COMPARING THE STANDARD MODEL TO THE CANTABILE STYLE
By Keith Hill and Marianne Ploger Nashville, TN 2025
The Standard Model in Music Performance
The Standard Model in Music is founded on a set of performance requirements used to determine a musician’s level of professionalism. Those are as follows:
Technical Requirements
1. Metrical precision and accuracy as determined from the printed score.
2. Notational precision and accuracy as determined from the printed score.
3. Precision and accuracy of vertical and linear tonal alignment as determined from the appearance of the printed score.
4. Realization of expression limited to that indicated on the printed score.
5. Expressive devices limited to Articulation, Gradual or abrupt changes in volume, speed, texture, timbre, etc., as indicated on the printed score.
6. Stylistic interpretive devices based on traditional practices such as: vibrato, tempo, volume, and instrumentation as maybe determined from the printed score.
7. In-tune based on equal temperament at A – 440 + or –
8. Scores that do not indicate how the notes are to be performed are played legato.
9. No particular rhythmic hierarchy: absence of strong and weak beats in a bar.
Aesthetic Requirements
1. Correct performance results from adherence to that which appears on the printed score.
2. Take no liberties with the printed score.
3. Treat the printed score as the final arbiter of the composer’s intentions
4. Produce the best sound possible.
The Standard Model with Historically Informed Musical Performance Practice
Apply all the Standard Model Aesthetic Requirements listed above, then add all the following:
1. Correct Instrumentation based on Historically Informed building practices.
2. Correct Pitch standard based on HIMPP
3. Correct Tuning or Temperament based on HIMPP
4. Correct technique based on specific historical sources, especially rhythmic hierarchy.
5. Correct technique based on instrument, national and historical construction style.
6. Correct articulations based on composer, national style, and historical style.
7. Correct ornamentation based on composer, national style, and historical style.
8. Correct style based on HIMPP under the Standard Model.
9. Absence of Vibrato except for soloists/singers.
10. Using faster tempi.
11. When in doubt about performance style play in a detached manner
Problems Inherent in the Standard Model in Music Performance
The problems built into the Standard Model in Music from the outset arose from various technical and cultural developments all of which formed a kind of unspoken consensus among classically trained musicians.
One: The establishment of schools of music, conservatories, and music departments in colleges and universities led to the practice of certifying and conferring degrees on matriculating students. Certification required standards of professionalism that were considered objective. This process of certifying students required the institutions themselves to be certified regarding the content and competency of the information being taught. It eventually became necessary to have a set of standards that could be employed to objectively evaluate the professional achievement of each student. A student who successfully fulfilled the requirements of the standard model was then certified and earned a degree.
Two: Over time, technical advances in film, phonography, and printing exerted an influence on the need for increasing precision and accuracy in musical performances. The technical developments in sound recording meant that the performers/musicians had to be more rigorously prepared to meet the demands of the recording industry. In many ways, it was the attitude of recording engineers and editors that determined who was considered professional and who was not competent enough to have a career as a performing musician. So the curricula of the conservatories and schools of music conformed to the more stringent requirements being demanded by the recording engineers and editors. With each improvement in sound recording technology raised the standards of the model. Eventually, the technical crafts became incorporated directly into the conservatories and schools of music. Standards of perfection increased to keep pace with the recording industry.
Three: As music engraving gradually became responsive to developments in musicology, music scores became cleaner. Editorial suggestions common in the late 19th century and early 20th century editions of printed music, intended to help performers interpret the music, disappeared. With the onset of the URTEXT movement in musicology, scores labeled Urtext became sterilized of all but the notes of the original manuscripts and the layout of these scores took on a mathematical and mechanical rigor. Performers consequently mirrored the Urtext mentality and assumed the mathematical, mechanical rigor suggested by the printed scores. The musicological aesthetic became: “Let the music speak for itself”.
Fourth: Consequently, “Let the Music Speak for itself” justified the “One ought not take liberties with the score” philosophy that propped up the Standard Model.
Fifth: To force the change in performance practices, in order to cement the Standard Model, phrases of derision were aimed at musicians who complained about making the change. Example: “Eliminate the sloppy sentimentalisms of a bygone era!” Such phrases are a common academic tactic to force compliance to a meaningless rule designed to bully and belittle voices of disagreement. The Standard Model was a tactic of a fascist-like dictatorship intended to overthrow the Cantabile Style of playing music.
