The Art of Arpeggiation

Niels Pfeffer

Student Number 3167720 Supervisor(s) Patrick van Deurzen Title The Art of Arpeggiation Research Question How many different ways of arpeggiation is it possible to think of and how is musical meaning created through them? Summary This research is about discovering the expressive possibilities of arpeggiation – may it be indicated by an arpeggio sign or added arbitrarily by a performer. For two reasons this question seems relevant: 1. In the past century, the idea that musical performance should be an exact reproduction of the score has become increasingly predominant and in consequence the idea of exact synchronity has evolved. Seeking for a more creative and less reproducing way to perform, breaking up this rigid synchronity provides us with an exciting "playground" yet to be explored. 2. Particularly on the classical guitar arpeggiation can frequently be heard – often for more technical than musical reasons. Especially on this instrument, a more reflected use is desirable. It was barely looked at the rules on what happens "inside" an arpeggiation. A reason for that might be, that everything inside an arpeggiation usually occurs very rapidly which makes it a lot harder to be analyzed. Besides that, often in arpeggiation the performer relies on "automatic" processes that are difficult to be modified consciously. I propose the idea, that arpeggiation consists of multiple layers of meaning that can be put together in any possible combination. The layers of arpeggiation span with increasing subtlety from habitual arpeggiation to a meticulously planned effect. In the presentation I will demonstrate this concept by showing different ways and meanings of arpeggiation in recordings and on my instrument. Short Bio Niels Pfeffer finished his harpsichord studies at the Stuttgart University of Music under Jörg Halubek and his guitar studies with Johannes Monno in 2017. He is studying in master with Robert Hill in Freiburg (harpsichord) and with Zoran Dukić in The Hague (guitar). With the guitar he won numerous prizes at renowned competitions. He is passionate about playing continuo on theorbo and harpsichord. With both instruments he took part in opera and orchestra performances. As member of different early music ensembles he has been regularly successful in competitions. At the University of Music Stuttgart he is teaching continuo and theorbo.

Fanny Davies, a direct student of Clara Wieck-Schumann, uses arpeggiation in a very refined way to show the inner voices, e.g. in a recording of "Von fremden Ländern und Menschen" from Schumann's Kinderszenen op. 15. Since Adelina de Lara, another pupil of Clara Schumann uses left-hand arpeggi in this piece in the same way, it is likely that this performance style comes very close to what Schumann himself actually expected hear.

Fifth Observation: Highlight Inner Voices

Compared to Saint-Saens, Rachmaninov*s more subtly dislocated performance approach is way closer to the now-adays listening habits.

Often the melody plays a small gesture surprisingly faster than expected – and the accompaniment comes in "too late" rather than the usual "too early"
Rachmaninov employs arpeggiation to subtly highlight inner voices, to make them sing with/against a main voice.

Conclusion: Deducing Creative Principles for own Artistic Practice

Six perhaps provocative imperatives:

1. Make your instrument bloom – find a way of arpeggiating/dislocating that gives your instrument a maximum of resonance. Do that espacially in places, that otherwise seem void.

2. Fill the space between expected and real with an imaginary swelling-up sound of a violin, a port-de-voix or a portamento.

3. Don't be afraid to disorient the ear.

3. Find a maximum of varying arpeggio lengths – no arpeggio may have the same quality in a row

4. Use arpeggiation to reinforce the intensity (which is a product of dynamics, agogics and register).

5. Play the melody voice as free and as capricious as possible. Try to follow in the accompaniment, but never precisely.

6. Use arpeggi to highlight inner voices.

Preliminary Observations on the Recordings

1. There's an extremely varying length of arpeggi – in early recordings much more than in contemporary performances

2. No arpeggiation is the exception. An arpeggio rarely comes alone are rare and have to be seen as a rhethorical moment.

5. If we were to give a charactarization to Llobet's performance, we would find it round, free and very cantabile while the performance of Russell seems to be more bound, static.

6. On the other hand Saint-Saens' performance often seems arbitrary and edgy to the modern ear or positvely spoken perhaps capricious – a consequence of his extreme use of tempo modification in combination with arpeggiation and dislocation.

The above-used diagrams, while representing all the exact numbers for tempo modifications and variations arpeggio-length, don't show anything that intuitively might be useful for a performer. For visualising dislocation and arpeggiation I want to propose here using the so-called performance worm, introduced by Goebl et al.

Fourth Observation: Correlation with Intensity Curve

(The smoothing factor was chosen to be 0.5). Looking at the large final gesture first, we see that amount and quality of arpeggiation are constantly increasing and thus are keeping up tension and intensity and thus reinforce agogics and dynamics. In bar 8 we see the case of a very big arpeggiation which initiates a turn in dynamics as well as tempo. It has been suggested that the registral contour also contributes this intensity curve¹ and that registral extrema as well as gradual registral changes are being expressed through arpeggiation.²

Bar 7 as played by Rachmaninov

Performance Worm

Other than the straight-forward diagrams of above, the performance worm shows very clearly the turning-points in both, dynamics and agogics. It further gives a very clear idea of the "course" of intensity. The worm can easily be identified with gestures following each other. These gestures are possible to feel while playing – specifically on the piano it feels natural to show the "gestures" with one hand while the other one in playing.

However, this form representation requires data smoothing before. Depending on level of smoothing, small gestures will seem more and more unified. Taking a very high level of smoothing, all the music will be represented as one big gesture.

I have chosen to display arpeggi and dislocations on these "gestures" as red circles, growing by the length of an arpeggio.

On the left hand side you see such a performance worm of the same performance of Chopin's Nocturne op. 15 No. 2 by Camille Saint-Saens.

The inner voice that Fanny Davies highlights through arpeggiation in her recording of 1929.

Listen Fanny Davies here and Adelina de Lara there.

¹ John Rink, …

² Alan Dodson, "Expressive Asynchrony in a Recording of Chopin's Prelude No. 6 in B Minor by Vladimir de Pachmann", Music Theory Spectrum 33, p. 59–64.

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