Beethoven cello sonatas dissertation

When famed cellist Steven Isserlis came to end of his project to perform all five Beethoven sonatas in sequence, he found that the final movement of the final sonata expresses a conquest over struggles that would have destroyed a lesser being.

Years ago cellist Steven Isserlis set out on a quest, a quest to discover how performing all five Beethoven sonatas in sequence would work. He first asked himself what Beethoven would have heard as he composed them. How would it sound? How would it feel to be accompanied by a fortepiano? Mr. Isserlis began to work with classical pianist (and fortepianist) Robert Levin in Boston to produce the most accurate musical balance. And balance is crucial, he points out, because a modern grand piano does not have the same nuance of the fortepiano.

Mr. Isserlis also discovered the exact work of Beethoven scholar Jonathan Del Mar. For the past twenty years as a music editor, Mr. Del Mar had examined and compared Beethoven’s first printed scores, printed proof scores with handwritten notations, copyist scores for mistakes and corrections, later printed copies, anything the composer would have had control over. The tiniest marks in a copy could be misinterpreted as a staccato mark or accent.

After completing his work with the nine symphonies, Mr. Del Mar uncovered more discrepancies in the original scores of the cello sonatas. Mr. Del Mar’s new urtext differed so much from the previous one of 1971 that there were more than thirty new markings per movement. As if the music were still evolving, Mr. Isserlis studied the meaning of each slur and dot before performing and recording all five.

For Mr. Isserlis, performing Beethoven’s cello sonatas in sequence was a different experience from playing any one sonata separately. Altogether, the sonatas represented Beethoven’s three major creative periods. Thus playing through them was like playing through the

Advanced cello students and their studio teachers have a wide range of literature to study and perform that spans approximately 400 years. Despite this wealth of repertoire, advanced music from the classical era is often understudied or overlooked due to difficulties of the accompanying part, written either for the piano or the orchestra. For example, Beethoven’s cello sonatas tend to be avoided by teachers of advanced young students because of the difficulties in securing a pianist. Additionally, Haydn’s cello concerti demand a great deal of rehearsal time with an experienced pianist in preparing the student to perform with a full ensemble.

The purpose of this study is to provide pedagogical assistance to the cello studio teacher of advanced students. This detailed teaching edition reduces the original accompaniment into a single cello part to be played by the studio teacher during lessons. The transcriptions do not replace the music written for the piano, but functions as a three-part pedagogical bridge: teaching the student the solo; accompanying the student in the cello reduction; and preparing the student to play with the accompaniment as originally conceived. The two compositions presented in this aid are Beethoven’s Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 3 in A major, Op. 69 and Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb.1. This practical study will refer to An Annotated Translation of Evegeny Shenderovich’s Overcoming Technical Difficulties in the Piano Transcriptions of Orchestral Scores by Marcelina Turcanu.

ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: THE SONATAS FOR PIANO AND CELLO BY LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: A RECORDING PROJECT Victor Santiago Asuncion, Doctor of Musical Arts, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Professor Rita Sloan School of Music The Beethoven sonatas for piano and cello occupy a significant portion of the repertoire for both the piano and the 'cello. They are a seminal group of works that serve as a foundation to the development of the piano as a collaborative instrument and the development of the violoncello as a solo instrument. Prior to the composition of these sonatas, the role of the piano was most often a solo instrument or a supportive and supported part in works involving other instruments. The cello's role was relegated to that of the basso continuo and as a soloist in a few sonatas and concerti. Unlike the ten piano and violin sonatas, the sonatas for piano and cello span the three "periods" of Beethoven's life. Like the thirty-two sonatas for piano solo, they exhibit the growth and development of Beethoven as a composer: his grasp of the technical aspects of the instruments for which he was writing; as well as his emotional and psychological maturity as a human being. This dissertation is a performance survey of the complete sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven done through the medium of recording. It features the cellist Tobias Werner and comprises two compact discs recorded on May 10, 11, and 12,2004, at the Washington Conservatory in Bethesda, Maryland, and on December 20 and 2 1, 2004, in the Gildenhorn Recital Hall of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts center in College Park, Maryland. These recordings may be obtained in person or online from the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library of the University of Maryland, College Park. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: A RECORDING SURVEY OF THE FIVE SONATAS FOR PIANO AND VIOLONCELLO BY Victor Santiago Asuncion Dissertation