Owain Sutton wrote:
Andrew Stiller wrote:
In any case, where's the first downbeat of Beethoven 5? If it's impossible to determine, then what should be notated?
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This reminds me of a point RE that symphony: it's earliest listeners would have had no idea, upon hearing the opening notes, whether the piece was going to be in major or minor mode--and they probably would have assumed the former. The definitive turning to the dark side a few bars in must have been a deliberate effect on B's part, but it's impossible to hear that today, because we know in advance what's coming.
Spot on, and related to the point I was hinting at with my question - those who've answered that the downbeat 'obviously' comes on the quaver rest can only say so with such conviction because they've seen it in print.
This is my favorite counterexample to assertions that western classical music is fixed in notation; here, the standard performance practice is wildly at odds with the score and, indeed, a literal reading of the opening measures is considered radically unconventional. (That said, Carlos Kleiber's extraordinary recording makes a convincing case for the more literal reading, one in which the initial rest definitely affects the articulation of the three repeated eighths, so that one feels a whole pickup measure instead of three isolated and heavily accented eighths in half tempo as is too often the case!)
Daniel Wolf
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