Expressiveness in Historical Perspective: Nineteenth-Century Ideals and Practices

This chapter examines the philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings of nineteenth-century performance, as suggested in contemporary written literature and heard on early recordings, and summarizes them as an almost universal understanding of music in terms of its linguistic and declamatory properties, giving rise to flexibility in the meaning of music notation and basic musical parameters, and being used to justify specific expressive practices. The chapter summarizes the main tenets of such thought as a context for understanding the nature of expressive practices in violin and piano playing, including portamento, vibrato, dislocation, and arpeggiation. The authors discuss their experiences of producing “stylistically reconstructive” recordings, highlighting the challenges and potential for musical expressiveness. The results suggest that any research into cognitive/psychological music performance, particularly of the romantic repertoire, must widen its parameters beyond the modern aesthetics of expressivity, and focus more on the singing and rhetorical devices examined in this chapter.