Please read the essay by Cosmo Buono on John Field’s Nocturne No. 5 in B-flat major first. 

There are any number of terms related to the performance of music. In fact, the Oxford Dictionary of Music has over 10,000 entries, and approximately 250 new ones.  Music is an art form that is constantly evolving, and as a result giving us new ideas to ponder, and new concepts to absorb.

When it comes to classical music however, there are certain formats that have remained with us for centuries.  They prepare us for understanding what is required of a work, how we should think about it, and most importantly, how it should be performed.  It’s not unlike if someone invited you for dinner, but they served you bacon and eggs.  When we hear a word like “dinner” we don’t think about it in the same way we do when we hear the word “breakfast.”

The term “nocturne” is one of many examples of different forms of music.  Others are “étude,” “concerto,” and “sonata,” just to name a few.

What is important however in order to perform a piece properly—and here is this week’s Lightbulb Moment a performer does not need to know just the notes on the page, he has to understand the mindset of the composer.  Why, for example is the term “nocturne” appropriate to this work by Field?  It is because a nocturne has to do with the night.  Here are the dictionary definitions:

1. A short composition of a romantic or dream character suggestive of night, typically for piano

2. A picture of a night scene

The word “nocturne” is preparing you for what to expect from the work, the same way that dinner sets up the mind for the kind of food one can expect to eat. 

At the same time, “nocturne” is also signaling what you should give to it in the way of study, interpretation, and nuance.

It is a mindset that should be in place in order to prepare the work, and one that is carried through into performance.

Shakespeare in his Romeo and Juliet wrote: “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Names in music are important, but not just because they provide a means of identification.  They are also there to offer suggestions of what a piece requires of us as musicians and performers.  You don’t expect a rose to smell like a lilac, just like you don’t expect a nocturne to sound like a scherzo, the Italian word for “joke.”  We associate certain characteristics with certain names.

Start your learning of a work by understanding first the name attached to it.  Let that then guide you into your study of it.  Let the name, which is there to identify the work, transport you into a means of understanding its requirements and its demands on you as a performer, in order to highlight the ways in which you can best understand and interpret it.