This "Legato" Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

[@alexkliever4659]

Glad you covered this point, Charles. I’ve heard at least a handful of recordings where the pianists do not finger-pedal the low, driving C-sharps. When I first listened to A. Rubinstein’s 1965 recording, I was disappointed to hear that he did not do so consistently, which leads to that sort of hiccup effect breaking up the intended resonance. I studied this Nocturne myself a few years ago and had to give focused attention to pedaling technique. Looking forward to watching the entirety of your masterclass. Thank you for making this invaluable content!

[@PianistAcademy1]

Thanks for watching, Alex! And thanks for taking the time to comment as well :-D

[@antoniomaccagnan7200]

Well, thinking that you play the piano with your fingers is like thinking that you play chess with your hands.

[@youngliverfailure6536]

Even if you consider rubinstein's playing "wrong" it still sounds better than any other recording i've ever heard

[@PianistAcademy1]

Philosophical question... can any interpretation actually be "better" than any other? If every interpretation considered is executed flawlessly and is exactly what the master intended to give to the listener, can any of them be "bad?" Not saying we can't have our own preferences. I don't think Rubenstein plays any better or any worse than just about any other artist you could name. He plays differently and with his own personality. Aside from not following Chopin's directions (and probably not purposely but because the research didn't exist at the time), Rubenstein playing Chopin is just that, Rubenstein playing Chopin. Just as my performance is Szczepanek playing Chopin. Just as Pires is Pires playing Chopin. So, does our personal preference (in performance and also as listeners) make one better than another? Especially when discussing Chopin, a composer so steeped in improvisation and fluidity of interpretation?

[@btat16]

It's amazing how much composers of old would have elaborated verbally to their students and peers that are just lost to time now and left to interpretation. This is quite insightful and very logical reasoning for the meaning of legato in this context!

[@btat16]

This is purely an uneducated guess but could it be possible that the "asterisk" denoted the last note of a pedal group rather than when to lift the pedal? If that were to be the case, Ekier's graphic would fall in line with what we expected perhaps

[@PianistAcademy1]

I'm not sure of the complete history of pedal markings with asterisks and "ped," but I've never seen an edition that uses them correctly. We know for certain that "legato pedal" was definitely established as the "best way" to pedal by the romantic period, yet score after score continues to have very misleading pedal marks. I've always wondered why the asterisks are even present... if simply another "ped" was marked, you'd obviously have to lift before depressing again. There's a chance it could simply come down to methods of printing at the time and that it simply couldn't be printed any more accurately... but today with digital notation, there's far more flexibility.

[@BradSumner]

I think Ped and * come from an earlier generation that did not have a Chopin and had never heard music so complex and subtle. Ped/* did their jobs just fine. With Chopin I think there is a lot you have to interpret with the pedal markings - especially with louder, more resonant modern grand pianos. Sometimes you lose the Ped entirely and you are certainly not going to play it without pedal - it sounds weird. That seems to happen quite frequently on passages with rapid changes in harmony - so you are going to want to pedal on every beat. Maybe the engravers threw up their hands and said no way we cannot cram all that in here without stretching the bar out.

[@davcaslop]

@@PianistAcademy1printing doesn’t have to do with the other marking since you find the mark of stop pedaling in manuscripts

[@ArmenChakmakian]

Thank you. Really great explanation. You are talented teacher.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Thank you and thanks for watching!

[@MotifMusicStudios]

Really love this topic!

[@PianistAcademy1]

So interesting, right?!

[@qazsedcft2162]

Very interesting! I never knew that this legato marking should be interpreted like that.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Crazy how much is hidden in that marking!

[@aBachwardsfellow]

- when legato go, legato go ...

[@PianistAcademy1]

😂

[@N-JKoordt]

Well, if Chopin didn't know how to mark his own music and wanted it to be monotonous and didn't mind the published sheet music being misinterpreted. More likely, he wanted the sustained tone to be raising because of the great effect it has in the music, which is evident by the grouping of the notes. Chopin could have easily changed the markings to reflect Ekier's desire for monotony, had he wanted that.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Notation itself is a very rudimentary representation of what music is, and we also know that Chopin was notoriously bad at proofing scores that went to publishing. He didn’t believe that the end all and be all was the printed score. You’re of course free to interpret the piece as you desire, I just want to point out that all of Ekier’s scores aren’t his own personal opinions about the music in question, like pretty much every other edition out there; his scores are based on spending his entire lifetime researching Chopins intentions, comparing all of the differences in first edition prints, reading all of the first hand sources of letters from Chopin to others and from his students to others and more. There are hundreds if not thousands of added/changed tidbits in all of those sources that were never in the manuscripts and not in print until the Ekier editions, so this one instance is far from the only time the score can be demystified or even changed completely by extra research. As a composer myself, I stand behind the interpretation of the bass sustain mostly because of the first note of the piece. If Chopin wanted, compositionally, the note after, showing inversion or instability, to be the focus, the piece would have started on G# not C# to maintain continuity of motif.

