Re: The biggest scandal in music publishing
Posted: 26 Jun 2021, 09:55
I agree with Romanos401. The problem for harpsichordists doesn't even exist, as they are trained since their first year. The problem is all for the pianists. But are you sure, John, that the fingerings and the ornamentation would solve the issues and bring a higher number of the sonatas to more players? As I wrote in my previous post, that's the simplest of the problems.
You just don't play Scarlatti if you aren't able to finger yourself. Nor Bach etc. Moreover, putting your own fingering on the score is a most useful moment in studying the score. Fingering is not just a mechanical device but a mean to look slowly at the piece, at its harmonies, at the developing of its melodies, and so on. And Scarlatti is not Frescobaldi, when it comes to fingering. In Scarlatti "modern" and "baroque" fingering overlay pretty well (not everywhere, of course).
However, fingering is not just "where to put what finger". It should be something aimed to the "correct" articulation. For example, read what Malcolm Bilson (a renowned fortepiano player) writes here: http://malcolmbilson.com/pdf/bilson_fin ... rtexts.pdf. Having an already set fingering, while being no guarantee at all, means reversing the logical order: you FIRST must know what your articulation should be, THEN decide on the fingering. Having a printed fingering reverses this order: FIRST I have the fingering, THEN I have an articulation more or less induced by that fingering. I could go and play even without having thought of articulation. But in baroque music articulation is nearly everything.
As for the ornamentation, Scarlatti only has longer or shorter squiggles which I can assure you have no unique solution. There is no table of ornaments for Scarlatti because a table of ornaments would go outside Scarlatti (and italian and spanish) aestethics. North-european composers are a different thing.
What takes pianists (and many harpsichordists too) away from all of those masterpieces is a lack of understanding of the musical values of the sonatas. They are short of understanding how those "wrong harmonies", parallel fifths etc. can possibly work. Or how and why - for example - the beginning of most sonatas show a theme or motive (sorry, I don't know hot to say in English) which doesn't come back later anymore. Or maybe they can't recognize, in a sonata, an Opera Sinfonia or an Opera Finale, or an instrumental concerto or a Flamenco or a Saeta (try to play the K 490 not thinking of a Saeta: you just couldn't make head nor tail of it: what are those sudden stops followed by strange scales? Scarlatti ran out of melodic ideas? no, it's a Saeta). In a word, in order to play Scarlatti in a convincing way you have to understand his immense musical world. Something you can't get by fingerings and impossible table of ornaments. The best harpsichord teachers try to teach these things, while the piano teachers usually don't (and couldn't, because then they have Beethoven and Liszt and Scriabin to teach as well...).
Since you recognize the sonatas as masterpieces, you are obviously well capable of understanding and doing this, but please be aware that is not a simple task for many many players both of harpsichord and piano.
There is literature on this subject, of course.
Sorry for being so long.
You just don't play Scarlatti if you aren't able to finger yourself. Nor Bach etc. Moreover, putting your own fingering on the score is a most useful moment in studying the score. Fingering is not just a mechanical device but a mean to look slowly at the piece, at its harmonies, at the developing of its melodies, and so on. And Scarlatti is not Frescobaldi, when it comes to fingering. In Scarlatti "modern" and "baroque" fingering overlay pretty well (not everywhere, of course).
However, fingering is not just "where to put what finger". It should be something aimed to the "correct" articulation. For example, read what Malcolm Bilson (a renowned fortepiano player) writes here: http://malcolmbilson.com/pdf/bilson_fin ... rtexts.pdf. Having an already set fingering, while being no guarantee at all, means reversing the logical order: you FIRST must know what your articulation should be, THEN decide on the fingering. Having a printed fingering reverses this order: FIRST I have the fingering, THEN I have an articulation more or less induced by that fingering. I could go and play even without having thought of articulation. But in baroque music articulation is nearly everything.
As for the ornamentation, Scarlatti only has longer or shorter squiggles which I can assure you have no unique solution. There is no table of ornaments for Scarlatti because a table of ornaments would go outside Scarlatti (and italian and spanish) aestethics. North-european composers are a different thing.
What takes pianists (and many harpsichordists too) away from all of those masterpieces is a lack of understanding of the musical values of the sonatas. They are short of understanding how those "wrong harmonies", parallel fifths etc. can possibly work. Or how and why - for example - the beginning of most sonatas show a theme or motive (sorry, I don't know hot to say in English) which doesn't come back later anymore. Or maybe they can't recognize, in a sonata, an Opera Sinfonia or an Opera Finale, or an instrumental concerto or a Flamenco or a Saeta (try to play the K 490 not thinking of a Saeta: you just couldn't make head nor tail of it: what are those sudden stops followed by strange scales? Scarlatti ran out of melodic ideas? no, it's a Saeta). In a word, in order to play Scarlatti in a convincing way you have to understand his immense musical world. Something you can't get by fingerings and impossible table of ornaments. The best harpsichord teachers try to teach these things, while the piano teachers usually don't (and couldn't, because then they have Beethoven and Liszt and Scriabin to teach as well...).
Since you recognize the sonatas as masterpieces, you are obviously well capable of understanding and doing this, but please be aware that is not a simple task for many many players both of harpsichord and piano.
There is literature on this subject, of course.
Sorry for being so long.