Klarinet Archive - Posting 000795.txt from 2001/09

From: "emily worthington" <emily.worthington@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tenuto as force
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 12:54:09 -0400

Jack Kissinger wrote:

>My daughter's
> piano teacher, a very well trained Russian emigre and consummate musician
who
> had been a teacher in her homeland, invariably taught my daughter that
notes
> were marked tenuto to call for a little extra emphasis. The first time
she did
> this, I was surprised and asked her about it. She gave me a fairly
lengthy
> explanation, most of which I have forgotten over the years but, from it, I
> gathered that this was a common interpretation among pianists (who don't
tongue
> and can't "slur"). >

On a basic level, tenuto in piano terms is related to the nature of the
insrument. Not because pianists can't tongue and slur, but because they can
_only_ control the initial attack of each note, the 'tongue' or 'slur',
which once sounded gradually dies away. A pianist can't grow through a note.
The bigger the attack, the longer the note will sound for. Thus to obtain a
tenuto effect a note must be articulated in such a way that it rings out for
longer, but without putting a harsh accent in the beginning of the note.

This is often achieved by a miniscule delay before the note, coupled with a
slow firm attack. Whereas on a wind instrument tenuto can sometimes mean
sustaining the initial level of intensity throughout the note rather than
backing off, on a piano once released the note is out of the pianist's
control. Even if sustained a note will quickly dwindle. So a tenuto mark
must invariably involve a different kind of attack.

More sublte applications of tenuto in this context can be shown by example:

The Rachmaninov Prelude I'm currently learning (op 23 no.4) is based on a
single melody. The second time it occurs this melody is the second of three
voices, with triplet quaver decoration over the top and duplet quaver
apreggio bass. The density of these cross rhythms could easily obscure the
melody, which is largely in a minim-crotchet rhythm. Every note of the
melody is marked by tenuto marks, each line is slurred in single bar phrases
and the whole thing is marked pp. Clearly in this instance the melody has to
be marked out so as not to be swamped, but putting an accent by every note
would be at odds with the cantabile nature of the theme. Tenuto marks are
used to indicate that the melody must _ring_ over the other lines, and to
achieve this each note must be emphasised.

Tenuto can also linked to the function of the note. At the end of this
melody there is a note which, as well as being part of a falling arpeggio
figure, is extended by a tie to become a line of its own, resolving onto an
anticipation of the tonic. Tenuto is used here to indicate that the note
must be sounded so as to _emerge_ from the quaver decoration and be seen as
part of another line.

Hope this isn't too off-topic, what I am trying to say is that in some
instances tenuto can mean nothing _but_ 'force', in a very subtle sense.
Just another shade of grey that dictionaries can't always cover.

Here's a teaser - in a piece for clarinet and piano, if the two instruments
simultaneously articulated notes of equal importance which were marked
tenuto in both parts, how then should they interpret the symbol? (eg playing
in octaves or thirds, the two lines working together homo- or
heterophonically) Does anyone have examples of this?

Em.

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