(NOTE: I will refer to the manuscript by the abbreviation MS, and the Segovia Schott Edition as AS)
Recently, I've been working on Manuel M. Ponce's Sonate romantique (Homage a Franz Schubert), and have become interested in the significance of Ponce's precisely-notated note durations generally, and in the second slow movement in particular.
To demonstrate what I mean, take a look at this passage, the opening few lines of the 2nd movement, (MS):
Here are some (not all) curious points that have arisen in my practice of this passage, listed measure by measure:
(LINE 1)
m. 1 do you stop the bass note (notated as a half-note) precisely at the third beat, or do you let it ring?
do you stop the treble E precisely at the fourth beat?
m. 3 in the inner voice, do you stop the C# and A to realise the rests?
m. 4 do you effectively play the half note rest in the top and bass voices after the outer Es have sounded for their half-note duration
(LINE 2)
mm. 5-6 Notice how the bass notes are notated as half notes in m. 5, but only as eighth notes in m .6 (likewise between mm. 7 and 8). Is there a musical purpose to this?
mm. 9 - 12 Notice how the accompaniment is notated in short notes almost exclusively until m. 11 where the G# bass notes become half-notes. Is there a musical purpose to this detail?
Why do these and similar questions come up? Because, in my experience of listening to guitarists (and indeed reflecting on my own development), I've found that we are often a pretty casual bunch when it comes to aspects of notational detail like this. Durations of notes among us, far as I can tell, is determined by a mixture of intiuition (basically a general sense of clarity in the texture) and technical dictates (you hold the note till it "stops itself" due to a LH lift, or RH playing another note on the same string). Often we (including most of my own playing to-date) do not even attempt to go to the trouble playing the notes legato for the correct duration, without un-notated ringing over. In any case, with the present example, if I had not noticed that in the MS there are those notated differences between bass note durations in mm. 5 and 6, I might not have come to delve into this topic further.
However, having noticed the difference, I have come to conclude that there in all likelihood a significance in how Ponce has notated durations, and that these durations are worth examining seriously, even if it means a more challenging level of technical engagement.
For example, look at the effect of sustained bass notes and thus a more arpegiated sound (in MS) in m. 5 and how well it contrasts well with a leaner, more horizontal rising figure in the accompaninent of m. 6, here "ungrounded" by a lack of sustaining bass note. Likewise, the lack of sustaining bass notes in mm. 9 and 10 gives more prominence to the melody and makes the held root of the dominant chord G# in m. 11 more weighty.
After spending time and coming to some conclusions while working with the MS, I decided, with some trepidation, to open the old Segovia edition and have a look how he dealt (or not) with these issues.
Here are some observations on how this passage differs from the MS (I'm not going to get into dynamic markings here)
mm. 1 and 2 - the E melody note is held to the end of the bar (no rest on the 4th beat)
m.3 - the bass note "B" on the third beat is now only a quarter (crotchet) duration - presumably to facilitate technical execution.
mm. 5 and 7 - the lower line is notated in all eighth-notes (no sustained basses in mm. 5 and 7, and thus no contrast in presentation "m. 5 sustained --- m. 6 not sustained" etc. . . )
m. 12 - The C# in the melody is, in the AS a half note, where in the MS it's a dotted half-note.
So in other words, for mm 5-10, what Segovia's edition (AS) has is actually harder that the MS, because if one were to read it literally, one would be stopping the notes.
But then I thought, did Segovia actually read it literally? And has anyone read them literally since?
I thought I'd have a listen to a few recordings, starting with Segovia himself. I should say right now that I did not approach this listening from a personally critical point of view, but rather to get a representative gauge how details like this are dealt with in the guitar community. In other words, to ascertain the "state of current performance practice" when it comes to this detail.
Here are the recordings I listened to. All of them are CD recordings except Eduardo Fernandez, whose performance of the Sonata live in Tokyo was accessed via youtube at this link.
Andres Segovia
Norbert Kraft
Marcin Dylla
Jason Vieaux
Eduardo Fernandez
Gerardo Arriaga
Ana Vidovic
All of the recordings have strong artistic merit (and some are stunningly beautiful!), but the approach to note durations is rather casual.
As a baseline, most if not all the players maintained a tidiness and awareness of sonority, and within this context controlled some note durations, and usually performed with a clear dynamic layering between melody and accompaniment.
In the more controlled instances, you could infer a level of conscious and controlled individual piano pedaling-like approach (Norbert Kraft and Eduardo Fernandez's playing in particular made me think this, as did Marcin Dylla's handling of a few of the measures in question), but no-one shows any consistent attempt to reproduce the notes at their notated duration. The closest that anyone gets is . . . not the modern and presumably more detail-oriented players, but . . . . Segovia! . . . Although his approach is not consistent, he is the only one who displays a discernible attempt, in places, to actually play the accompanying notes short. . .
Again I want to reiterate that this is not a value-laden observation, but rather just my attempt to gauge how people approach this aspect of musical notation. Also, I should note that because the Segovia edition (AS), which is what everyone except Dylla appears to have followed for their recordings, does not show the variation between bass note durations in passages like mm. 5-6, it is less likely to have arisen as a point of consequence. I imagine at least some of the players, were they working from the MS, would have noted and absorbed the differing use of bass note durations.
What are my own personal conclusions regarding this, and what have I learnt from comparing editions and recordings?
1. (AGAIN) That the Segovia editions and the manuscripts are really substantively different.
2. That a laissez-faire "l.v." (let vibrate) approach to note-durations might sometimes be appropriate in certain circumstances, and as an attribute of our instrument it is at once something to embrace where possible, but also something we have to be able to control.
3. That the "l.v" approach should not become a hindrance to a controlled execution of detailed note durations where these might plausibly hold interpretive implications, such as in the passage between mm. 5 and 12, where the alternation between different note durations (employed consistently by Ponce in this movement) in different measures is significant in outlining different musical material - the more arpegio like sonority in the measures where the bass notes are held, and a more linear, directed musical discourse in the measures where the accompaniment is all in short note values.
In the end, having conducted this little exercise, I'm going to maintain my own adventure by playing the musical text as though I had answered "yes" to each of the of questions at the beginning of this blog post.
Needless to say, however, that the way one deals with each of those questions and issues fits into a spectrum of priorities, the significance of which is the performer's business to determine. For instance, it makes little difference if in mm. 1 and 2, I stop the melodic E for the 4th beat rest (see MS), because the note has largely decayed by that point. In contrast, the handling of the duration of bass notes in mm. 9-11 is can have a dramatic effect on how the passage functions when it is played . . .
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