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I will categorize the ingredients of pianistic performance practice to identify what makes up the flexibility of performance in early recordings as follows:
- Dislocation
- Unnotated arpeggiation
- Earlier type of rubato and rhythmic alteration
- Later type of rubato and tempo modification
These categorizations have been borrowed from Richard Hudson1 and Neal Peres da Costa2, and I have taken an eclectic approach from both because it is
closest to my understanding and offers ease of explanation. It has been a challenge to categorize the elements we can hear in the early recordings because they
are so similar, and it is sometimes difficult to say which element is which. Peres Da Costa says: “Some might argue that all of these techniques amount to one
and the same thing: a way of creating rubato or displacement of time that influences phrase shape, texture, and dynamic. Indeed, on early piano recordings,
these are often introduced in combination, resulting in highly expressive effects.”3 Hudson, for example, understands dislocation as “a special type of
arpeggiation [which] occurs when only two notes are involved.”4 I also find that unwritten arpeggiation and dislocation sometimes seem to have the same
effect. Most of tthe time, however, they are used for different purposes.
I also understand that “true” dislocation is a kind of early rubato. However, the crux of dislocation is that it occurs between the right and left hands of a
keyboard player. Due to its ease of use, it has been abused in ways that were not its original purpose, so it is important to discuss it separately from early
rubato.
Furthermore, the pianists at the time did not think they were such a separate and conscious performance practice. Hudson argues: “I suspect, however,
that a great artist is not usually conscious of all the details of this complex rhythmic counterpoint, but simply imagines he is singing or playing the notes as
written, but with highly intensified passion.”5 However, Peres Da Costa reports: “when I use them in my playing, I do have to think about them separately, to
decide how and when to dislocate my hands, add arpeggios, and make metrical displacements. Therefore, I feel that such complexity necessitates discussing
these as separate techniques.”6 I found these categorization efforts extremely meaningful, even if painful, as a process of becoming more aware of what I use
and how I use it in my performance.
1. Peres Da Costa, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing.
2. Hudson, Stolen Time: The History of Tempo Rubato (Clarendon Press, 1994).
2. Peres Da Costa, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing, 45.
3. Hudson, Stolen Time: The History of Tempo Rubato (Clarendon Press, 1994), 23.
4. Ibid. 111.
5. Peres Da Costa, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing, 45-46.