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.

Gesture

An arpeggiation that speeds up and slows down once or several times, often evokes the association of a visual gesture. Consequently, this section reflects on how the internal tempo structure of an arpeggiation can be translated into a gesture-like visualization.

In 2008, a team of authors researching in Austria proposed using phase-plane visualizations to emphasize the dynamic and gestural quality in expressive timing (Grachten 2008) and slightly extended it in 2009 (Grachten 2009), highlighting its performer-specific aspect and suggesting an alphabet of prototypical forms for future work. This method is including tempo derivatives in the visualization in addition to the tempo itself. While Grachten et al. use it to visualize expressive tempo modifications, it seems to be highly adequate for visualizing the gestural quality of arpeggiations as well.

The graphs should be read as trajectories. While the horizontal axis represents tempo itself in beats per minute (BPM), the vertical axis represents the change (derivation) of tempo. Every single note of the arpeggio is represented by a point that is connected with the point of the next note.

I will further demonstrate this form of visualization by comparing four different interpretations of harpsichordists playing the opening arpeggio of the Prelude nonmesuré "à l'imitation de Froberger" by Louis Couperin.

From those visualizations, some conclusions can immediately be drawn: Magdalena Hasibeder breaks the arpeggio down into three gestures, while every gesture is faster than the previous one, and finishes with a strong retard. Francesco Corti on the other hand interprets the arpeggio as only one gesture by very evenly speeding up and slowing down. His interpretation represents the rapid gesture of all four interpretations. Gustav Leonhardt starts with a very fast arpeggiation, gives more time subsequently in order to initiate two gestures from there. He finishes rather fast.

In the Sarabande L'unique, gestural arpeggiation happens very frequently. The graphic below shows every note attack represented as a vertical line on a time axis. The more lines are densely packed together, the more notes attacks are occuring in that place. This visual representation allows easily to group together a set of notes as one gesture.

Toget with the notes of the first beat of bar 2, bar 1 arguably builds one gesture composed of several smaller gestures. In the proposed method this gesture could be visualized like this (the labels should be read as bar/beat):

The recordings are in the following order: (1) Hasibeder, (2) Corti, (3) Sempe, (4) Leonahrdt

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