Linear phrasing: 4
The main difference between piano players and guitar players is in their phrasing—piano players tend to phrase linearly and guitar players tend to phrase metrically.
This wasn’t always the case.
If you listen to Agustin Barrios, his phrasing is linear. The same is true of Llobet and his student, Maria Luisa Anido. So also is Segovia’s phrasing.
The transformation to metrical phrasing occurred, I believe, because of the influence of pop and rock music.
Most modern guitar players came to classical music through popular and rock guitar. (I know, I count myself among them.)
In other words, they started playing the guitar by playing pop and rock music and pop music especially rock music is all about the beat.
This early influence with its emphasis on the beat was so strong, they carried it into their classical playing.
But what’s wrong with metrical phrasing?
Isn’t it just a matter of musical taste and preference?
As one of my students asked one day, ‘Sir, why do we need to listen to piano players? We’re not playing the piano, we’re playing guitar.’
The answer lies in musicianship and musicality—it’s not about piano players, it’s about musicality.
Consider a folk musician, maybe an Irish folk musician playing classical music, maybe the music of Chopin.
The beat in Irish folk music is strong, can you imagine that strong beat in a Chopin Nocturne?
Or perhaps even in a Bach piece like the famous Toccata?
Now, substitute the words Irish folk with pop and rock.
Classical music is highly refined art music. There’s a great deal of rhythmic subtleties and nuances, especially in the music from the Romantic period.
And the art of a great classical artist lies in his/her ability to penetrate into these subtleties and nuances and bring out their poetry.
That’s why in the piano world, they’re so hung up on this artist being a great Chopin player or that artist being a great Beethoven player.
When I first started listening to piano players, they all sounded the same to me and I was always a little perplexed when my piano friends would say, ‘Oh that Claudio Arrau, he’s so old-fashioned or, Barenboim, he can’t play Chopin, he’s too stiff etc.’
But the more I listened, the more I began too to appreciate the subtle difference between the players.
I found myself gravitating to Dinu Lipatti who has an exquisite rhythmic touch. And Alfred Brendel who was my piano teacher Margaret Nielsen’s favorite pianist.
And Glenn Gould who was a bit of an iconoclast but who was still thoroughly grounded in the traditions of Artur Schnabel.
And of course Martha Argerich, the student of the so-called old-fashioned Claudio Arrau.
Once I began to appreciate the incredible fluidity and subtlety of linear phrasing, metrical phrasing sounds rigid and folksy in comparison, and inadequate to the musical aesthetics of classical music.