Quoting Barry
they had to 'write' music which professional musicians could play either
almost or completely at sight, and all the directions had to be on the
page. The larger the group of musicians, the more more meticulous the
directions had to be.
To my way of thinking, in the classical mode (as I have described it) the
technical terms are prescriptive and the Composer to the Elector of
Wotsitburg can say to his orchestra, "When I say this bit is staccato I
mean "Proper Poppa dopadumds".
A good post, Barry, and basically you are right about later classical
music - 19th century and later, when the composer had become the "Great
Artist" and large professional orchestras have to play it right - and
especially when economics mean minimal rehearsal time. But just to be
pedantic, you are not quite right about the Elector of Wotsitburg era. Then,
directions on the page were usually minimal - sometimes just the bare notes
and slurs if you were lucky (at least just where they were really wanted),
'stacato' dots sometimes, and very ocasionally a direction like "forte". A
very few composers were very exact e.g. with ornaments, and provided a page
showing what their various signs meant. Most of the time musicians were
playing new music, and if professionals they often had the composer
directing them (so you are right about the "Proper Poppa dopadums" bit).
Othersise, think more like Jazz - there were established conventions which
included e.g. very variable ways of playing notated 'staccato', degrees of
rhythmic flexibility etc. depending on context, dance types, national
styles, and mood of the music. Apart from that, musicians had much more
freedom to interpret and improvise. Soloists were very much expected to
decorate the music, though of course orchestras did have to do it all the
same, so among other factors it's the growth of bigger orchestras which led
to more exact written directions.
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