What's the meaning of this annotation? (In german)

Hi! I was sight-reading my score of the "Fantasia und Fugue" in G minor transcribed by Szántó and I realised He wrote some things in german.

The translator helps me with most of them but there is a translation of one of them which isn't very convincing.

Here you have the score:

Fantasia und Fugue in G Minor (IMSLP)

It's on the third page. It says "bedeutet das stumme Ablösen der Taste." The translator says: "means the removal of the silent button" but that makes no sense because I'm not using the "silent button" (it's not indicated >.< )

Thank you very much for trying help me!!

My guess is that "silent button" is meant to be the una corda pedal, but we'll see what a German speaker says.


-J

I think it means hold the keys down silently.

Translation: "means quiet (silent) release of the key"
Could this indicate that the F#A must be released silently while the D's continue to be held?

I'm with keystring.

A movement of Schumann's Kreisleriana has the notation, "Durchaus leise zu halten." For a while I assumed it was the name of a lied that the movement was based on (which made immediate sense because those words can be exactly sung to the melody). After a while I figured it wouldn't hurt to check what the phrase means. It means to play the movement softly.

Me too.

Ditto.

A diamond-shaped note usually means one that is depressed without sounding. What is confusing about this is that the note was already played aloud, and could just be held.

'keep the key down while changing fingers'. It's a funny little nationalistic thing, Beethoven started this in using 'Hammerklavier', and 'mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck', meaning: 'Piano' and 'Allegro con sentimento e espressivo.' Schumann tried to follow in this manner, his best try: 'durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen', meaning: 'continualmente con fantasia e con passione'. What's worse: the italian or the german? I don't mind. As long as finnish/hungarian/mongolian/chinese/japanese et al composers stick to italian/english or what the h... german.

keystring´s translation is correct.
(I am a native-language German speaker, if this helps you to have full confidence)

Equd on, euskadi!

I'm German and I approve.

I'm not sure there's any other way to release a note than silently, so I think that although you get the meaning across, that's not really an accurate translation of how the idea was expressed. I think what is really meant is that you shouldn't restrike the D's, but let their sound carry over from the chord. The footnote applies to the diamond-shaped D's, after all, which are not released. For your translation to work, the F# and A would need to be the diamond-shaped notes.

Hello everybody! First of all: Happy New Year from Switzerland!

Has anybody noticed the 16th-break? In that bar, the left hand plays an eighth note, then a 16th-note with a staccato dot, which (strangely) is connected to the next note (the diamond shaped one) with a bow. But in-between there's a 16th-break. So, I guess that the German sentence has to be interpreted such as to lift your fingers off the keys with the staccato note and then press them silently down at the diamond shaped one.
By the way, the pedal sign indicates to lift the pedal with the staccato note.

To me, the staccato dot indicates that the F# and A are to be coordinated with the RH chord - a slur figure with a quick release.

The D octave is held, but the rest of the chord matches the articulation of the RH.

What would you propose as an accurate translation?

Probably something like "[the diamond-shaped note] means to press the key again silently". In the context it looks like that would mean to lift the hand while still holding the chord with the pedal, then silently pressing the keys to catch the sound before completely lifting the pedal. "Ablösen" can have a sense of taking over from, or superseding, something, so the most precise word for the translation might be "retaking", to say that you are to silently retake the notes with the D keys, after having sounded them in the preceding chord.

It might be worthwhile to look at the original organ score to see what this might mean.

I did look, and to me, it didn't really help to clarify things, except to show that the transcriber was being fairly creative, rather than trying to stay close to the original score.

I don't see the sense in that. Since the D's are tied, what is the point of releasing them and then pressing them down silently? If they are tied, as I see them to be, doesn't one simply hold them while releasing the F-sharp and A, as indicated by the rest? Who is going to hear whatever difference there may be, in any case?

Regards,

In string music diamond shape notes indicate harmonics. Don't you play harmonics on piano by 'silently holding a note down' and striking another? I don't know if this can apply here because I haven't looked at the music, but that's the way it sounds from the descriptions.

But it doesn't look to me like the D's are actually tied. There's nothing in the note values that would indicate that the sixteenth-note rest only applies to the F# and A but not to the D's. And too, the preceding chord that contains the D's has a staccato dot, which would seem to mean the keys really should come up.

Anyway, it seems to me like fairly capricious notation that should have been explained more fully. In my theory of what it might mean, the only difference in actual sound would be if the pianist did some pretty deft catching of the sound as the pedal was being released.

I am curious now - can harmonics be produce on the piano by doing this? When you have an harmonic, you hear a crystal glass kind of sound. Can this be achieved on a keyboard?

do you mean in the notation itself?

Meanwhile your proposed translation shows the fine line that translators have to tread. You should have sufficient knowledge before accepting such work so that you don't end up with nonsense like "silent buttons", but you also don't want to overstep and put in your own interpretation. "Abloesen" does have that meaning: like in the changing of the guards, where one guard replaces the next and at that moment one is stepping out of duty while the other is stepping in. I think that translation might work, *if* that is what was meant. Has anyone tried playing the passage for more insight?

Sure, I've seen and heard it done. I can't try it out myself though because I have a digital

Anyway I had a look online at the score of Bartok's piece 'Harmonics' from Mikrocosmos, and it turns out that diamond shaped notes indicate harmonics in piano music too. There's also the footnote to hold the key down silently or some such, so I don't think there's any mystery here any more.

Do I get a reward?