Interestingly, Arnold Schoenberg, whose theories of atonalism paved the way for the standard model to become entrenched in classical music training, actually wrote an article in 1948 titled: Today’s Manner of Playing Classical Music. In this article, Schoenberg complained about the erasure of expressive playing happening everywhere, especially in Europe where there had existed an established culture of expressive playing in music. Arnold blamed American Rock music as the cause.
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Questioning the Standard Model???
When any reasonable musician examines the list of requirements to establish a level of professional competence, every requirement seems reasonable and valuable. Were one to question that set of requirements and understand the underlying errors in thinking behind each requirement, they would fail the test of scrutiny. Begin with the first: Metrical precision and accuracy as determined from the printed score.
What about Affect?
In music, throughout the history of music with the exception of the last 90 years, the overarching aim or outcome of playing music has been the concept of Affekt. Affect, or Affekt (from the German), is not the self-expressive emotional nonsense used by purveyors of the Standard Model. Affect is actually a language of suggestion of human attitudes, states of mind, emotions, and physical behaviors employing the elements of melody, rhythm, and harmony. Again, affect is a language of suggestion, not expression. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term used for this language in German was Affektenlehre (Doctrine of Affects) This Doctrine was less important to a practicing musician than understanding how to employ the elements needed to create music that was highly suggestive of some human feeling. Here is the problem! Every sound conveys affect. It doesn’t matter if the feeling being suggested is intentional or not, every sound conveys affect.
What is Affect Content?
Let’s ask the question, what is the affect “content” of metrical precision and accuracy as determined from the printed score? Metrical precision is characterized as being metronomic, military, mind numbing, boring, scolding, deadly, mechanical, cold, calculating, indifferent, fear, anger, etc. It makes no affective difference to anything else that might be going on musically. If metrical precision is present, those affects will be the overarching feelings being suggested. Even if the composer has been intending to suggest a completely opposite affect like sweetness and tenderness, if the performer seeing a series of perfectly regular and equal note values on the printed page and performs the music in a manner that is metrically precise, the affect will be suggesting coldness and mechanical indifference. The stylistic function of the standard model is to ensure a performance that is clean and objective. The side effect of adopting the highly mannered of the standard model is to guarantee that every performance of the music will sound exactly like the previous 983 performances.
What got tossed out? The baby or the bathwater?
In the 1940’s, the Standard Model became firmly established as the modus operandi both in Europe and in America. At the time it was heralded as a new, cleaner, more objective style of playing music. This style was designed specifically to brush away the remnants of the previous sloppy sentimental romantic style that had dominated musical performances. That so-called sloppy sentimental romantic style of playing had been developing and evolving over the previous centuries since 1400! Every so-called rational attempt to sterilize the world of dirt ends in killing the baby.
What is the purpose of the Standard Model?
An even more insidious side effect of adopting the Standard Model manner is considerably less well understood. That is, in a sonic environment such as a perfectly metrical performance of music, errors stick out like a proverbial sore thumb. Even worse, errors actually become the only meaning available. This is well understood by seasoned professional musicians, which is why they enforce that requirement so rigorously. Young professionals learn quickly to avoid making mistakes. Many, however, discover only after 12 years of higher level training in music that the fear of making mistakes compounds over time and leads to performance anxiety. What teachers and students fail to realize is that perfectly metrical playing is mind-numbingly boring, especially dangerous in the midst of performing. Mistakes happen when the mind of a performer is bored. It is a feedback loop that guarantees the manufacture of errors. The only students who can play note perfectly in the presence of a brain that is fast asleep are the truly talented students. But still the standard model is paramount.
Who is truly happy about all this?
Having spent a lifetime career in music, 1966 to 2025, observing musicians closely, it is evident to us that Standard Model performers are frustrated and disillusioned. What begins in youth as a passionate love of music shrivels to resignation under the heel of the Standard Model, and eventually morphs into careers that often don’t involve playing music for others to enjoy.
