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Keyboard slurring practice in the nineteenth
century: the conflicted case of Mendelssohn
again
William Whitehead
Journal of the Royal College of Organists
Volume 6 (2012) pp. 48-65
WILLIAM WHITEHEAD is a freelance organist and teacher, who
has held posts at both the Royal Academy of Music and Trinity
College of Music, London. His organ recordings have met with
critical acclaim, and he continues to travel widely as a concert
organist
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RCO The Journal
Keyboard slurring practice in the early
nineteenth century: the conflicted case of
Mendelssohn again
William Whitehead
The question of Mendelssohn’s articulation markings in the organ music, and his slurring
in particular, has once again been raised in recent years by commentators such as Laukvik,
Geffert, Little and Ward Jones.1 This article is partly an exercise in siting his notational
practices in a historical context, a (frequently underplayed) pre-condition of trying to
make sense of them, and partly a discussion of what these markings might imply for
performance. There is not scope in this article to consider the philosophical nature of the
processes by which performers convert notation into practice.2 Whatever the essential
problems of notation, slurring practice from the period between roughly 1800 and 1880
carries with it special conditions. The delicate strands of meaning that issue from notation
in this transitional period are all too easily bruised or crushed altogether in an ahistorical
search for rationale and consistency, a search rather eagerly embarked on by some scholars
and players. Nevertheless, we are bound to pose the questions: what did Mendelssohn
mean when he marked slurs in his organ music? For whose benefit were they intended?
How should we best respond to them today?
Slurring practice cannot be considered without also considering developments in
legato playing. I set the discussion in the following context: that legato was a tendency as
eighteenth century turns into nineteenth, but had become a principle as nineteenth turns
to twentieth.3 In between, there exists a transitional approach which parallels, but does
not equate exactly to, the transition in slurring practice. The mutually reactive relationship
between slur notation and the wider prevalence of legato playing forms an elusive but vital
factor in this discussion. I make no apology for covering similar territory to Clive Brown in his Classical and
Romantic Performing Practice 1750–1900.4 This remarkable work gathers an immense
amount of documentary and anecdotal material together and provides an evidential and
contextual background to much of what follows.
Slurring as notational practice
It is useful to define the territory before exploring it, as the terminology has not always
been clear in discussions of articulation, phrasing and slurs. The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians has ‘Articulation and Phrasing’ as a single entry, and defines them
thus:
The separation of successive notes from one another, singly or in groups, by a performer,
Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
49
and the manner in which this is done. The term ‘phrasing’ implies a linguistic or syntactic
analogy, and since the 18th century this analogy has constantly been invoked in discussing the
groupings of successive notes, especially in melodies; the term ‘articulation’ refers primarily to
the degree to which a performer detaches individual notes from one another in practice (e.g., in
staccato and legato) …5
This is a very useful starting point, and I would add the following denominators for
further clarification: to ‘articulation’ belong long, short, legato, staccato, strong, weak,
motif, etc.; to ‘phrase’ belong legato, line, shape, breath, period, melody, etc. It is worth
noting immediately that slurs service both articulation and phrasing indiscriminately, with
no qualitative distinction on the page. While we may think of the phrase-marking as a
descendant of the articulation-marking, it is very difficult to pin down the moment at
which one ceded to, or evolved into, the other, one of the key problems lying at the heart
of this discussion. Articulation marks in keyboard music, and slurring in particular, reach a level of
abundance, one might say maturity, with Haydn and Mozart. Here is a typical example of
Mozart’s notational practice. In this example there is an easy relationship between slurring,
musical material and metrical accentuation, with slurs occupying a subservient role to the
other two:
Ex. 1: W. A. Mozart, Piano Sonata in G major, K 283 (c.1774), Allegro, bars 1–10.
As can be seen, the slurs work at a motivic level, generally covering small groups of notes,
most often twos, threes or fours, and this practice can be seen as the general principle
in eighteenth-century music, covering both baroque styles and later, classically phrased
music. If the trend through the century is for slurs to extend to greater lengths, they remain
generally in thrall to the beat hierarchy, and therefore the bar. Slurs crossing the bar line or
the beat hierarchy are the exception rather than the rule, though are of course a cherished
effect, as seen in the above example.
In practical terms, commentators such as C. P. E. Bach, Leopold Mozart and Daniel
Gottlob Türk discuss three aspects of slurs: the necessity of keeping notes under a slur
legato, of accenting and/or lengthening the first note, and of shortening the last note under
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them, though this last receives less consensus of opinion.6 If I present the eighteenth century
as a sort of ‘Garden of Eden’ in which notation and meaning are of one accord, it only
seems so in contrast to the dislocation delivered by new styles of composition appearing
at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Specifically, it
is cantabile melody, with its broader harmonic span and associated legato playing style,
which undermines the comfortable trinity of musical material, slurring practice and
metrical accentuation. The changing musical archetypes, some of which are demonstrated
by Mendelssohn’s music, destabilise what has hitherto been a co-ordinated system. Slurring
increasingly finds itself at odds with, or inadequate to partner, a musical material that
resides less and less within the old metrical rules. Here is a well-known example from
Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata, Op. 13 (the notation follows the first edition of 1799):
Ex. 2: Beethoven, Sonata No. 8 ‘Pathétique’, Adagio cantabile, bars 1–12.
