Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music: Their Principles and Applications

Performance today on either the pianoforte or the fortepiano can be at once joyful, musicianly, expressive, and historically informed. From this point of view, the author examines the principles of performing the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and their contemporaries as revealed in a variety of historical sources: their autographs and letters, early editions of their music, original instruments, and contemporary tutors and journals. She applies these findings to such elements of performance as dynamics, accentuation, pedaling, articulation and touch, technique and fingering, ornaments and embellishments, choice of tempo, and tempo flexibility. Familiarity with the Classic conventions provides a framework for interpretation and an understanding of the choices available within the style, the amount of freedom a performer has, and which areas are ambiguous. This detailed study, copiously illustrated with musical examples, is invaluable for professional and amateur performers, serious piano students and their teachers and students of performance practices by Scarlatti and Clementi.