The embellished fast movements of thirty-two violin sonatas by Franz Benda
Date
1978
Authors
Poole, Elissa
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Abstract
The subject of this study is the collection of thirty-two embellished violin sonatas by Berlin violinist and composer Franz Benda, contained in Mus. Ms. 1315/15 of the Preussischer Kulturbesitz in West Berlin. .These sonatas, probably written sometime between 1733 and 1751, are a fertile source of information about mid eighteenth-century Berlin performance style and Benda's style in particular, in that both the embellishments and the articulations, two integral aspects of an eighteenth-century performer's style, have been carefully notated throughout the collection.
Embellished slow movements are fairly numerous in eighteenth-century literature; however, there are relatively few embellished fast movements. This makes Ms. 1315/15, in which nearly all the fast movements are embellished, particularly valuable. Therefore, this study will be concerned only with embellishment and articulation in the fast movements.
The third chapter of the thesis is designed primarily for the performer who wishes to incorporate embellishments into fast movements in the Berlin style. It is in two parts. In the first part, various melodic units have been isolated--such as long notes, anacrusis figures, scale and arpeggio fragments--and the embellishment possibilities for these units, as shown in the Benda collection, have been enumerated and presented in musical examples. In the second part, basic principles of rhythmic variation which can be applied to a given melodic or rhythmic unit are discussed and presented in musical examples, including such techniques as the filling in of rests, use of tempo rubato, the addition of syncopation, and variation in rhythmic motives.
Because of the idiomatic instrumental writing of the sonata in Berlin, the embellishments are more or less excluded from vocal style. Furthermore, the virtuosic violinistic embellishments are often too florid to be executed on another instrument. However, the non-violinist will still find it useful to note the types and positions of melodic and rhythmic units which are available for embellishment and may then choose appropriate embellishments or simplify the more complex ones to suit his instrument.
Since eighteenth-century composers frequently omitted the articulation indications in their scores, the performer has yet another responsibility, in addition to embellishment, if he is to render an authentic performance of the music. Articulations have been copiously included in this collection, making it of double value to the performer. The final chapter of this thesis consists of a compilation of musical examples and guidelines for articulating various types of common melodic and rhythmic units, both in term~ of the most frequently used articulations and articulation employed as a method of embellishment. While some of the articulations are violinistic, for instance, the size of interval and length of some slurred passages would not always be suitable for a wind instrument, the majority of the articulation principles are applicable to both wind and string players, for use in articulation of fast movements.