The Short

Reichardt's assumption that performances would commonly be under the composer's direct control also hints at one
reason why such markings were relatively infrequent in mid-eighteenth-century music, which was seldom written with
a view to publication. In practice, very few composers in the 1770s or 1780s took the sort of care with their scores that
Reichardt recommended, and very few orchestras seem to have achieved his ideal. This is reflected in his comments
about ‘loud and soft and their various nuances’, where he remarked:
This is, for our feelings, what the attractive force of the moon is for the sea: it will just as surely cause ebb and flow
in us. The majority of orchestras only recognize and practise forte and piano without bothering about the finer
degrees or the shading of the whole. That is to say they paint the wall black and white: it is all very well if it is
beautiful white and beautiful black, but what does it say? It is difficult, extraordinarily difficult, to get a whole
orchestra to do that which already gives a single virtuoso much trouble. But it is certainly possible: one hears this in
Mannheim, one has heard it in Stuttgart. 150
The idea that orchestras were only just learning to produce effective dynamic contrasts at that time is supported by
Christian Gottlob Neefe's report of 1783 that Kapellmeister Mattioli in Bonn ‘was the first to introduce accentuation,
instrumental declamation, careful attention to forte and piano, all the degrees of light and shade in the orchestra of this
place’. 151 Reichardt's treatment of the subject also implies that matters were not helped by confusion about the meaning
of some of the terms employed at this period. He stated that such markings as m. v. (mezza voce) and f.v. (fatto
voce—occasionally used as a synonym for ‘mezza voce’) were sometimes taken to mean the same as mf (mezzo forte)
and sometimes even the same as fz. (forzato). 152 He might have added to his list pf. When this marking stood for ‘poco
forte’, as proposed by Türk, and still occasionally used by Brahms (for instance in the second movement of his C
minor Piano Trio), it indicated a dynamic level between f and mf; but it might easily be confused with pf standing for
‘più forte’, for example, in Galuppi's L'Olimpiade, where a crescendo is shown in something approaching Reichardt's
manner by f — pf — fortissimo (Ex. 3.2.)
Ex. 3.2. Galuppi, L'Olimpiade, Act I, Scene i
150
Ibid. 59.
151
Magazin der Musik, 1 (1783), 377.
152 Ibid. 68.
NOTATION OF ACCENTS AND DYNAMICS 61