This example demonstrates the fault-lines in the system, and points up that it is not
just organists who are faced with these seeming notational inconsistencies. The slurs are
evidently reluctant to cross bar lines, but the sense of cantabile melody, longer-breathed
than would have been typical in the previous century, seems to contradict the beat-directed
and motivically centered articulation markings. Today’s performer is left in a quandary:
do these markings represent an inconsistent or incompetent system (since they do not
sufficiently capture the sense of legato and ‘phrase’), or do they enfold an older performance
practice (in which legato was not yet a principle)? Here is a Mendelssohn example from an
early edition (Ex. 3), in which the slurs similarly appear to cede to metrical priority:
Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
51
Ex. 3: Mendelssohn, Lieder ohne Worte, Op. 30 No. 1, bars 1–7.
The fact that Beethoven and Mendelssohn appear similar in their slurring practice is
no surprise if we categorise them as ‘Romantic Classicists’. Their musical style, particularly
in slow movements, presents newly extended melodic ambit while still retaining a sense
of metrical propriety. Indeed Beethoven is the more modern in some respects, teaching
his slurs to cross bar lines with much greater freedom than Mendelssohn—the Pathétique
example above is backward looking in comparison to much of his other music. From this
it becomes clear that the notation of slurs cannot be considered without also considering
changing compositional styles. If notational ‘paradise’ is lost around 1800, as notation and meaning drift apart, it is
arguably regained from about 1880 onwards, when slurs reclaim a sense of consistency and
rationale. Composers such as Brahms and Reger, editors such as Straube, and, above all,
the theorist Hugo Riemann,7 contribute in various ways to this process. We see slurs losing
their provincial interest in articulation in favour of the loftier, more philosophical, heights
of the phrase; they are mandated with the onerous duty to show structure and expression.
Crucially, the status of a metrical hierarchy and its relevance to musical performance are
now called into question. From this point until the emergence of Urtext culture the phrased
edition is the ideal, and we can proclaim transitional slurring practice, with all its fluidity
and lack of system, a thing of the past.
We witness the approach of the ‘phrased-edition culture’ through the increasingly
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frequent comments that slurring systems were inconsistent, illogical and outdated. Here is
a reproachful review of W. T. Best’s 1871 edition of the Mendelssohn Organ Sonatas:
... the only regret [is] that he did not give us some indication of his own phrasing in substitution
for, or instead of, Mendelssohn’s antiquated and often imperfect method of phrase notation.8
The review, written in 1918, shows the new climate. The ‘phrasing edition’ is now the
standard, and preservation of Mendelssohn’s transitional slurring practice is seen as a
regrettable quality of the edition. We find a similar modernising instinct in Karl Klindworth,
in the preface to his 1898 edition of the Lieder ohne Worte for piano:
Whenever it seemed desirable for the better understanding of the composer’s intentions, I have
added phrasing slurs, which extend the short bar-sections into melodic phrases.9
The editorial methodology is a familiar, if maligned, one, but there are tantalising questions
raised by a musician like Klindworth, who comes from the generation immediately following
Mendelssohn and who was taught the piano by Liszt. In his notational intervention does he
capture the memory of a genuinely long-breathed style of presentation, remembered from
his youth, or does he obscure such in his modernising notational adjustments? I consider the
performance practice implications of transitional slurs more thoroughly later on. The problematising of transitional notation took various forms. Often composers
stood accused of what I call ‘misappropriation’: the transfer of slurs from one instrumental
discipline to another, and in so doing giving muddled or incorrect information. This
perceived deficiency surfaces frequently, for example in Ravel’s edition of the Mendelssohn
Lieder ohne Worte. Here he discusses his editorial policies:
I have invariably substituted a pianistic slur in place of the orchestral slur, which is improperly
used in piano writing by the majority of classical composers, and which can give rise to
ambiguity. Thus, regarding this indication which is used in bowing:
the overly conscientious student will surely perform this:
whereas, from all evidence, the composer desired this interpretation:
Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
53
(+ and + are connected by means of the pedal).10
Here is Tovey, who, by contrast, allows a guarded deference to ‘old systems’ even as he
problematises them, and goes on to cite slur misappropriation as a key failing in Liszt’s
piano arrangement of the Eroica Symphony:
The classical composers did not arrive at a coherent system of marks of articulation, and our
modern efforts at such a system expose us to the risk of misinterpreting such traces of older
systems that exist. ... Some things that violins can do are impossible on the pianoforte, and
some things have quite a different meaning on different instruments. Thus in the first movement
of the Eroica Symphony the rhythm of
would lose all energy if the violinists bowed it as follows:
But on the pianoforte the latter form of slur is the only possible one. An attempt to separate
the semiquavers from the following quavers would lead to a worse loss of energy than that
which Beethoven’s violin-bowing avoids. Yet Liszt, in his pianoforte arrangement of the
Eroica Symphony, reproduces Beethoven’s bowing on the assumption that no pianist will
misunderstand it.11
Tovey appears to want to have it both ways: respect for older composers and their
notational systems, but license to change the notation where he sees fit, in particular where
misappropriation appears to be the failing (his edition of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas displays
a high degree of editorial intervention). As will become clear in the ensuing discussion, it
is much more likely that Liszt left the slurring as in Beethoven’s original score because
pianists of his time were quite used to seeing short slurs, the characteristic typology of the
transitional period. The underlying problem in both cases is not, I think, the misappropriation of slurs
from orchestral practice, but the relationship of metrical rhythm to slurring. Beethoven’s
and Mendelssohn’s bar line is an important pillar of rhythmic clarity, to which their slur
pays deference, as indeed the retake of the string-player’s bow does. This is why transitional
keyboard slurring sometimes resembles orchestral bowing. The question is, would a
nineteenth-century pianist have responded to these short slurs with a more developed
intuition than either Ravel or Tovey allow? These editors clearly lack faith in the performers
of their own time projecting anything other than a two-ish lumpiness when confronted with
such slurs. The problem for both editors is that in their era, the slur has come to denote a
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procedure, whereas it tended to connote various procedures in the nineteenth century, the
selection of which was left to the performer in a much looser connection of notation and
practice. The unspoken possibility is that a mid-nineteenth-century pianist might well have
spontaneously made larger musical units than the slurs strictly notate, musical units a later
generation of editors felt bound to enshrine in notation.
