Page:Collier's Cyclopedia of Commercial and Social Information.djvu/143

Rh F we listen to the performances of two pianoforte-players, one good and the other bad, and try to analyze the differences which exist between their renderings of the same composition, supposing both players capable of playing all the written notes. correctly. The first of these points is touch; the passages of the good player being distinct and brilliant, while those of the other are slurred and ineffective, and in listening to them one cannot always feel sure that each note of the written passage has been fairly struck. Again, the cantabile or melody playing of the one is rich and full in tone, and the expression vocal—the instrument seems to sing; whereas a melody played by the supposed bad performer is weak and short in tone, and often overpowered by heavy accompaniment. The second of the two points of difference to be noticed is the different rendering or conception of the whole work given by the two players. In the one case the whole is intelligible and satisfactory, while in the other much of the music appears vague and unmeaning, and one is inclined to wonder what the composer could have meant by it. No doubt the question of the general conception and reading of a complete composition is a wide one, and must necessarily include a great number of details, extending even to the capability of the performer to enter into and understand the intentions of the composer; still, in this book we have to do less with the intentions of either composer or performer, than with the mechanical expression of those intentions, supposing them to have been correctly conceived, and from this point of view it will be found that the chief difference between the readings of our two imaginary performers lies in their good or bad phrasing. Touch and Phrasing will then chiefly claim our attention, and first of all

Touch is to the pianist what a good management of the voice is to the vocalist, or a good action of the bow to a violinist—the means of producing agreeable sounds and of executing difficulties. True, the tone produced by an inexperienced hand on the pianoforte is not so disagreeable as the earliest attempts of a beginner on the violin, because the former is a more purely mechanical instrument than the latter; still, a, good touch is one of the greatest excellences of a pianist, and to play good music with bad touch is very like attempting to read a fine poem ina language which one is unable to pronounce properly. Touch is of two kinds: legato, or connected, and staccato, or detached touch. Of these legato-touch is by far the most