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Re: Poco Forte marking in Brahms

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2014-07-25 00:56

Arnoldstang wrote:

> I opened this topic up without doing much homework myself. I
> have just looked at a score of his third symphony. Brahms
> does use sotto voce and mezza voce in this work in conjunction
> with dynamic markings. In the case of the Piano Quartet in A
> major he chose Poco Forte not mezza voce with Forte. He must
> have intended something else other than mf or F mezza voce.
>

If Brahms had something specific in mind and didn't provide the explanation to anyone in a position to pass it on to posterity, we have no way to know what it was. I won't say these are distinctions without a difference, but I suspect the differences are often overwhelmed by performance conditions that tend not to respect either a composer's or a performer's idealized conception of a piece.

How are andante and moderato different? They translate differently, but how do knowledgeable performers generally treat them? If one were to set a blind test of examples of music marked with each term, do you think they could reliably be identified as one or the other?

Karl

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Poco Forte marking in Brahms new

Arnoldstang

2014-07-23 17:57