Page 713 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

Jan/Feb 2023

Photo: alevision.co

Orchestras and Competitions

Rethink the Printed Program

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By Laurence Vittes | From the January-February 2023 issue of Strings magazine

In 1900–01, the English writer and composer Donald Francis Tovey helped establish the
program note, with musical examples in the text, as essential to the concertgoing experience
with the two essays he wrote to prepare the London public for his performances of Bach’s
Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. He had them published “on
soft, rough paper that turns noiselessly.” His intention, according to the musicologist Michael
Tilmouth, was that they “be read prior to the concerts, having been published about a week
beforehand. Then, during the concert, the musical quotations could be used as visual aids to
the aural experience of the music. He wanted to demolish the idea that everything in classical
music is obvious to the meanest capacity. ‘I know it isn’t obvious to me,’ he said.”