This tendency of the small-scale slur to be subsumed into larger imaginative units is
described by a number of nineteenth-century composers and performers. There are several
well-known examples of composers advising students that slurs need not mean separation
of sound or the lifting of the hand in keyboard playing.12 Ludger Lohmann proceeds no
further than Czerny’s unequivocal instructions that consecutive slurs covering more than
three notes should be joined together.13 Brahms and Joachim correspond at length on a
similar matter in 1879; to summarise, Joachim says that it is tricky to decide if slurs give
instructions as to bow strokes (in which case adjacent groups of slurred notes might sound
continuous, if played skilfully on the violin) or whether they do imply the shortening of the
last note and consequent intervention of an articulation gap (in other words, responding
to the slurs as a pianist traditionally would). Brahms’s reply is fascinating: he says slurs do
not reduce the value of any notes, they indicate legato, with any grouping arising according
to the performer’s whim (which might nevertheless include shortening the last note);
only in slurred pairs does the second note become shortened.14 Though it is dangerous to
extrapolate general practice from singular comments, in all of these cases there seems to
be a common thread: unspoken legato, surrounding and smoothing out the local impact of
slurs. The slur, in other words, must not be ‘taken too literally’. At a later date such non-literalism was de rigueur. Here we find Widor insisting on a
legato interpretation of Bach’s slurs (and thereby tacitly accusing Bach of misappropriation).
For him, Bach’s articulation marks are what he calls ‘mental’ slurring:
We say ‘mentally’ because it is quite necessary to keep from detaching the sounds from each
other. The skillfulness [of the player] lies in making the intentions of the composer felt either
by accentuations of duration or by subtleties of touch ... Let us repeat here what we have
repeated many times, namely that these slurs represent the bowings of the orchestra, and that
on the organ the player is not at all to take account of them. We indicate them only for a more
immediate understanding of the idea.15
By now, the slur has been fully subsumed into an ideology of legato line, indeed has
practically lost its identity altogether. So minimised is its effect in this case that it has
become merely an idea, not to be realised in any meaningful way at all. I will return to this
‘idea’ slur later on, specifically with relation to Mendelssohn’s fugal writing. One tantalising instance of Mendelssohn commenting on notational practice does
exist. The London Handel Society issued Mendelssohn’s edition of Israel in Egypt and, in
an exchange of letters of 1845, he corrects some of the engraver’s errors. Mendelssohn
discusses slurring being used erroneously to denote word underlay in vocal music,
commenting as follows on the proofs (see text in facsimile in Plate 1):16
Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
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Plate 1: Mendelssohn’s comments
on engraver’s mistakes. See
note 16.
Beaming and underlay matters apart, it is Mendelssohn’s casual aside that is of interest here.
He clearly regards discretely articulated (i.e. separated) pairs to be represented in modern
notational practice by the use of a staccato dot. Even if he is exaggerating the point, or
imagined baroque articulation as extremely marked, it provides an angle on Mendelssohn’s
use of paired slurring in his organ music (e.g., the start of Sonata No. 3). Nowhere in his
organ music does he use the paired slurring with a staccato dot. Does this tell us that, in his
mind, slurs, unless used in conjunction with the staccato dot, were not primarily indicators of
separation? If this is the case, Mendelssohn, writing in 1845, is arguably even more embedded
in a culture of generalised legato than Brahms in 1879.17 The foregoing discussion might perhaps be summarised in the following way. The
transition that Mendelssohn’s (or Schumann’s, Beethoven’s, or Liszt’s) slurs are undergoing
is from the microscopic to the macroscopic, or from agents of rhythm to agents of line.
It is not an overstatement to say that they move from the rational to the poetic. If these
antitheses are at once too simplistic and too generalised, they do at least frame the
ambiguous nature of slurs in the nineteenth century, neither strict guarantors of articulation
nor yet guardians of the phrase. At best, the composers of the early and mid century had
a marvellous flexibility of notation, at worst a muddled set of signs that offered very little
secure information.
