Seymour’s reaction to Logan being on the call was so sweet

I am an opera singer, and I was taught this interpretation of the hairpins by my vocal coach in Germany. It opened up an entire new realm for interpreting arias for me. I am so glad to see it again! Thank you for this!

I have to ask, how many hairpins were added by well-intentioned, but not well-informed editors, and not by the original composers?

As a musicologist and choral conductor, I have to think of my 16 years old me sitting in rehearsal with the youth choir of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The famous Swedish conductor Dan-Olof Stenlund told us about hairpins not being the same as „crescendo“ or „diminuendo/decrescendo“. It‘s a matter of the „primary product“, as he said: „Crescendo“ means you get louder. The opening hairpin means you increase your „effort“ (he called it „riding the bike uphill“). As a byproduct you also get louder, but not primarily, and also slower („rubato“)! „Diminuendo“ he said is like „stepping on the clutch when you get down the hill“ — I know, now we are in a car all the sudden :D. And with that you move faster again and loose energy, hence volume. In the 14 years and many years of music studies, I found sooo many proofs of this approach in choral music of romantic composers like Brahms, Reger, Schumann or Elgar.

it's 3am. i came here expected to chill so i could sleep, but bro what  now i will not be able to sleep

Seymour!!! What an incredible revelation! Of all the pianists I've heard, he is the most intellectual, yet his playing exudes emotion, without any hint of intellectual or mechanistic influence. Ben, you are so fortunate to learn directly from him, since he is a direct link to the 19th century and its creative era. He's like a link to an ancient language which is in danger of being lost. Carry on, sir.

This hairpin rubato is all over Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, there's even a dim. inside a hairpin. I 100% believe these are rubato makings in Chopin. Other composers not 100% sure yet. Depends on the composer.

I am not a pianist. I am a woodwind player in band and orchestra. In that setting, the conductor gets to decide the interpretation of the symbols on the page, not the individual players. I am just a little jealous of the flexible interpretation of solo piano. Thanks for sharing this.

Hairpins are assignable to whatever you like.

I'm so glad you revisited this exact topic - the first of your videos I ever watched was the first with Seymour, and the hairpins stuff blew my mind too. This was a beautiful video. I was astonished at the end when Seymour suddenly expressed an analogue of a thought that I hadn't heard from anyone else - this idea of what he called the internal macrocosm. Its relation to music is something I had not considered before but the combination is gravid with possibilities! The quote from Kafka is one of my favourites and cuts to the absolute core of what's Seymour was alluding to. Thank you, Ben, Logan and Seymour!

How interesting - hairpins as "enlarging" or "broadening" emotionally rather than literally.

One counter argument you don’t mention is that there are lots of hairpins in the parts of orchestral scores and clearly not meant to be applied to the whole score.

It wouldn’t make much sense to treat those as “agogic” emphasis or rubato. Unless we’re going to theorize that Wagner was into obtuse polytemporality.

I remember when my piano teacher at the conservatory, over 20 years ago, asked me whose version I was listening to while preparing some Chopin’s nocturnes, and I said Rubinstein. She told me that was fine, but not to pay too much attention because he was very free with his rubatos, making them up in excess. After watching this video, I went to get the score and listened to Rubinstein’s recording at the same time, and there’s no invented rubato—it turns out everything was written.

There’s a famous meme in Spain that we use when we feel like something we’ve been told is a lie; the phrase “emosido engañados” ("hemos sido engañados" - we’ve been deceived but misspelled) appears written on a wall. That’s how I feel after watching this video. Suddenly, I feel the need to go through recording after recording, score in hand, rediscovering everything that was denied to me musically because I was told that those symbols were merely a crescendo/diminuendo in volume.

Paderewski was once criticized by a fellow musician for "not obeying the written notations."  They were speaking in French.  Paderewski's response was "Il ne s'agit pas de ce qui est ecrit.  Il s'agit de l'effet musical."  (It's not about what's written.  It's about the musical effect.")  In other words, follow your musical instincts, and that's how late 19th century pianists played.  It was the first half of the 20th century that worshipped the supposed sacrosanctity of the printed note and note-perfect performances over feeling and drama and MEANING.

I found a funny example in Liszt's transcription of Hymne à Sainte-Cécile (by Gounod) (urtext edition, Neue Liszt-Ausgabe, you can easily find it on imslp). Bar 34 there is a hair pin which opens with crescendo written on it. Bar 35 there is a hair pin which opens with rallentando written on it. Should we play both crescendo and rallentando ? Or just one of those, the one written ? Or one is both crescendo and rallentando but the other is just one of those ? Endless torture for the pianist (but this piece is a hidden gem, check it out anyway).

Interesting. I'm glad I came across this because I've been learning piano from pieces composed by classical composers, and I was noticing that stretching or compressing the time feels more natural for the hairpins than dynamic changes.

17:10 I think that's the main point, the symbol used to mean different things simultaneously, but for people at the time it must have been obvious in context, where now our culture, relationship with music and especially score (they're almost treated as sacred texts) has changed, the obsession with playing "in time" and measured precision with every note etc.. It's incomprehensible for us that a great composer, to us almost like a god among men, would leave to us the choice in interpretation with filthy rubatos instead of precisely marking down everything. Chopin would probably be perplexed with the way we treat every one of his written notes like gospel when he would almost never play his pieces twice the same way

The piano world owes you an unbelievable amount, Ben. Thank you.

Wonderful! As a guitarist (and composer), I’m intrigued to look at the 19thC guitar repertoire in the same way. Keep up the great work, Ben!

Holy smokes... all those times Beethoven writes an opening hairpin ("crescendo") followed immediately by p or pp, I always figured he meant get louder then subito soft. I'm going to have to re-read all 32 sonatas!