Thursday, January 30, 2014

Carl Czerny's Preludes

Figures below are taken from the English edition of Czerny's The Art of Preluding, op. 300. Please note that the cadences shown on the first page (p. 2 of the original volume) are not examples of chord spelling from a harmony textbook -- Czerny calls them the "shortest Preludes." It was assumed that a pianist would improvise a passage before playing a complete composition, such as a sonata or rondo -- a practice that only gradually faded away after the mid-nineteenth century. (One of the longest hold-outs was Clara Schumann, generally one of the most conservative concert pianists of the era.)

The "shortest Preludes" all use a ^7-^8 figure in the uppermost voice. Notice also that Czerny doesn't bother to express the other half of the old clausula vera formula (^2-^1) in an inner part.

In the "rather longer Preludes" (the second page, or p. 3 of the original), only the two on the fourth system unequivocally expand the cadence stereotype that Kofi Agawu cites as universal, with ^3-^2-^1 above: see my post on the topic.

The English edition of Czerny's op. 300 may be found on IMSLP: here.