The Italian expression "suonare con anima" is defined in the Dizionario Treccani (which is a bit like quoting the Oxford Dictionary for an English word) as "suonare con calore e sentimento" - "to play with warmth and feeling". ("Anima", in its religious sense, means "soul"). When the Italians want something played with spirit, they say "con spirito". However, while Italian was traditionally used as the universal language for musical terminology, there is sometimes a lingering doubt, when the composer is not an Italian native speaker, that he may think that what he is writing means something else. In the case of op.24/4, the music does seem to want to move ahead, especially compared with the preceding "sotto voce" section. The "con anima" section can sag if the forte phrases are not played with a certain impulsiveness.
I may come back later on some of your other points.
A little while ago I had occasion to play Chopin's Mazurka Op.24 no.4 to a professional pianist who questioned my decision to press the tempo forward at the marking "Con anima" that appears halfway through the piece. Being aware that this is often translated into English as "With soul" (implying , I suppose, a more expressive "Soulful" approach to a passage I pointed out that the phrase might also be translated as "With spirit" and that I had arrived at my interpretation of the passage based on how I had felt about the character and balance of the whole piece. What Chopin meant by the marking is anybody's guess and indeed I feel there are many equivocal terms used in music which must be interpreted in their context and according to how the composer uses them. (The term "Mazurka" itself like the word "Dog" includes creatures of various shapes, sizes and temperaments and woe betide any performer who tries to apply a "One size fits all" interpretation to Chopin's essays in the form).
Perhaps the study of metronome marks where the composer supplied them (not , by the way, implying a rigid "Metronomic" performance) ought to be used as a clue as to the composer's intentions as regards pace. The problem with this is that many people will look at such indications and - because they don't like what they find - refuse to accept them and aver that the composer must have made a mistake or that his metronome was faulty. The last excuse has , for long, been used in connection with Schumann's metronome markings but it has never been explained (to my knowledge, at least) how this could be so - unless the calibrations on the instrument were completely wrong and went unnoticed, which is an unlikely explanation when two accomplished composers were living in the same house as husband and wife and various others like Brahms were frequently visiting it.
It's known that Beethoven (along with a few others like Reger for instance) changed his mind about the value of the metronome for indicating the correct speed of his music but, nevertheless, a study of them can be instructive. The Marcia Funebre from the Eroica symphony is marked Adagio assai ; "Assai" is usually translated as "very" but there are alternative translations of the word such as "Rather" and "Enough" which suggest something rather more mobile than "Very slow" as the movement is often taken. Anyone with a metronome to hand - presumably not a faulty one ! - might be surprised to check the speed indicated for the march (quaver = 80 ) against what they hear in many performances. At this speed the march takes on more of the character of a military procession in keeping with the notion of it being in memory of a great man rather than as an expression of private grief. Also, at this brisker tempo, the demisemiquaver grace notes in the basses take on the character of precise drum rolls rather than the untidy smears sometimes evident in performance. On a personal note I have heard some performances of the march so slow that they have left me a dejected, exhausted wreck long before the procession has reached its weary conclusion.
Erich Leinsdorf ,in his book The Composer's Advocate showed himself to be a strong advocate of considering Beethoven's markings. In another section of the book he tackles the question of Alla Breve (sometimes spoken of as "Cut Common Time" ) and points out that the usual interpretation of "In two" cannot possibly apply in every case as there is a passage in 3/4 time in Bach's St.John passion that carries the marking. At a public question and answer session I asked the pianist Charles Rosen -author of a number of erudite and somewhat abstruse books about classical style and interpretation - about "Alla Breve" and received the standard definition of "In two" from him. When I pointed out the Bach example he looked puzzled and fell silent. Leinsdorf defines Alla Breve as signifying "The next higher unit." I'm not sure that I completely understand this definition but I take it to mean that note-values are to be treated as half their written value. Taking the first movement of Schubert's A minor piano sonata (op.42, D845) as an example of a piece with an Alla Breve time-signature this would make sense; if the piece was notated in notes half the value of how they appear on the page it would give a totally wrong visual impression of the character of the movement. One advantage of shorter note-values is that the various stresses within the larger phrases would appear more evident and deter those pianists who think that the first beat of each bar should be accented regardless of their context within the whole. The Alla Breve should serve as a warning, also, not to take a movement so marked too slowly.
It strikes me that the "In two" definition of Alla Breve has become so generally accepted (even by someone as distinguished as Charles Rosen) that there might have been many composers -probably post-Schubert - who accepted it and intended it to be understood as such when they used it. Each case has to be weighed on its own merits.
There are two possible ways of placing the stresses in the Allegro Molto movement of Beethoven's op.110 Piano Sonata, with the stress on the first beat of each two-bar group or on the third beat , thus giving it the character of a rather fast gavotte, and over which pianists are divided. Even such musical luminaries as Camille Saint-Saens and Vincent D'Indy differed as to where the main stress falls at the opening of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony - at the very first notes in the bass (Saint-Saens) or at the beginning of the next bar (D'Indy).
I know that such issues as these are unlikely to be of the slightest concern to the majority of music lovers and the same could probably be said, alas, of many musical professionals. With the great classics there is enough choice of performances on record, radio and in the concert hall for listeners to hear a variety of them and choose for themselves which they prefer but where a problem arises is when a work which is hardly known to listeners is given in a careless and/or incompetent performance and leaves a very unfavourable impression on audiences which the work doesn't deserve. I know of two cases where the descendants of notable British composers of the early twentieth century were extremely wary about letting the music be performed or recorded by anyone insufficiently accomplished or dedicated to the task. Unfortunately the choice is often to have a work played by the Portsmouth Sinfonia or its equivalent or not at all. Most responsible musicians would choose the latter option.
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