The Short

140 ARTICULATION AND PHRASING
expression of a melody and that they have described that punctuation in similar terms does not mean that a musician
of 1780 would have rendered it in quite the same manner as one of 1880, any more than actors or orators of different
generations and traditions would have adopted the same approach to articulation in speech. Quite apart from other
considerations, changes in compositional style brought in their train modified approaches to articulation, as well as to
many other aspects of performance. The relationship between rules of ‘correct’ composition and rules of ‘correct’
performance, so often emphasized by eighteenth-century writers, 267 weakened in the nineteenth century as ‘unfettered
genius’ 268 came increasingly to be seen to override prescriptive aesthetic notions. And though older music continued to
be performed, indeed began to be performed more frequently as the century advanced, there seems only to have been
a limited awareness of historically appropriate performance techniques; the musicians of successive generations tended
to apply their own contemporary stylistic criteria to all the music in their repertoire. In particular, it seems possible that
the growing emphasis on legato in both composition and performance may have led during the nineteenth century to a
less distinct separation of phrases in earlier music, the articulation (where no break in continuity was indicated by the
composer) being more often conveyed by accent and dynamic nuance, perhaps, than by an appreciable break in the
sound. However, at every stage in this investigation it is important to bear in mind that keyboard instruments, bowed
instruments, various kinds of wind instruments and the human voice all have their own mechanisms and imperatives,
which affect the execution and application of articulation. The means that are available to the organist or
harpsichordist to convey phrasing effectively are quite different from those available to the violinist, flautist, or singer.
It is also necessary to remember that great artists will have displayed individuality just as much in this area as in others,
and that any two artists of a given period may well have adopted quite distinctly personal approaches to articulating the
same piece of music.
Some of the most obvious differences between periods and performing traditions will become more apparent on
closer consideration; many will inevitably remain irrecoverable, for the finer details of performance that distinguish the
playing and singing of the most cultivated artists are, as numerous writers pointed out, not susceptible of verbal
description. These refinements certainly cannot be fully reconstructed from written accounts, however elaborate; they
could only have been appreciated through hearing the artists who were felt to be the representatives of good taste in
any particular period.
267 e.g. Türk, Klavierschule, VI, §§23 ff.
268 Emily Anderson, rrans. and ed., The Letters of Beethoven (London, 1961), 1325.