Sostenuto

[Israel Stein]

At 11:00 AM 7/22/2007, Paul Revenko-Jones wrote:
>Israel:
>
>You're not interested in the question. I am. Thanks for the input.
>
>Paul

Au contraire, Paul. I have been interested in the question for over 
twenty years now. It seems that nobody I approached has any light to 
shed on it. So I'll continue with some more hypotheses for you to 
check out - if you can.

While - as some have written - the sostenuto is a convenience for 
some pianists who use it quite frequently, it does not open any great 
vistas for composers to explore. This is due to the inherent property 
of the piano as a percussive instrument - it simply is not capable of 
sustaining a note or a chord for any significant length of time, 
regardless of any mechanical contraption that makes "look ma no 
hands" sustaining possible. The sound decays pretty rapidly 
regardless, and so the musical effects achievable with the sostenuto 
are quite limited and not even innovative - playing moving lines 
while sustaining a note or a chord is hardly revolutionary, 
musically. And composers have for a couple of centuries before the 
sostenuto was invented employed four-hand composition and composition 
for multiple keyboards for thicker-textured pieces - which the 
sostenuto can't even approach, since it does nothing to enable the 
playing of an additional moving line (as, for example, the organ pedalboard).

In pianistic writing a long trill is typically used in place of a 
long-sustained note where such an effect is called for - the trill 
does not decay and can be blended into a long melodic line at any 
dynamic level - unlike a held note whose rapid decay makes only a 
piano or pianissimo continuation possible... For a good example of 
this compositional technique, check out Beethoven's transcription of 
his own violin concerto for the piano. Even on the modern piano - 
with much more sustain capability than Beethoven's instrument - 
trying to substitute held notes for the sustained trills will yield 
pretty anemic results.

The sostenuto pedal is not capable of delivering a true pedal point, 
or fitting a note into a moving line or of too many other musical 
effects. Other than grabbing an occasional extra note or chord, it 
can do little to open great new compositional vistas... It's rather - 
as some have written - pretty much a "convenience device".

Israel Stein