I have spent a year and a half researching the notational enigma of hairpins in late classical and romantic music, and now I am at a bend in the road.
The esteemed Czerny claims that opening and closing hairpins (< and >) mean crescendo and diminuendo (growing and diminishing in volume). Following this, there are innumerable notational redundancies in most classical music. Cresc. abbreviations followed by opening hairpins. Instances such as the m. 165-167 in Schubert's Impromptu in E-flat major D. 899, No.2. Diminuendo hairpin followed by a dimin. abbreviation followed by a decresc. abbreviation.
I am not convinced that < > always means crescendo and diminuendo.
- Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel claims that < and > means accelerando and ritardando (accelerating and retarding in tempo) in her Allegro ma non troppo in F minor, “This piece must be performed with many changes in tempo, but always gently, without jerking. The < > sign stands for accelerando and ritardando.” (Hensel, 51). From Klavierstück, Allegro ma non Troppo in F minor H167 (1826).
- Liszt went even so far as to notate crescendo and diminuendo through thick, thin, and double lines in his Au Bord d'une Source.
- Manuel Garcia Jr., son of the famed opera singer and pedagogue Manuel Garcia claims that < means crescendo and > means diminuendo, but if they are not aligned perfectly they have different agogic meanings. This is from his Ecole de Garcia.
- To Brahms, the hairpins applied to tempo as well as volume. -From Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music.
- A famous musician claimed that hairpins are a case of wheels within wheels. Something so complex and complicated. From Seymour Bernstein's Interpreting Chopin's Notation Symbols. Heidsieck claims that < > are called bellows (soufflet) by French musicians again from Seymour Bernstein's Interpreting Chopin's Notation Symbols.
I am so confounded and confused that I am looking to this forum for answers. Bernstein's Interpreting Chopin's Notation Symbols and Poli's The Secret Life of Notational Symbols are great guides, but what is and what isn't? I agree with Garcia and Brahms; they refer to volume and subtle tempo changes in different contexts.
