{"id":6539,"date":"2021-09-25T19:06:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-25T09:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/?p=6539"},"modified":"2021-09-25T19:55:20","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T09:55:20","slug":"debussy-on-pedalling-in-chopin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/?p=6539","title":{"rendered":"Debussy on pedalling in Chopin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Despite my respect for Saint-Sa\u00ebns&#8217; age, what he says about Chopin&#8217;s pedalling isn&#8217;t entirely true.  I have very clear memories of what Mme Maut\u00e9 de Fleurville told me. He (Chopin) recommended practising without pedal and, in performance, not holding it on except in very rare instances. It was the same way of turning the pedal into a kind of <em>breathing<\/em> which I observed in Liszt when I had the chance to hear him in Rome. I feel Saint-Sa\u00ebns forgets that pianists are poor musicians, for the most part, and cut music up into unequal lumps, like a chicken. The plain truth perhaps is that abusing the pedal is only a means of covering up a lack of technique, and that making a lot of noise is a way to drown the music you&#8217;re slaughtering! In theory we should be able to find a graphic means of representing this &#8216;breathing&#8217; pedal\u2026it wouldn&#8217;t be impossible. Come to think of it, isn&#8217;t there a work on the subject by Mme Marie Ja\u00ebll, who was severe in the matter of piano technique?<br><br>\u2014 Debussy, in a letter to Durand, 1.9.1915.<\/p><cite><br>F. Lesure &amp; N. Nichols (ed.), <em>Debussy Letters<\/em>, London, Faber, 1987, p. 301.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite my respect for Saint-Sa\u00ebns&#8217; age, what he says about Chopin&#8217;s pedalling isn&#8217;t entirely true. I have very clear memories of what Mme Maut\u00e9 de Fleurville told me. He (Chopin) recommended practising without pedal and, in performance, not holding it on except in very rare instances. It was the same way of turning the pedal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"templates\/template-full-width.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[626,1463],"class_list":["post-6539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-performance-practice","tag-debussy","tag-pedalling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6539"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6546,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539\/revisions\/6546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}