If you stop on the soft pedal/una corda, you can get all the hammers to lightly touch the strings, at least on an upright piano. On a grand piano, it shifts the hammers over a little bit so they don’t hit all the strings. (On an upright, the soft pedal usually moves the hammers closer to the strings, so they have less distance to travel and therefore are quieter. Press it hard enough and you can get the hammers to bounce to the strings.)
There may be other unconventional pedal techniques that cause the strings to ring out, but that’s the one I remember from whacking the pedals on my spinet. (And depress the damper to let them ring out.)
They can all mean different things. On the piano legato vs. slur can get a little academic, but I might consider a slur an instruction about how to connect a specific line or phrase, while a legato marking is about a technique and approach to a whole piece/section.
Take the piece in the OP. Imagine that the slur across measures 1-4 was actually two slurs, each 2 measures long. So there would be two slurred phrases, but they would connect in a legato fashion. How would it sound different? Well, that’s up to the pianist, as it’s all interpretation. In my hypothetical 2-bar-slur scenario, I might just give a little added emphasis to the A on the downbeat of measure three.
For some instruments, the difference between legato and slur can be more significant. Generally, on a slurred phrase, you wouldn’t re-articulate for any notes (ie. stop the air moving across the reed) in the phrase. In a legato passage you might.
The sustain pedal can facilitate legato playing, but doesn’t at all mean the same thing. Legato is not about notes sounding longer than they’re notated, but sounding their full duration and connecting to subsequent notes without space between, and with limited “attack”.
Again, imagine this same piece but instead of slurs and legato, we had staccato markings (kind of the opposite of legato- emphasis on the note attack and distinct separation between sounds) on all the 8th notes. You could keep the pedal down but still play the piece staccato.
So there is a follow-up. I was taught also to interpret the slurs as you do. My question is more like: how would you play the piece differently without the “legato” instruction? My instinct upon seeing the pedal markings and how the melody line phrases are slurred is that the piece is meant to be played legato. Is “legato” really adding any information to the performer?
Then again, I’m looking over my book of Chopin Nocturnes, and I see his Em Nocturne Op 72 No 1 does have a “molto legato” marking in a similar context as this piece, where just looking at the piece, legato seems to be the clear intent. So is it just to re-iterate that that’s the feel that is wanted? How might you, as a performer, play it differently without that instruction?
Hello. For this piece there is a tempo direction (dotted-half)=(quarter). This type of direction it usually specifies a change in tempo from a previous section. What is your intention for this tempo direction. Thanks!
He replied:
Bonjour,
Cette indication ne montre pas un changement un tempo mais insiste sur le fait qu’il faut ressentir cette pièce à la blanche pointée, donc un peu rubato et non comme une valse à la noir
Damien
Which Google translates as:
Hello,
This indication does not show a change a tempo but insists on the fact that you have to feel this piece in the white pointed, so a little rubato and not like a waltz in the black
Damien
OK, so the idea is something like treat the dotted half as the pulse, as its own single unit, and not as three quarter notes in feel. Something like that?
It seems that the composer was afraid that, with the 3/4 time signature, players would approach it as a waltz rather than something like Gymnopédie No. 1. Hence the cryptic notation. Of course, Satie managed to convey his intention without said cryptic notation.
I also should have mentioned above way back when that this nocturne is a VERY simplified version of the actual one and was only used as an example of notation.
It appears to me that the composer intended the pedal to be held down starting at the second note in the measure, to sustain the rest of that measure as it is being played. It’s certainly not clear where he wanted the pedal to be lifted (usually horizontal lines and other symbols are used to resolve ambiguity, but they aren’t shown here). In the image you supplied there are two blotches that might be additional pedal marks, but the image isn’t sharp or detailed enough for me to tell.
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