The Pianoforte Student.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XXVI, 27 June 1903, Page 1772

The Pianoforte Student.

A COMMON ERROR IN EXPRESSION. (By J. S. Van Cleve.) One morning, while listening to a young lady recite her lesson in pianoplaying, I observed, with more than usual distinctness, an error in the understanding of musical directions of expression which is so frequently made that a word of elucidation and caution may be well. Everyone knows, or at any rate thinks he knows, what is signified by the Italian word ritardando often employed by composers. My pupil was reciting the “Rondo Capriceioso,” by Mendelssohn. In the introductory Andante there is toward the dose a precipitate passage of octaves in the right hand, which has a mark of ritardando. When she arrived at the last three notes there was an abrupt halt, and a very slow, emphatic sounding out of the notes. Besides being quite abhorrent to the Mendelssohnian tradition, which demands almost constant equality of beating, this was so gross a gaucherie as to be quite glaring. I took occasion to explain to her the marked difference between ritardando and meno mosso. The latter effect is also often employed in music, but is quite another thing from ritardando. Meno mosso means that there is to be an instantaneous alteration of the tempo to a slower rate, at which it is to remain until further notice. The secret of the ritardando is to add an insensible amount of lengthening to each beat or note, at any rate to each unit of the music to be retarded, whether there be but two or three or four of such notes, or whether the slackening is to extend through a long series of 30 or 40 notes. Suppose you were to add a grain of sand each mo-

ment to a pan of a balance; it would sink lower and lower by very gentle and nicely-graded abatements, and the sinking would be as soft as the gentle alighting of a balloon under perfect control. This may be taken as an image of the ritardando. Such an effect is to be as aerial and pulse-like as possible, and nothing is more fatal to the effect desired by the composer, namely, the softening and dulling of the fire of feeling, than suddenly to quench it. Do not dash a cup of water upon the flame; sprinkle ashes upon it. The expression meno mosso is generally used at the beginning of some entirely new thought or form of tonestructure, and is intended to distract the mind for a moment, and to produce a slight arrest of the attention or spur of wonder. The pit-fall into which all beginners at retarding seem to fall by some fatal instinct of blunder is that of changing the first note or two much too violently. The truth is, you must deliver the notes which immediately follow the direction “ritardando” nearly as fast as you have been going, then by tittle and little, usually by changes quite too delicate for a tyro, the sluggishness of the pulse must be brought in. There is a wide-spread neglect of accurate attention to these routine and fundamental marks of expression among our pupils, and, as teachers, we are ;much too apt to take for granted a knowledge of what is to us so rudimental.