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Slurring as metrical tool
The manner in which nineteenth-century composers engaged with the slur varies
enormously, but Mendelssohn is certainly not forward-looking in comparison to his
contemporaries, nor even to some composers from the previous generation. In organ
music, Hummel, Rinck, Töpfer and Ritter, all active before 1850, were capable of more
logical, usually longer-spun, slurring patterns than those presented by Mendelssohn: in
other words, they present the incipient ‘phrase’. Chopin already in 1828 uses a vastly more
evolved sense of the phrasal slur than Mendelssohn does. It is also interesting to note that
the ‘modern’ organ genres that appear during the nineteenth century (mostly imported
from the piano) of Fantasia, Andante, Variation, Etude, etc., tend to incur a rich slurring
practice while the older, church genres, Choral, Vorspiel, Fugue, etc., can often be left
completely unannotated; genre carries its own implications for slurring practice.
Ex. 4a: Mendelssohn, Organ Sonata No. 6, Andante sostenuto, bars 4–10, according to the Berlin-Krakow version,
ed. Little (Novello, 1987).
Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
57
I set out at the start of this article by saying that the search for rationale and consistency
in the transitional slur was a perilous aspiration. Nevertheless, let us try to salvage what
sense we can by considering slurs from this period not as the product of Riemannesque
logic, but as the collision of two principles moving in opposite directions: that towards
legato and that towards metrical rhythm. By setting up this framework, we can begin to
catch occasional eddies of consistent meaning and retrieve some sense of logic from the
Mendelssohnian slur. That the Organ Sonatas had an educational element is well known. Frequently referred
to by Mendelssohn as ‘Studies’ throughout their gestation, they were, in his own words,
‘A kind of Organ-school of Six Sonatas for that instrument’, as announced by Coventry in
July 1845. The didactic intent, though removed from the final publication’s title page, was
certainly part of their conception, and, I propose, left its impression on matters of slurring,
particularly in their intersection with rhythm. The compositional process of these Sonatas
can be tracked from the early sketches (the Berlin-Krakow manuscripts), through the more
developed compositions held in the Bodleian Library (Deneke MSS) to the published
versions. Exx. 4a and 4b present an extract from the Sixth Organ Sonata in two versions,
one in draft form (Berlin-Krakow), one in published form.
Ex. 4b: Mendelssohn, Organ Sonata No. 6, Andante sostenuto, bars 4–10, according to the first editions.
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The earlier version presents surprisingly long slurs, slurs that look forward in time to a
phrasal methodology. The published edition retreats to an apparently earlier methodology
in which the bar line appears to regain primacy, and smaller units are prioritised. In fact,
this is the pattern we generally find in the Sonatas’ evolution, and may be expressed thus:
where Berlin-Krakow has any slurs at all (and they are sparse, as expected in an early
draft) they are more lengthy than Deneke, which in turn presents lengthier slurs than the
published versions.18
Why this seemingly regressive move from ‘phrase’ slurs towards ‘articulation’ slurs?
My view is that it enshrines a didactic intent, commensurate with the idea of ‘schooling’,
a retrenchment to rhythmic discipline that developed as the compositions themselves
developed. Were organists, and English ones in particular, not to be trusted with lengthy
phrasal slurs? Might they fail to enliven and detail their musical discourse sufficiently?
We know from various accounts that a sense of well-drilled playing was paramount to
Mendelssohn. He was, after all, the first conductor to use a baton and became known
for his instilling of orchestral discipline. Accounts of his keyboard playing talk about
wiry crispness, energy and clarity. What better way to preach rhythm and clarity in organ
playing than to notate slurs that encourage these qualities? Several other examples of this
tendency in the Sonatas are noted in the final section of this article. Here is the same tendency in piano music, to which Klindworth makes apposite
reference in the preface to his 1898 edition. He discusses Mendelssohn’s Op. 30 No. 1 in
E flat (See Ex. 3 above):
The new phrasing-slurs are intended to preserve the pianist from the error of rendering the
melody according to the strict rules of pianoforte playing, which would require that in every
group of slurred notes the first is to be accented and the last slightly shortened in value, thus
dividing it from the following group. In thinking over the matter in which Mendelssohn may
have intended the melody to be played I have imagined the style in which, for instance, a great
violinist would render the song thus phrased. He would certainly link the last group 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.19
Klindworth’s appeals to beauty and naturalness against a rigid, ‘schooled’ approach reject
Mendelssohn’s transitional slurring methodology as obsolete or misconceived, and reclaim
his music for a Romantic aesthetic. But isn’t Mendelssohn aligning his slurring precisely
with a sense of classical metre and discipline which might resonate with the amateur
pianist, possibly an enthusiastic exponent of the ‘strict rules of pianoforte playing’? The
performance might end up a trifle literal-minded and wooden, reading from an early
edition’s slurs by two and four, but it might equally be more rhythmically played and clearly
pedalled than one from a score with the longer articulation marks inserted by Klindworth
(note how the pedalling aligns so carefully with the slurring in Ex. 3). Might Mendelssohn
