Abstract

In the early nineteenth century, the piano e´tude was conceived as an outgrowth of the eighteenth-century exercice, perpetuating the idea of mechanical virtuosity devoid of any poetic meaning; but it was also shaped by the Romantic pie`ce de caracte`re. Drawing upon the context of Parisian musical life in the 1830s (notably the reception of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony), this article discusses Charles-Valentin Alkan’s piano e´tudes Souvenirs: Trois morceaux dans le genre pathe´tique, op. 15 (Paris, 1837). This work shows how virtuoso idiomatic figures can act as genre markers, thereby allowing the encoding of a specific extramusical meaning. It further addresses the issue of the privileged understanding between the composer and his performer that goes back to eighteenth-century tradition.

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