The Pianoforte in the Classical Era
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Product details:
- Publisher Clarendon Press
- Date of Publication 5 March 1998
- ISBN 9780198166344
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages412 pages
- Size 243x163x27 mm
- Weight 818 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 24 pp plates, line figures, tables 0
Categories
Short description:
The Pianoforte in the Classical Era is an important and radically new history, detailing the nature of the early piano and related instruments during the lifetimes of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. It promises to be a standard reference on the subject for many years to come.
MoreLong description:
In a period of only thirty years in the second half of the eighteenth century European musical culture underwent a remarkable transformation. In 1765 the harpsichord was the indispensable item in almost every concert and in every home where music was practised; the sound of the pianoforte was virtually unknown to most music lovers. Yet by 1795 the situation was entirely reversed. The pianoforte was indispensable and the harpsichord had become all but obsolete - except in the most backward and conservative establishments. Three hundred years of harpsichord dominance had ended, and workshops that had been busy producing them either ceased trading or switched hurriedly to the new hammer-action instruments.
What precipitated this amazing capitulation was, of course, new styles in musical composition and performance. While baroque counterpoint might be ideally suited to the harpsichord, the new keyboard music required above all expression. Not only loud and soft sounds, which the harpsichord could be contrived to imitate, but diminuendi and crescendi, sudden accents and an arresting quietness, which it was powerless to perform; these became the essential elements in any accomplished performance. For song accompaniments, too, the pianoforte was found to be ideal, with a sweet tone that supported the voice, and a dynamic flexibility that permitted it to follow the vocal line or to prepare the appropriate effect.
The Pianoforte in the Classical Era charts the progress of this revolution in musical aesthetics and experience, detailing the extraordinary variety of sounds and musical resources built into the keyboard instruments in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Wherever possible the author returns to original sources - a wide variety of previously unreported documents, as well as surviving instruments - to reconstruct a history of the pianoforte that departs radically from earlier theories of many of the most fundamental issues. A wide range of instruments, each carefully described, is placed in a precise chronological and cultural setting. New insights are offered into the parameters that governed the performance of keyboard music in the Classical Era.
Michael Cole, a harpsichord and fortepiano maker, has written a delightful and entertaining book ... The practical bias of his knowledge is manifested time and again
Table of Contents:
Introduction
The Early Piano I
The Early Piano II
Johannes Zumpe and the English Square Piano
After Zumpe: Small Pianos in Europe and America 1770-1795
Interlude: Buying a Pianoforte
Beyond Zumpe: The English Square Piano 1782-1805
Americus Backers, Inventor of the English Grand Piano
The English Grand, 1778-1805
Pianoforte or Pantalon? The Origins of German Tafelklaviere
Johann Andreas Stein and the German Grand Piano
Keyboard Instruments in Germany and Austria 1770-1790: An Overview
`Mozart's Own Fortepiano'
In Vienna
Harpsichord, Pianoforte, and Combination Instruments
The Upright Pianoforte: the Genesis of Upright Forms
Into the Nineteenth Century
Construction of the Early Piano
At the Keyboard. Touch and Tone in the Early Piano
Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries
Envoi
Appendices
I: Selected Passages from Early Sources
II: A Proposal for the Systematic Classification of Piano Actions
III: Americus Backers: the Inventory of his House and Workshop in 1778
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