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BACH’S CANTABILE STYLE OF PLAYING
In the Preface of the Inventions and Sinfonias, Bach specifies the pre-eminence of cantabile playing. It reads: "Honest method, by which the amateurs of the keyboard – especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way not only (1) to learn to play cleanly in two parts, but also, after further progress, (2) to handle three obligate parts correctly and well; and along with this not only to obtain good inventions (ideas) but to develop the same well; above all, however, to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition."
The Bach Reader includes several references to that emphasis Bach placed on a true independence of voices. However, musicologists conveniently took this to refer to Bach’s compositional methods and practices. Yet here in this particular letter, Kirnberger clearly means a true independence of voices in performance: "Bach was the most daring in this respect, and therefore his things require a quite special style of performance, exactly suited to his manner of writing, for otherwise many of his things can hardly be listened to. Anyone who does not have a complete knowledge of harmony must not make bold to play his difficult things; but if one finds the right style of performance for them, even his most learned fugues sound beautiful." (from Kirnberger in 1774) p.261
And: "He invented the convenient and sure fingering and the significant style of performance, with which he cleverly conbined the ornamental manner of the French artists of the time, and thus made the perfecting of the clavier important and necessary, in which task Silbermann was so fortunately at his side." (Reichardt 1796) p.265 The Bach Reader
It was only when a letter by Friedrich Griepenkerl from 12 April, 1842 was published did we discover exactly what that "right style of performance, that special style of performance, that signifiant style of performance" actually was. Interestingly, the same has been said of Chopin's manner of playing. People who mentioned his distinctive manner of playing never said what that involved.
The famous letter from Friedrich Griepenkerl written on 12 April 1842.
The great grand student of JS Bach, Friedrich Griepenkerl, wrote in a letter when he was very old: "Bach himself, his sons, and Forkel played the masterpieces with such a profound declamation that they sounded like polyphonic songs sung by individual great artist singers. Thereby, all means of good singing were brought into use. No Cercare, no Portamento was missing, even breathing was in all the right places...Bach's music wants to be sung with the maximum of art." Andreas Arand in Ars Organi . 49.Jhg . März 2001, p.12
The definition of the words Cercare and Portamento appear in separate dictionaries of Music. Riemann’s 19th cent. Dictionary defines Cercare and Cercare dela Nota as “a 17th century Italian ornament in which the lower or upper auxiliary note sound rapidly and silently to the main note.”
Portamento is defined in a 17th century Italian dictionary as: “the manner of managing tones on the organ.”
Some interesting connections: Griepenkerl was a student of Nicolas Forkel. Forkel was a student of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who was a student and son of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Sarah Levy, Felix Mendelssohn’s aunt, studied with both Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philip Emanuel Bach and commissioned the double concerto for Harpsichord and Fortepiano from CPE Bach. Mendelssohn’s grand mother Bella gave him the score to the St. Matthew Passion of Bach. JS Bach himself taught Kirnberger who taught Fasch who taught Zelter who taught both Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn.
https://youtu.be/QW6clGWyiDE?si=I5orIEuk-B_naEj3
The Cardinal signs for a Cantabile Style when Playing Music
1. “Endeavor to avoid everything mechanical and slavish. Play from the Soul, not like a trained bird.” From the Versuch by CPE Bach.
2. “Maintain strict time” also from the Versuch by CPE Bach, was instantly adopted into the Standard Model due to a gross false interpretation of the word TIME by 20th century musicologists. 18th Century time was not the same as modern notions of time as measured by an atomic clock. You cannot interpret time as meter in the metronomical sense…the mistake that most music teachers make. Remember, “Endeavor to avoid everything mechanical and slavish!” Therefore the more sensible understanding of strict time must refer to time as in flow of time. In this sense, yes, it is essential to maintain strict flow, strict flow, that is, of musical thought in performance. There is no such thing as flow in a Standard Model performance…maintaining strict meter is actually fake flow. The key here is: Flow of Musical Thought. Curiously, it is perfectly possible to cease or interrupt both sound and meter for a considerable duration and still maintain the flow of musical thought.
3. True Independence of voices in performance of music. Every tone at every volume on every different pitch level is unique in timbre and in tendency. Musical intelligence makes clear the meaning of each tone according to the references it suggests. This is also the underlying logic behind syntax or grammar in language. Tonal music based on the Ionian mode behaves exactly like grammar in language. All parts of the tonal scale refer to the tonic just as all parts of speech refer to the subject in a sentence.
