Brahms and Romantic Era Performance Practice Study Guide

The 1903 Joachim Recordings: Joseph Joachim, a key figure in Johannes Brahms' inner circle, premiered nearly all of Brahms' works for violin and string quartet. His recordings from $1903$ provide vital, albeit complex, evidence of performance practice.
- Contextual Limitations: In $1903$ , Joachim was in his seventies. This raises the question of whether his playing in his final years reflected his performance style from previous decades when the works were composed.
- Technological Distortions: Early technology, such as wax cylinders, often failed to capture live sound accurately. There are documented instances where performers would play a specific note, but the playback on the wax cylinder would produce a different pitch.
- The Case of Marcel Moyse (Flute):
  - Moyse, a famous French virtuoso, found that early recording technology captured the piano well but obscured the flute sound.
  - To compensate and bring his sound "forward" in the recording, he began playing with vibrato on every single note.
  - While Moyse intended this as a solution to a technical recording problem, listeners worldwide interpreted it as a new musical ideal, leading to the widespread adoption of continuous vibrato as a trendy performance feature.

Spontaneity and Expression: The Romantic aesthetic prioritized expression first and spontaneity second. Performances were not meant to be identical from day to day; rather, the interpretation was meant to shift based on the performer's internal state at that specific moment (described as "how the blood moves us").
The Problem of Imitation: If a performer copies another's expression exactly, it ceases to be personal expression. This creates a conflict with modern methodologies that emphasize copying historical recordings.
Modern Focus on Accuracy: contemporary music performance is highly focused on technical accuracy (intonation, rhythm, and note-perfect playing).
- Historical Shift: In the Romantic era, expressive intent was valued at approximately $90\%$ or higher, while intonation or note accuracy might only account for $1\%$ of the critical evaluation.
- Technological Impact on Live Standards: The ease of creating "perfect" recordings in a studio (through splicing, editing, and multiple takes) has altered audience expectations. Listeners now compare live performances to these manufactured, perfect recordings, forcing live performers to prioritize accuracy over raw emotion to meet these standards.

The Sydney Academic Approach: A specific methodology for reclaiming Romantic performance style has gained popularity, involving three rigorous steps:
- Step 1: Listen to historical recordings extensively (e.g., a thousand times) until every nuance is internalized.
- Step 2: Play along with the recording, meticulously copying every single nuance, tempo shift, and articulation.
- Step 3: Use the mastery gained through imitation to develop the ability to perform in that style autonomously.
Critique of Methodology: The primary flaw is that historical recordings capture only one specific day's interpretation. Documents surrounding Brahms and his peers suggest they never played the same piece the same way twice.

Historical Documentation: Brahms was recognized as a genius during his lifetime, leading followers to document his playing in extreme detail. Observers took notes directly into scores, marking where he accelerated or slowed down.
Tempo Fluctuations: Brahms was famous for a fluid approach to tempo. He was known to start a tempo and then progressively slow it down throughout a piece. He often changed tempo markings three or four times on the same piece because he felt his own markings were too fast when he heard others play them.
Organic Dynamics and Phrasing:
- Crescendo as Acceleration: In the Romantic era, a crescendo was not just a volume change; it was often intrinsically linked to getting faster as the music became more exciting.
- Diminuendo as Deceleration: Softer passages were associated with pastoral, gentle, or warm characters, which often necessitated a slower tempo.
Sostenuto Notation Clues: According to one of Brahms' lifelong publishers (described as a methodical, "nerdy" individual), there was a secret code in Brahms' notation:
- Capital "S": When Sostenuto began with a capital "S", it indicated a change in tempo.
- Lowercase "s": When sostenuto began with a lowercase "s", it indicated a change in character only, while maintaining the same tempo.

Portamento and Fingerings: Historical cello fingerings for Brahms' works often involved sequences like $1-1-1-1-1$ , indicating heavy sliding (portamento) between notes rather than the clean position changes preferred today.
Hungarian Style: Violin recordings of works like the Hungarian Dances showcase heavy portamento and spread, which were characteristic of the expressive agitation of the period.

Clara Schumann: Known as the "Helen of Troy of the $19^{th}$ century," she was an incredibly beautiful and successful concert pianist and composer. She was famous for her fashion, allegedly never wearing the same outfit twice.
The Swan Feather Cape: Clara owned a massive, glamorous cape made of swan feathers. During the hardships of World War II, the descendants of Robert and Clara Schumann (who were suffering from hunger) traded historical artefacts—including the swan feather cape—to an American couple in New York in exchange for canned food and beans.
Schumann Legacy: Many items were housed in a Schumann Museum in New York before returning to the Schumann House in Dusseldorf. There are still Schumann descendants alive today, though the family has historically struggled with mental illness, inherited from Robert Schumann.

Question on Instructional Silence: The speaker recounts a teaching evaluation where they were advised to wait for student answers. They once waited for $18$ minutes in total silence until the class ended, as the students would not answer. This illustrates the difficulty of encouraging active student participation.
Question on Stylistic Influence (English and Italian Style):
- Response: English composers like Stanford were heavily influenced by the German Romantic style of Brahms.
- Response on Impressionism: Musical impressionism (e.g., Debussy) does not follow the same Romantic performance rules. In Impressionism, the composer writes much more detail on the page, whereas Brahms often wrote only one dynamic every $24$ bars, leaving the rest to the performer's discretion.
Question on Accuracy in Recordings: To illustrate the absurdity of modern recording perfection, the speaker mentions a flute teacher who claimed a rival recorded "one note at a time" to ensure total perfection.