Klarinet Archive - Posting 000116.txt from 1993/11

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Jeremy Reynolds comments on "Playing It Differently"
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 08:27:10 -0500

Jeremy Reynolds of Ithaca sent in a most interesting note on
the importance of each person playing the Mozart concert differently.
He cites the Pay recording of K. 622 and says that he likes it
very much because Pay performs it so differently.

Jeremy, I could not agree more. But there is a lot of freedom
you tolerate before you felt the music was being distorted?

I don't think you would agree that the player has liberty to do anything
he or she wanted to do under the assumption that as long as it was
different, it would be tolerated. Let me give a dumb example.

Would you consider the execution of the work acceptable if the player
decided to switch from A clarinet to tenor sax in the middle of the
slow movement because s/he felt that "it sounded better on tenor sax."?

The bottom line here is that a player is always constrained to play
a work within reasonably well-defined and tolerated limits of execution.
I think (or hope) that that is a reasonable statement; i.e., there are
limits on what a player should do in performance.

These limits exist both by tradition and by documentation. They are
generally referred to as performance practices, or the things that
are generally considered appropriate for performance of music during
those epochs.

There were performance practices for Brahms' music in 1900 that differ
substantially from the performance practices for Brahms' music in 1950
which, in turn, differ substantially from the performance practices for
Brahms' music today.

The same thing is true for Mozart and it is wrong to think that the player
does not have some responsibility to understand what the performance
practices were for his music at the time he wrote it. Lack of knowledge
of those practices frequently produce a performance that is uncharacteristic.
The best examples were the recent stagings of three Mozart operas for
public television, one of which was set in the Bronx. These performances
were, for some, uncharacteristic of the general epoch of Mozart's music.

As for the Pay performance of the Mozart concerto, I ask you to amplify
what you meant when you said it was different. In what way was it
different from other performances you heard? What did Pay do to allow
you to come to the conclusion that it was different?

Let me add that one of the things that Pay did that was different from
almost all contemporary performances of K. 622 is that he played the
work on a basset clarinet!! Of course that is different. That is
the instrument for which the work was written, the instrument without
which one cannot execute all
of the notes in their correct registers. That is very different
indeed and it also happens to be very Mozartean. In fact, to play
the Mozart concerto on a traditional clarinet is what the clarinet
playing community has evolved to, but the music has suffered because
of that movement as you so eloquently noted.

So? How was Pay's performance different? Simply saying that you
liked it because it was different is too imprecise and unclear.

Thanks for your note. It was very helpful.

you
====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================