The Short

Ex. 6.41.Mendelssohn, Lieder ohne Worte, ed. Klindworth, p. iii
DOTS AND STROKES 239
of notes played with one bow to the first note of the new bow, without shortening its value, and thus he would
logically connect phrase to phrase, so that the melody might appeal to our hearts in a broad and unbroken stream. 414
Klindworth was only twenty-one years younger than Mendelssohn, and, while it is possible that his understanding of
the intentions behind the composer's notation may have been incorrect in particular instances, there are no very good
grounds for believing that he was fundamentally mistaken about the style in general. If one listens to Joachim's violin
playing in his own Romance in C, one hears precisely the kind of performance that Klindworth wished the pianist to
achieve; and there is no doubt that Joachim's musicianship was deeply affected by his early association with
Mendelssohn. Whatever Mendelssohn may have intended his slurs to convey, it seems very unlikely that he expected
them to be played according to what Klindworth called the ‘strict rules of pianoforte playing’. Klindworth was certainly
not alone among late nineteenth-century musicians in believing that the manner in which most composers employed
slurs was often an inadequate guide to the realization of their intentions. Lussy, also, criticized the practice of his
contemporaries in this respect. 415
It was Hugo Riemann, however, who made the most sustained effort to find a mode of notating every aspect of
phrasing with the greatest precision. He laid out his premises in detail in 1884, 416 and over the next decades made
practical use of his principles in his many editions of late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century piano music. As
he remarked in the preface to his edition of Schubert's Moments musicaux op. 94 and two scherzos for Litolff's Verlag,
The principal difference between editions with phrasing marks, and others, is in the use of the slur. The curved lines
or slurs used to indicate the legato touch (very often in an incorrect manner in Music for the Pianoforte, originating
from Violin-bowing) reveal the thematic analysis of a musical work, the union of motives into phrases and the
disjunction of phrases from each other; thus supplying a long-felt want of musical Notation, namely, an unequivocal
punctuation; enabling the performer (even the least talented) to give a correct
414
Ibid. pp. v–v i.
415
Le Rhythme musical, 66f.
416
Musikalische Dynamik und Agogik: Lehrbuch der musikalische Phrasierung (Hamburg, 1884).