Klarinet Archive - Posting 000119.txt from 1994/01

From: Cary Karp <nrm-karp@-----.SE>
Subj: Re: Mozart performance practice
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 1994 11:42:15 -0500

On Thu, 20 Jan 1994, Dan Leeson wrote:

> And example of this has to do with the taking of repeat signs in minuets.
> Because of the lack of clarity, a convention has developed about how to
> play minuets. No one needs to tell a performer how to do this today, since
> we all do it automatically; i.e., all repeats first time through, no repeats
> second and later times through. This impacts how we play, for example,
> the Gran Partitta which has two minuets, both of which have two trios.

I'm also planning to wait a while before wading all the way into the
Mozart discussion, but couldn't resist a good opportunity for complicating
things. In Mozart's day there were two kinds of minuets -- the ones they
danced to, and the ones that they stuck into things like symphonies. One
big difference between them was that the latter were performed a darned
sight faster. Despite this, contemporary notions of proper tempi for the
non-dance variety are often determined by reasoning along the line of,
"not too fast -- remember they used to dance to these things". (As if this
argument were based on any particular insight into historical dance
practice.)