not be consciously hinting at propriety and correctness rather than ‘modern’ beauty of
line? It would do to note von Bülow’s comment that a Mendelssohn ‘Song without Words’
was as ‘Classical as a Goethe poem’ and should be played as such.20
Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
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At best, this old-fashioned sense of slurring might indicate clarity (realised through
accent or separation). At worst it might induce ‘fragmentation’, as described by Liszt in the
preface to his symphonic poems. Here, he laments the
mechanical, fragmented up and down playing, tied to the bar-line, which is still the rule in
many places and can only acknowledge as appropriate a periodic style of music, with the
prominence of special accents and the rounding off of melodic and rhythmic shading ...21
Liszt describes a performance style that recalls eighteenth-century norms at a time when
compositional style had already moved into new territory. I hesitate to push Mendelssohn
into Liszt’s firing line, but his classicising compositional style, when coupled with a rhythmic
style of delivery, would exactly fulfil the criteria for Liszt’s criticism. Performance practice
issues are here opening up which cannot fully be answered, but they hint at a possibility
for metrical observance in performance that we, like Klindworth and Liszt, might find
unsatisfactory. For all we know, Mendelssohn’s own preferred style of performance
may have been what we today might call four-square or fragmented.22 In this context,
it is interesting to note that at least one critic thought Mendelssohn’s playing of Chopin
unsympathetic, music in which the singing line has a special place.23 Before entering unknowable (and possibly uncomfortable) performance practice
territory, let us examine a third case that illuminates the ‘didactic’ slur in Mendelssohn:
his fugal writing. This texture very often induces a plethora of slur markings, limning
the rhythmic shape of the subject. Examples include the fugues in the Second and Third
Organ Sonatas and those in E minor, D major and A flat major from the Six Preludes and
Fugues for piano, Op. 35. There is a quasi-analytical quality to these slurs, somewhat akin
to Widor’s ‘more immediate understanding of the idea’ or what might be simply called an
‘idea’ slur.24 It is almost as if the ‘disciplined’ and ‘correct’ technique of fugue induces an
equivalent aspect to the slurring, as it were X-raying the individual bones that go to make
up the limb. Once again the music is slurred with a surprising verticality which seems to go
against its melodic vein. Does Mendelssohn wish us to play these fugues with a particular
ear to rhythmic discipline?
And yet this melodic vein is elsewhere endorsed quite naturally by Mendelssohn’s
slurring and other markings, chiming with the technical tutors by Czerny, Rinck, Knecht
and others which encourage legato playing. Mendelssohn invokes this style at numerous
points in the Sonatas (e.g., ‘sempre legato’ in the First Sonata, first movement, bar 98, and
‘Sostenuto e Legato’ of the Fuga in the Sixth Sonata). His within-the-bar slurs are sometimes
precisely indicators of this style.25 The problem is that these legato slurs co-exist ambiguously
with metrical slurs, leaving the player unsure how to respond. Take, for example, the Sixth
Sonata, final movement, where the within-the-bar slurs of the first six bars seem to glaze
the melody with a continuous legato despite its internal logic, after which the next two bars
present overactive by-three slurs, reasserting a sense of rhythm that has already been to all
intents and purposes negated. The entwining of metrical and legato slurs reaches its most
untangle-able in the melody of the Allegretto from the Fourth Sonata. The wilful exhortation
to join up the phrases through legato (bar 7) is contradicted by the metrical cry of separation
(bars 11–13). How can we possibly reconcile these mixed signals?
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I would like to loosen the legato/metre deadlock by redefining and expanding the terms
somewhat. Instead of opposing ‘metrical’ and ‘legato’, let us consider Spohr’s opposition
of the ‘correct’ and the ‘fine’. Seen in this light, Mendelssohn’s ‘metrical’ slurs tend to
urge the player to correctness, while his ‘legato’ slurs urge her to fineness, or in Hummel’s
terms, beauty. Brown defines these positions as follows:
Spohr considered that ‘the accentuation and separation of musical phrases’ were among
the distinguishing features of a ‘fine style’ rather than a merely ‘correct’ one. The difference
between these was, in Spohr’s opinion, that the former involved ‘discerning the character of
the piece performed and of seizing its predominant expression and transfusing the same into
performance ...’26
It is my view that Mendelssohn mixed two ambitions in writing his Organ Sonatas:
to inculcate the ‘correct’ style, but also to make his player consider the ‘fine’. Any overenunciation we might see in his slur notation can be seen as resulting from the former, which
represents a confluence of historical factors: a classicising style, a didactic personality, and
an amateur market perceived as needing firm instruction. His printed editions, released
in four countries simultaneously, are shot through with this ambition. Yet his slurs are
harnessed to a second horse, pointing in the opposite direction, which wishes us to lead
the player to the ‘fine’. We are faced, therefore, with a choice when performing this music.
If we are to ‘discern the character of the piece and transfuse it into performance’, we may
have to downplay the ‘correct’ elements as mere historical necessity, in order to allow
a performance, should we believe the music to have the potential, to move towards the
‘fine’.