[@N-JKoordt]

I would say that maintaining a monotonous ostinato is one possible effect a composer might want, change is another. But Chopin would have to be very messy indeed to make such a consistent error in notation, that could easily be rectified.@@PianistAcademy1

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@N-JKoordt I suppose my question to you is, are you truly certain you know Chopin's intentions better than someone who spent 50+ years researching it on a daily basis? I don't think I'll ever be at a point in my life, even if I live to 90 or 100, where I'd disagree with Ekier. The more I find out on my own in time, the more it substantiates his findings. And other than the Rubenstein recording I quote in the video, you'll be very hard pressed to find another concert artist who brings out the change in bass note and also changes pedal, yet it will hardly sound monotonous. If we also bring into the equation how differently Chopin's piano would have sustained tone, we'd also know that the low C# wouldn't be nearly as resonant, sustained, and powerful in Chopin's time on his piano as it is on the modern piano. I don't think that means we can release it, but instead it actually makes executing this LH passage far more difficult on the modern piano than on Chopin's own. I don't think it's a matter of messy, but more that the importance of notation and it's nearly "authoritative" qualities are a product of the invention of the music conservatory and especially of music study in the mid 20th century, far after the time of most of the great composers. The idea that the score is somehow "absolute" and "the only way" is very much a modern idea that none of the great composers would have ascribed to. We live in this "urtext" era where there is this incredible drive to see exactly what the composers put on paper, but in many ways we have lost the underlying music in the search for "exact intentions." It's well known that when Chopin and even Liszt performed, they'd routinely change their own works in performance, sometimes even to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. There's a story of Chopin playing one of his Mazurka's for a small gathering... and then playing it again later in the evening so remarkably differently that it wasn't until nearly the end of the piece that the audience realized it was the same piece of music he had already played.

[@N-JKoordt]

Yes, you are right about musical tradition - obviously. I just don't find this kind of notation error likely - and do like the way it sounds with a raising sustained note. @@PianistAcademy1

[@BarnieSnyman]

Very captivating explanation! I was glued to the screen start to finish. But it occurs to me... all this is because the *-ped way of notating pedaling is, well, clunky. The |__^__^__ method is much more precise. And if you reaaaally want to get granular, one can use Grainger's variation: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hpfJXoiqgdikerc Chopin wasn't shy to explicitly notate finger-pedaling when needed. Now if only Grainger's pedaling-notation was a thing in Chopin's time. Then there probably wouldn't have been a "legato" marking in need of extended explanation and you probably wouldn't have made this video. :) Could this be a case where applying "modern" notation/engraving practices would actually be beneficial in conveying Chopin's intention?

[@PianistAcademy1]

Chopin notated holding in multiple voices all over the place, yes. And old pedal markings are horrible… I almost included a bit about that in this video, but it was too far off topic lol. But even “modern” ped with the ^ and ___ etc, still wouldn’t show the finger ped needed… and… I see just as many bad engravings of modern ped markings putting the lift in the wrong place!

[@BarnieSnyman]

@@PianistAcademy1Well, modern ped markings aren't going to help if they put the lift in the wrong place :) For this nocturne, I was thinking something along these lines: Notate the needed finger-pedaling explicitly. This can be done like how the guy you mention in the video whose name I can't spell does it, or perhaps the note can be tied to a grace note/appoggiatura after the note. And then use Grainger's pedaling-notation to pinpoint where the down and lift should happen in relation to the notated finger pedaling. This hyper-detailed notation could be used in the first few measures of the nocturne, followed by a "simile". Or maybe you can write such an explanatory edition of this nocturne for you masterclass. And even maybe use that in a video. Just a thought.

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@BarnieSnyman it’s a great thought! But probably very difficult to “overthrow” the standing and authority of the current urtext editions, even if a new edition would be “easier” to understand the true intention. I’m sure there would be uproar about “changing” the notes Chopin put on paper haha, but perhaps if it were called a “learning edition” or something similar it would be ok with more people? There’s been so much mis-information in editions over the last hundred years because of editors printing their own interpretation that the pull to urtext is incredibly strong.

[@BarnieSnyman]

@@PianistAcademy1 Understandable. I can totally see how misinformed editorial changes accumulating over decades/centuries can result in Chopin's true intentions being lost, and that is why urtext editions are precious and so fiercely defended. But they need to be interpreted correctly, and the knowledge of how to interpret them also needs to be preserved. So, as you say, perhaps a "learning-edition" clearly indicated as such (intended to accompany an urtext edition maybe?) might be more easily accepted.