4. No Cercare dela nota is missing. This stems from the human utterance signaling recognition and agreement or the ability to follow a thought. Normal human speech is replete with the cercare. Everyone uses this mode of utterance so often that it is totally unrecognized for what it is. Computer speech cannot reproduce this utterance which is why that monotonous variety of verbal output is summarily rejected by people.
5. No Portamento is missing. Portamento is any means of managing tones in music that increases the efficiency of musical communication. There are 11 specific technical devices derived from human speech that transmit meaning and attitude from one mind to that of another.
6. Vacillare. Tosi in his Art of the Florid Song (1736) states: “The singer should endeavor to sing before the beat or after the beat and never with the beat.”
7. Dyssynchrony of tones in performance. Avoid strict alignment of tones in a vertical sense unless you mean it.
8. Endeavor to create gestures as often as possible. Gestures made of sound are more easily followed and remembered because the normal human brain easily perceives sound that is loaded with meaning. The more directional and shaped those sounds are generated, the clearer the meaning is both received and understood.
9. Legato is the technical means of connecting tones in the mind’s ear. The range of touch that conveys to the mind’s ear is only limited by the skill of the performer.
10. Tempo. Speed of movement suggests health or disease in terms of musical character and quality. Andante suggests the normal speed of a person aiming to be someplace specific…that speed is expressed as 116 MM. 116MM also indicates the normal flow of accents in human speech. The Golden Mean:: (1:1.618) of 116MM is 72MM and this tempo appears to govern the moments of change in human conversation, pauses, and points of emphasis being expressed.
Footnote:
Here is an example of a musician who has swallowed the Standard Model hook, line and sinker.
How the Students of Liszt played, with critical comments by Sebastien Dupuis dismissing their playing
https://youtu.be/qKCL4Mh7Ci4?si=zV7cvN9FoEIdjpvL
Our Response?
It is extremely clear that you understand nothing about musical communication. Every standard that you listed in the first minutes of this video were adopted after 1940. From that moment it is precisely those standards of hands together, perfection of meter, perfection of performance, note error requirements, were all the beginning of the drift of the audience away from the concert halls especially from solo piano concerts. The sales of recordings of classical music from that moment to 1978 went from 73% of all recording sold in Europe and the US to 3% of all recordings sold in Europe and the US. Now hardly anyone can produce an audience for a solo piano concert compared to 1906. These pianists studied with Liszt to learn how to communicate music so that a normal music lover would want to attend a solo piano concert. What you are clearly ignorant of are the techniques that they were learning. These techniques are all derived from human perception, cognition and communication. When these techniques are eliminated by the use of the performance standards you support by your mouth in this video, the only listeners who want to hear such performances are so-called left brain dominant individuals, otherwise known as bean counters. The modern performance standards were adopted because it was too hard for juries of judges of competitions to agree about what was an error in performance...so they removed entirely all variances from the printed page.
Here is an instrument built by my 2019 acoustical Technology student, Fabio Rigali
Fabio began his work with me in early 2019 being primarily interested in clavichord making. But he was also an organist and had done some work as part of his degree studies at the Organ Workshop at the University of Götteborg, Sweden. During the period spent in Michigan, I taught him everything I know about how to apply all the principles which I apply in making my harpsichords, clavichords, fortepianos, lautenwerks and violins. I just received this photo and recording of Fabio’s first organ. I have yet to hear an organ built after 1825 that sounds as good as Fabio’s first organ. The instrument is made with all wooden pipes.
Announcing an Audio version of a small portion of my book
Play from the Soul
The announcement this time is that I am posting an audio track from my book, Play from the Soul, an Artist’s Science of Creativity, as read by AI from Speechify.com. Anyone, like myself, who deals with Dyslexia will appreciate not having to look at the text in order to know what my book is about. I am choosing a portion that is useful and interesting based on questions I have fielded since the book was published back in 2018. If anyone who hears these various audio selections wants to know where the book can be bought, here is the link.
https://www.amazon.com/Play-Soul-Artists-Science-Creativity/dp/1986663892