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Casals and the Art of Interpretation PDF

252 Pages·1980·33.19 MB·English
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CASALS and the Art of Interpretation DA/ID BLUM CASALS and the Art of Interpretation Pablo Casals, the greatest cellist the world has ever known, thought of himself not primarily as a cellist but as a musician. During the last twenty-eight years of his life, when he seldom performed as a soloist, Casals devoted himself mainly to conducting and teaching, conveying to a younger generation his essential principles of music- making. It was during this period that there developed between the author and Casals a friendship that was to last nearly two decades. And now, in this book, David Blum provides the first comprehensive study of Casals’ approach to interpretation. As Antony Hopkins points out in his Foreword, David Blum was ideally placed to hand down Casals’ musical legacy: ‘He had his notebook to hand but he never forced himself upon Casals as a chronicler. . . . He simply wanted to treasure for his own use everything that he could gather of Casals’ experience and wisdom. Only an intellectual miser would want to keep such riches to himself; it is our good fortune that this quiet observer has chosen to share this wealth with us so that we too may come under the spell of Pablo Casals and know him as a musician and teacher supreme.’ The book opens with a chapter on the essence of Casals’ musicianship, ‘The First Principle’. The subsequent three chapters are devoted in turn to Casals’ fundamental concepts of phrasing, the means by which he achieved clarity of musical articulation, and his approach to time relationships - rhythm, tempo, rubato. Chapter V, ‘Insights for String Players’, contains an account of the main points of Casals’ teaching in regard to bowing, fingering, vibrato and ‘expressive intonation’. Chapter VI is devoted to Casals’ interpretation of Bach, and in Chapter VII there is a fascinating and illuminating bar-by-bar account of Casals rehearsing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. A short epilogue describing a personal encounter concludes the book. The author has provided over 350 musical examples to illustrate the text. Everyone interested in music and its interpretation will find this a profoundly absorbing study. ISBN 0 8419 0307 7 3 9047 02644409 780.92 CASALS BLUM, DAVID CASALS AND THE 78 Ofi 7 7 ART OF INTERPRETATION. v MAR 6 1993 ^ yim c U 199 San Mateo Public Library San Mateo, CA 94402 “Questions Answered” ■ ... ■ Casals and the Art of Interpretation I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/casalsartofintOOblum CASALS AND THE ART OF INTERPRETATION DAVID BLUM HOLMES & MEIER PUBLISHERS NEW YORK First published in the United States of America 1977 by Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. 101 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10003 © David Blum 1977 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Blum, David. Casals and the art of interpretation. Includes index. 1. Casals, Pablo, 1876—1973. 2. Music— Performance. I. Title. ML418.C4B6 78O'.92'4 77-1444 ISBN 0-8419-0307-7 The author and publisher are grateful to Novello & Company Ltd for permission to reprint musical examples from the Elgar Cello Concerto, and to E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. and Hutchinson & Co. Ltd for permission to quote extracts from Conversations with Casals by Jose Maria Corredor. Copyright © 1956 by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 78 06277 CONTENTS Foreword vii Preface xi I The First Principle i II Finding the Design 15 III Diction for Instrumentalists 50 IV Perceiving Time Relationships 69 V Insights for String Players 101 VI Casals and Bach 138 VII A Casals Rehearsal: The Pastoral Symphony 164 Epilogue 208 Principal References 212 Index to Musical Works 215 General Index 219 ILLUSTRATIONS The musical examples have been drawn by Malcolm Lipkin. I will say only elemental things, nothing com- plicated — as everything ought to be, beginning with life. But you must know that the simplest things are the ones that count. Pablo Casals

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