The slur in performance
A musician of Mendelssohn’s wide experience, who played keyboard instruments as well as
strings, would have espoused an enormous variety of techniques that might be considered
proper responses to slurs. Quite apart from ‘the separation of successive notes from one
another’, the range of techniques he would have enjoyed as a pianist runs from use of the
sustaining pedal through to different types of touch and dynamic accent. The bowing of
strings and the tonguing of wind instruments add further channels of response, even if at
a metaphorical level. Arguably, rubato, dynamic flux (i.e. crescendo and diminuendo) and
agogic accent also form part of the articulatory process demanded by slurs.
Mendelssohn’s organ music may well contain echoes of all these practices, whether an
organist allows them to inform his playing or not. What is certain is that the limitations
inherent in the organ as an instrument can easily restrict the range of response to slurs to
‘separation’ and ‘detachment’. Here, the player risks giving a ‘correct’ performance rather
than a ‘fine’ one. I note that certain types of ‘neo-classical’ organ built in recent years,
coupled with the revival of interest in earlier performance practices, have encouraged an
attitude to articulation in some quarters which hauls Mendelssohn firmly back to baroque
principles. It seems a shame if the metricality of his slurring, aligned with its ‘correct’
imperative, outweighs other, potentially richer, possibilities, which better acknowledge
Mendelssohn’s wide-ranging and cosmopolitan activities as a composer and player.
Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
61
So how might a performer today best respond to Mendelssohn’s slurs? I referred earlier
to a contemporary performer responding to the transitional slur with a more complex set of
mechanisms than ‘phrasing’ editors would allow, one in which slurs help an understanding
of metre and clarity while at the same time not preventing a more sophisticated (‘fine’)
performance. We see Brahms, Liszt and Widor, amongst others, engaging in this type of
double-think; the score and its markings lay out a ‘basic’ form of articulation, on top of
which a more imaginative solution is to be layered if the performance is to rise above the
merely ‘correct’. That Mendelssohn aligns himself even more strongly than the others with
the ‘correct’ (even to the point of performing it that way himself) need not undermine our
attempt to engage with the ‘fine’ in his music, to which process we can bring everything
from Widor’s internalising ‘idea’, through modified legato, to a fully articulated metrical
clarity. Brahms’s oft-quoted ‘get out of jail card’ is precisely the interpretative point: ‘Do it
as you will, but do it beautifully’.
Postscript: There has not been an opportunity in this article to consider source and
editing problems, though they are nevertheless important. The transmission of slurs
from manuscript to printed edition adds another layer of ambiguity. Sometimes, seeming
inconsistencies arise for purely logistical reasons, including graphical technique (the ease
of executing, and therefore preference for, shorter slurs) and layout (slur-breaks caused by
other stave clutter or system breaks, carrying no intrinsic meaning). Basic lack of clarity
is often evident in manuscripts, and the cause of editorial uncertainty; Mendelssohn’s
manuscript slurs are often cursory, nearly straight, lines lacking close connection to the
notes they cover. All of these factors, though they should not militate against a close and
careful examination of the evidence, serve to remind us that a nineteenth-century player
scarcely took a forensic attitude to slur markings, an attitude we sometimes fail to dampen
in our post-Riemann, post-positivist times.
Notes on Mendelssohn’s Sonatas movement by movement: a personal view 27
General approach: legato ambiance, nevertheless inflected by various types of response to
slurs, be that lifting/separation, rubato and agogic shaping, or other imaginative stimuli
revolving around accent and diminuendo.
Sonata I
(1) Little that is controversial in slurring patterns here. The Beethovenian phraseology at
the opening, resting on three-chord rhetoric, is slurred as such. Second melodic idea at bar
11 crosses the bar line, as do most of its corresponding slurs. When the chorale enters at bar
40, slurs show the entire phrase-length, approaching the structural ambition of a Riemann
slur. In Deneke, this is achieved with some graphical effort; apart from their long length,
some of these chorale phrases are emphasised by slurs both above and below the stave,
seeming to encase the chorale in a cosseting legato. The slur methodology seems forwardlooking throughout this movement. Pedal slurring from bar 94 is within the bar, but the
sempre legato instruction at bar 98 indicates that these are legato slurs, not metrical.
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(2) The first of the song-like movements in the Sonatas. The theme’s phrase-structure
2+2+4 is slurred as 2+2+1+1+1+1. A ‘correct’ performer might respond to these
didactic within-the-bar slurs, bringing them out. Perhaps a more sophisticated (‘fine’)
performance would employ very subtle articulation or lengthening to shape these bars,
or internalise these slurs as ‘idea’ and play more or less legato. Slurring thins out around
bar 32, but takes up again with the recapitulation. In Deneke, the slurs are, if anything,
more ‘advanced’ (i.e. they cross bar lines and span greater lengths), again suggesting
Mendelssohn’s retrenchment to ‘correctness’ for publication.
(3) Much deference to the bar line in this movement, in didactic fashion. I imagine pairs of
flutes and oboes in dialogue, especially from bar 18, in which case the bar line-contained
slurs imply a light tonguing. From bar 29, the longer slurs collude with and emphasise the
legato of the held broken chords.
