong staccato sound, what Mozart wrote sounds confused and redundant almost blurred if played on a modern piano (without some kind of strategies to recapture the peculiarities of those instruments, hence relying little on the pedal, making the legatos more staccato, playing the left accompainment softly and so on)