Pathetique question on pedaling

[soitainly]

 I downloaded the sheet music from Piano Street and have started learning the Adagio, it's a little beyond my abilities but I like challenges and it's one of the pieces that made me want to take up piano in the first place. The recordings I have heard of this movement sound very ambient and always assumed there was quite a bit of pedaling involved, yet my music doesn't show any pedal markings. Is it common to add pedaling. For instance, my recording by Barenboim sounds really ambient, I guess it could be the room, but is it really pedaling to get that sound?

[rmbarbosa]

A lot of sheet music doesnt show pedal markings. The proper use of pedals is one of the most importants things one must learn and train. "Pedal is the soul of the piano", said Rubinstein. The fact that a sheemusic doesnt show markers doesnt mean pedal is not necessary. That means only that one must know how and when use them. Here, in pianostreet, you have the "guide to the proper use of the pianoforte pedals", by Bukhovtsev, based in Rubinstein technique. You have also a little but good book, "Possibilities of tone color by artistis use of pedals" by Teresa Carreno. If you could learn one of this books (Teresa carreno is easier), it was very useful to you. And, of course, a good but not excessive use of pedals is very important in that adagio.
Best wishes
Rui

[daniloperusina]

Also, the pedal, and pedal markings,has it's own history.

Mozart's pianos had a "pedal", which was operated by the knee, not the foot. Same function though, raising all the dampers. He never wrote markings, and he is known only to mention it once in a letter, saying that the "pedal" of a particular piano impressed him with how well it worked.

Beethoven started making pedal markings in his scores, but he hadn't started doing that at the time of the Pathéthique, which is quite an early sonata (opus 13). Famous is his instruction on the header of the first movement of the Moonlight: "This whole piece must be played very delicately and without dampers" in italian: Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordino. (I write from memory, so I hope I got it right!:))

His later sonatas have more detailed pedal markings.

In the later 19th century, it was popular to publish editions where the editor made his own markings, concerning dynamic, phrasings and pedalling. But todays "Urtext" editions avoid all that, and keep strictly to exactly what the composer himself wrote. Therefore, no pedal markings in the Pathéthique, but of course Beethoven used it! He was a freak about legato playing! It was part of a "new" approach which he was perhaps the key factor in establishing. When you find Urtext editions with pedal markings, they are Beethovens own. Other composers around the early/mid 19th century who also wrote pedal markings in their score are for example Chopin and Schumann. It's very interesting to study how those two used the pedal; one is bound to be surprised at how imaginative they are! It's much more than just legato pedalling; it's almost as a third voice (meaning that the two hands would be the normal two). Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Chopin who said that the pedal is the soul of the piano?

[quasimodo]

hmmm...
Is "senza sordino" "without dampers"? I thought it was referring to the left pedal ?

[daniloperusina]

No, the left pedal wasn't called a "sordino" pedal. At least on some models,there was not one left pedal, but several. Beethoven's sort of famous Broadwood grand had four strings to each treble note, whereas today we have three. With the "left" pedals one could swith gradually from four to three to two and to one string per note. From this we got the term "una corda", one string, which is not true of today's grands, which switches to two strings with the left pedal.

But "sordino" meant dampers, as the literal translation of the word is "deaf, silent".