(4) Slurs clearly adhere to the overall sense of legato, covering two- and three-bar lengths,
before ceding to the ‘sempre legato’ marking. Slurs for the second theme (introduced at
bar 68) are ambivalent, sometimes deferring to the bar line, sometimes crossing it. To that
extent, the failure to cross the bar line seems notational irresolution rather than meaningful
articulation, and should not be realised. Collusion of slurs in legato of held broken chords,
bar 138, is similar to previous movement.
Sonata II
(1) Grave: slurs appear rather modern in their willingness to cross the bar line in tandem
with the upbeat phrasing, almost implying ‘special effect’ legato. Adagio: Bachian texture
with medium-length slurs attached. These happen to cross the bar line, as the motif also
does, resulting in a mixture of bar line deference and bar line superiority. I like to imagine
the Bachian texture inducing articulatory clarity.
(2) Slurring in various lengths, drawing a distinction between energised smaller groups and
the legato ends of phrases. Continuous legato implied by the within-the-bar slurs at bars
22ff and bars 38ff in the pedal.
(3) Fugal slurring, i.e. extensive and metrically centered. These are either ‘idea’ slurs or
slurs demanding an accent/diminuendo response rather than separation.
Sonata III
(1) The opening presents the ‘special case’ of slurred pairs. How strongly did Mendelssohn
wish the effect of pairs to come over in performance? He does not notate paired slurs with
dots, which would be his own stated preference for distinct, separated pairs. Nevertheless,
he may intend separation, as described by Brahms. Subtle articulation combined with
other means of shaping, such as agogic leaning, are appropriate here. Bars 5–7 present
alternative slurring patterns to the opening motif—intentional variety? At bars 8–9 there
is what I believe to be a meaningless import of graphical necessity from the manuscript
Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
63
(presuming there is a stemma going from Deneke to the published edition, or they share
a common source). In Deneke there is much staff clutter above the notes marked for
the second manual at the end of bar 8 and the start of 9. The slur therefore has to begin
under the notes. From the D natural in the middle of bar 9, there is enough space so the
slur reverts to ‘normal’ practice, being placed above the notes. This graphical anomaly is
carried through to the printed edition, for no articulatory reason. Fugue: again, ‘fugal’ slurring appears at bars 26–8, seeming to demand metrical clarity. I prefer to aim for ‘fineness’
rather than ‘correctness’ with a subtle articulation at the bottom of the motif, not the top.
(2) This movement presents slurring conundrums, arising partly from the metrical
unorthodoxy of the melody. Short, motivic slurs, cut by the bar line in the early version
(Berlin-Krakow), devolve to larger spans in the published versions (e.g., upbeat to bar
1, bars 2–3). On the other hand some longer spans in Berlin-Krakow become cut in the
published versions (e.g., bars 9–10, 11–12). The unusual metrical pattern (I–V as upbeatdownbeat) seems to have caused some differing thinking (differences between English and
German first editions, too). The tempo also changed from ‘Andante con moto’ in early
version to ‘Andante tranquillo’ in published versions, which might explain the shorter
slurring spans in the former, more aligned with a sense of metrical propulsion.
Sonata IV
(1) Very little slurring in evidence, perhaps not surprising given the texture built of
figuration rather than melody.
(2) Slurs mostly align with a modern sense of ‘phrasing’, following the contours of this
‘sacred song’. Several examples of Mendelssohn’s customary break of slur with a repeated
note (e.g., bar 6). Does this show a ‘didactic’ imperative for clarity, in this case legislating
against legato which might lead to non-repetition of the G?
(3) As discussed earlier, some conflicted slurring in this movement, crossing natural phrasebreaks (e.g., middle of bar 7) but also causing metrical clarity in mid phrase (e.g., bars
11–13). ‘Fine’ performances can successfully blend both elements and rise above the
‘correct’.
(4) A curious mixture here of lengthy phrase slurs (e.g., opening pedal line) and slurs-bytwo, seeming to indicate articulatory detail. The upbeat start recalls a Gavotte, and perhaps
this underlying dance topic has a connection with the slurring. One can experiment with
different levels of articulation between melodic top part and lower two parts of the right
hand. Could the melody be legato while the inner parts enliven?
Sonata V
One of the least controversial in terms of slurring practice. The church genre of Chorale, as
expected, inspires no articulation markings. The Andante con moto and Allegro maestoso
show slurs with small deferences to the bar line, but which are generally logical within the
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phrase-structure. LH slurs in bars 30ff of the Allegro indicate general legato.
Sonata VI
(1) As usual, the chorale inspires no articulation markings whatsoever. Andante sostenuto:
as discussed earlier, the chorale theme initially carried a phrasal slur (Berlin-Krakow), but
Mendelssohn appears to have retrenched in favour of bar line deferential slurs. If the bar
line is to be recognised in performance at all, it ought to be through accent or extremely
subtle articulation. Note that he indicates ‘sempre legato’ at bar 29, which should severely
dampen any subsequent articulations. Allegro molto: slurs as over-legato indicators, at bars
99, 100, etc.28
(2) Fuga: legato is the defining aesthetic, though earlier versions do mark in rudimentary
slurring patterns. I imagine the style should not be radically different from the C major
fugue, despite the lack of notated slurs.
