INTERPRETATIVE TRENDS OF BEETHOVEN’S ORNAMENTATION

Abstract

Outstanding representative of the classical music composed in the transition period from XVIIIth to XIXth centuries, Ludwig van Beethoven remains memorable in the history of music through the strength, audacity, and remarkable rhetoric of his musical discourse. With the mastery of a demiurge, he coalesces in the texture of his thematic ideas’ heroic, pathetic or pastoral configurations, making the most of the technical-expressive possibilities of the epoch’s instruments into a authentic instrumental-interpretative manner. Advocate of a prevailingly monumental interpretation, Beethoven will perfect his instrumental style through authentic details which are the subject of the varied attack modes, of ornamentation, articulation, pedaling, etc., which are the personalized elements of a challenging technique. Approaching the aspect of Beethoven’s ornamentation, the present article will bring into focus the identification of the dominant ornamental components and their treatment from an interpretative viewpoint with emphasis on the authenticity of the artistic representation.