Keyboard Technique - Sustaining Pedal in Romantic Period Music

The Romantic aeon can aswell be dubbed the Era of the Comestible Pedal. Almost every section by a Romantic artisan depends at one point or another, and sometimes throughout, on the use of the comestible pedal.
The basal acumen for this change from Classic aeon music was the gradually accretion sonority of the piano itself. With abundantly accomplished accord of the new instruments, close-position chords in the bass, whether torn or unbroken, no best articulate tolerable. Composers accordingly opened out the chords, arena their addendum successively instead of simultaneously, and acclimated the pedal to sustain what could not be continued by a individual hand.
This was absolutely alone a development of an absolute device: Torn chords had continued been acclimated to accommodate both adroit absorption and a comestible aftereffect in keyboard music. What was new was the epiphany that the pedal now acceptable spacings which were not alone above the ability of a individual hand, but aswell acutely ill-fitted to the cursory tones of the piano. New and admirable keyboard textures evolved, whose immense potentialities were developed continuously up to the time of Debussy and beyond.
Two basal types of chords acquired to accompany pedaling. In the first, the ambit is advance out in individual notes. In the second, the ambit is disconnected into abate chords, or a aggregate of abate chords and individual notes. Pianists should be on the anchor for such architecture, and their combinations, because while they depend absolutely on the appropriate duke pedal for their effect, they are not consistently apparent by the artisan in the score. When there are no marks, the best way to actuate the pedaling is to abate the open-textured chords to their bankrupt position. The pedaling will again usually accompany with the changes in harmony. Additionally, harmonic factors should be taken into application so as not to actualize an over-thick complete and lose the accurate bass.
Another acumen for modifying the harmonic pedaling is the complication of the appropriate duke part. The bottom comestible ability of the acute as compared with the bass will about yield affliction of this. But at times the complete accept to be attenuated out by agency of a affectionate of half-pedaling that leaves the added beating bass addendum still affair audible, and in acute cases the bass should be alone altogether and larboard to the listener's ear so the music is not muddied.
One archetype is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, area the absolute aboriginal movement is played senzi sordini (without dampers); i.e. with the appropriate duke pedal captivated down banausic from alpha to end. On the avant-garde piano, the after-effects are hopelessly muddied. But with a third pedal, we can almost the furnishings Beethoven advised adequately carefully by black the everyman addendum in the section with the average pedal kept down by the larboard bottom throughout the movement. The appropriate duke pedal is acclimated in a accustomed manner, and afflicted as accord dictates. This allows the undampened everyman strings to act as affectionate resonators, so that they beat continuously and aftermath a aside but apparent brume of complete from alpha to end, through which the singing of the appropriate duke can sound, as Beethoven himself reported, "like a articulation from a vault." (Read added about piano history and the change of pianos.)
Various pedaling techniques can cover these:
Depress the pedal anon afterwards a agenda has been struck, and appear accompanying with the advance on a note, with the aftereffect that the additional agenda is abutting to the aboriginal in a absolute legato, and afterwards the aboriginal trace of down or butt in complete from one to the other.
An beforehand method, now acclimated beneath often, is accepted as rhythmic-pedaling. The pedal is depressed accompanying with the attack, and appear just afore a agenda is struck. The legato may be hardly beneath perfect, but the addendum accept a array of bang due to the affectionate beating of the added undampened strings. This can be acutely admirable in a apathetic cantabile.
A third blazon of pedaling can alone be acclimated afterwards a silence. In it, the pedal is depressed afore the agenda is struck, with after-effects actual agnate to those accomplished by rhythmic-pedaling.
Composers sometimes use staccato marks in aggregate with pedal signs. At aboriginal this may assume to be a bucking in terms. What is meant is not that the pianist should advance an absurd abridgement of the notes, but that they should be played with the aforementioned blow and advance as acclimated for a staccato. This produces a hardly altered accent from arena the aforementioned addendum legato and with pedal.
Pedal marks in Romantic music should be interpreted with acumen rather than followed blindly. The pianist should try to all-powerful what aftereffect the artisan was aiming at and actualize that affect as carefully as accessible with the avant-garde piano.