After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (review)

In After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance, Kenneth Hamilton challenges the monopoly of modern performance practice on romantic repertory. Focusing on the so-called "golden age" of pianism, ca.1840–ca.1940, Hamilton's healthy mixture of common sense, insightful arguments, and considerable experience as both scholar and pianist demonstrate just how far our current notions of performance etiquette, textual fidelity, and audience responsibility can be from those of practitioners a century or more removed. But Hamilton's main goal is not to enable some abstract musicological recovery of a lost nineteenth-century performance practice. Rather, he emphasizes that "rediscovering practices of the past does not just satisfy curiosity, it offers opportunities" to the modern performer (p. 32).

Chapter 1 frames the book by identifying the multivalent vocabulary associated with the period. Whether by his technique, his compositions, or through sheer accumulation of students, Liszt has come to be viewed as the inaugurator of the golden age. Indeed, many pianists even today introduce themselves as "a student of a student of a student of Liszt," the implication being that Liszt—his teaching, his artistry, even perhaps his spirit—remains alive and well. Hamilton questions the validity of such phrases on several grounds: Is it really possible to speak of an uninterrupted and uncorrupted performance aesthetic that can be traced back to Liszt? What of the myriad number of national styles or schools of pianism? How do other seminal pianist-composers like Chopin or Mendelssohn fit into the picture? And even if these questions can be answered honestly, should such a tradition be reverentially maintained? Many pianists continue to insist upon a "golden-age attitude" (p. 14) that waxes nostalgic about by-gone days, but Hamilton maintains that they, "in fact, are the odd ones out" (p. 30).

The romantic and modern attitudes are especially at odds in regards to the solo recital, the focus of chapter 2. While a rather regimented diet of compositions from Bach's period through ours—almost always ordered chronologically—is the norm today, Hamilton demonstrates that concerts during the golden age assumed a number of stylistic profiles. His accounts of recitals remind us that the performer was both seen and heard, that is, as much a visual phenomenon as an aural communicant. While Liszt again is often credited with its invention, the modern solo recital (or at least something resembling it) did not become established until about the 1880s—earlier in the century, "variety" shows were the norm. Perhaps most importantly, the content of a performance was site-specific. In the late 1830s Liszt was reluctant, for example, to perform Robert Schumann's Carnaval at a public concert. This decision was not necessarily an aesthetic one: ticket-paying audiences expected to hear Liszt perform original fantasies or arrangements. Moreover, Liszt often had to share the stage with other artists. In general, opportunities to mount a large work like Carnaval at a public concert in the 1830s and 1840s were scarce. (Clara Wieck's programs were quite unusual for the time.) The private soirée or the invitation-only salon would have been (and was) the preferred venue for such an undertaking. Even Beethoven's late works were usually performed by Liszt behind closed doors. The irony of this situation, writes Hamilton, "was that much of the 'serious' music in the standard repertoire itself was written for more intimate performance circumstances and had certainly not been composed in an era when multi-movement works were played complete and uninterrupted before a rapt audience in a large hall" (pp. 61–62).

The performance pendulum swung to the other extreme in the second half of the century, when pianists like Tausig and Anton Rubinstein programmed hours of music for one sitting, what Hamilton wryly calls "the value-for-money event" (p. 65). Such concerts were not only notable for the staggering number of...