(3) Much discussion has been generated by this movement, with its seeming dislocation of
phrases and slur patterns. Like the conflicted notation in the Allegretto of Sonata IV, there
is both generalised legato slurring in the first six bars (which should nevertheless have
shape) and metrical slurring in bars 7–8 (which should nevertheless be enacted within a
legato context).
Notes
1. See Jon Laukvik, Historical Performance Practice in Organ Playing, Vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Carus, 2010); Johannes Geffert, ‘Mendelssohn’s playing: playing Mendelssohn’, Journal of the Royal College of Organists 3 (2009), 59–70; William Little, Mendelssohn and the Organ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Peter Ward Jones, ‘Mendelssohn and the Organ’, in Mendelssohn in Performance, ed. Reichwald (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), 41–58.
2. What can we know of the musical artefact, and what form, content and reliability does this knowledge have? Work remains to be done on the specific area of the epistemology of
articulation marks.
3. Plenty of commentators assume that legato is a principle for the nineteenth century, which tends to normalise what must nevertheless have been a choice for performers.
4. Clive Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
5. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 2/2001). Article written by Geoffrey Chew.
6. For discussion of the degrees of separation recommended at the end of a slur, see B. L. Suderman, The problem of the keyboard slur in the works of W. A. Mozart: a study based on contemporary treatises, doctoral thesis, University of British Columbia, 1999. Available at: <https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/2429/10917/1/ubc_2000-487245.pdf>.
7. Riemann lays out his theories in Musikalische Dynamik und Agogik: Lehrbuch der musikalischen Phrasierung auf Grund einer Revision der Lehre von der musikalischen Metrik und Rhythmik (Hamburg, 1884).
8. Orlando Mansfield, ‘W. T. Best: his life, character, and works’, Musical Quarterly 4/2 (April Keyboard slurring practice in the early nineteenth century:
the conflicted case of Mendelssohn again
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
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1918), 209–49. Best’s edition is based, with very little alteration, on the first German edition of 1845. He respects the transitional slurring in an editorial non-interventionism quite characteristic of our own time.
Preface to Lieder ohne Worte, ed. Klindworth (London: Novello, 1898).
From the preface to Mendelssohn, Lieder ohne Worte, ed. Ravel (Paris, 1915). Quoted in Arbie Orenstein, A Ravel Reader: Correspondence, Articles, Interviews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 515–6.
From the preface to Beethoven, Sonatas for Pianoforte, ed. Tovey (London, 1931).
For example, Liszt’s pupil Lina Ramann, discussed in Laukvik, op. cit., 236. Or Brahms’s pupil Eugenie Schumann, ibid.
Carl Czerny, Vollständige theoretisch-practische Pianoforte-Schule, op. 500 (Wien/Wolfenbüttel, 1839), quoted in Ludger Lohmann, ‘Robert Schumann’s organ (?) music: hints on its performance’, Journal of the Royal College of Organists 4 (2010), 5–22, 8.
See Brown, op. cit., 233.
From the preface to Jean Sébastien Bach: Oeuvres complètes pour orgue, ed. Widor (New York, 1914). See also John R. Near, ‘Problems of interpretation and edition in the organ symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor’, Proceedings of the Göteborg International Organ Academy 1994, ed. Jullander and Davidsson (Göteborg: Göteborg University, 1995), 453–68.
Letter from Mendelssohn to George Macfarren, dated October 1845. Quoted in N. Temperley, ‘Berlioz and the slur’, Music and Letters 50/3 (July 1969), 388–92. See K. Mendelssohn, Goethe and Mendelssohn (1821–1831), trans. Glehn (London: Macmillan and Co., 2/1874), 177, for the complete exchange of letters on Israel in Egypt.
See Sandra Rosenblum, Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991). Czerny also stipulates a dot under the final note of a slur if it is to be separated from the notes under an adjacent slur.
See the second movement of Sonata III and the finale of Sonata VI for further examples of this evolving notational process.
See Brown, op. cit., 238.
Quoted in Kenneth Hamilton, ‘Mendelssohn and the piano’, Mendelssohn in Performance, ed. Reichwalt (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), 19–40, 20. Von Bülow had studied the piano briefly with Mendelssohn.
Liszt, Symphonic Poems, Complete Edition (c.1856). See Brown, op. cit., 27, for further discussion.
See Hamilton, op. cit., 21, for further discussion of Liszt rubbishing the ‘fashionable fragmenting of all themes’, which he associated with Mendelssohn’s teacher Moscheles and the ‘great’ conservatories of Leipzig, Frankfurt, Cologne or Berlin.
The critic was Ferdinand Hiller. See Hamilton, ibid., 30–1.
See A. E. Smoot, ‘Brahms’s organ music: a re-examination of its performance’, Royal College of Organists Yearbook 2004–5, 59–65, for further discussion of the ‘idea’ slur.
For instance in the Allegro maestoso of Sonata V, bar 30, LH.
Brown, op. cit., 152–3. Spohr writes in 1832. Hummel also described the division as between the ‘correct’ and the ‘beautiful’ in 1828.
The author has used the Bärenreiter edition (ed. Albrecht, 1994, BA 8197) whilst compiling these notes.
See Laukvik, op. cit., 68, for further discussion.