Klarinet Archive - Posting 000204.txt from 1993/11

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Cary Karp's excellent letter
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1993 08:22:16 -0500

OK. Nutcracker over. Two more tomorrow, and then only 10,000 left
to play before I go mad!!

Cary Karp says, "A significant part of musical license is deciding how
much attention one wishes to pay to the study of period performance
practice."

There is, of course, no performance practice policeman waiting outside
the door prepared to pounce if one plays a Mozart clarinet work with
a questionable historic approach to issues of ornamentation. It is
a free society and to that extent Cary is correct. Some people pay a
lot of attention to how these works were played during the epoch of
their composition, and others perceive that such knowledge is a waste
of time and effort.

I am of the opinion that those who believe the latter half of the last
sentence are not only historically incorrect, but are fundamentally
unable to achieve a characteristically intelligent performance. Oh, all
the notes come out to be sure, but the end result is a strange
anachronism, like putting a hoop skirt on the Venus De Milo. There is
nothing wrong a hoop skirt or with Venus. They just don't belong
together. Their styles clash and a thoughtful observer will simply
dismiss such a clash as indicative of a lack of knowledge on the part of
the creator.

And so it is with performance practices when playing Mozart on a clarinet.
One cannot not afford to pay attention to this subject and, simultaneously,
assert that they are a schooled musician (the operative word being
"schooled").

For example, if one does not know what a "lead-in" is, or what player is
supposed to do when encountering one, or how one knows when one has
been encountered, the a rather important part of both the concerto, K. 622
and the quintet, K. 581 will be inadequately addressed, and, presumably,
inadequately performed.

The things to which I refer are not constraints. On the contrary, they
free players to make a personal contribution to the performance of this
literature in a way that is not possible to achieve should one be
ignorant of the subject and its details.

(I prepare myself for the flames!!) It is in the absence of knowledge about
these things that causes (in my very humble opinion) almost every
performance of K. 622 to sound like almost every other performance. The
work has become an icon to be performed in a highly stylized way that
removes any sense of personal involvement with the music. Instead of being
performed with both the composer and the soloist being part of the creative
process, the work has become a stagnant, unchanging, virtually sterile
example of how not to play music from the 18th century.

There are exceptions, to be sure. But most every performance of K. 622
sounds like every other performance of K. 622 and I lay the blame for this
at the attitude that says "I don't have to know about performance practices.
They are irrelevant and unimportant."

Perhaps the most egregious example of this attitude is the French edition
of K. 622 (Leduc edition??) with a cadenza by Jacques Ibert. Now Ibert
was nobody's fool when it came to writing music for the clarinet. He knew
the instrument well and handled it beautifully in almost all of his music.

In the Leduc edition, Ibert writes a cadenza that has to be two pages long.
It is enormous!!! It goes on forever. One needs 100 fingers on each hand
to accomplish it. The problem lies in the fact that Ibert, who either knew
nothing about performance practice issues or else knew them and deliberately
chose to ignore them, puts a cadenza in a place where none has been asked
for. He went to a party without being invited. Even worse. Something is
being asked for at that very point of the composition and Ibert missed it
entirely. He either did not know what was being asked for (because he did
not know anything about performance practices of the epoch), or else he
knew and chose to ignore it. He put a hoop skirt on the Venus De Milo!!
And it doesn't fit. And it is ugly as sin. And it doesn't work. And it
is a culture clash beyond my ability to denigrate it. Bottom line is that
if I were reviewing a performance of the Mozart concerto and some clarinet
player used that edition with that cadenza, I would write the guy off
as an ignoramus who should be selling chocolate sodas in the Bronx, not
playing the clarinet. S/he isn't intellectually worthy of playing K. 622
if that is their attitude to the importance of tradition.

Recently, a major orchestra had an audition for 1st clarinet and a guy
with hands like nobody's business showed up for the audition. Wow, could
this guy play fast!! As part of the audition he was asked to play some
of the first movement of K. 622. He did so, and he played it on a B-flat
clarinet. Don't ask me why. He was dismissed at once from further
consideration by the conductor who later said in private, "I wouldn't
think of hiring a guy as dumb as someone who would play the Mozart
concerto on a B-flat clarinet. Don't the key clash kill him?"

So Cary, all of this was brough about by your single sentence at the
beginning of your excellent letter, which I kept as an example of
how to write intelligently.

In your email address, what is the "SE" part of it for?

there to be performed
these things,
do

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