Klarinet Archive - Posting 000143.txt from 1994/01

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Charles Hillen's comments on Mozart and performance issues
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 1994 12:49:05 -0500

I am still waiting to respond to the basic issues raised in objection
to my comments on performance practice with respect to Mozart's music,
but there was something in Charles Hillen's note that needs to be
both addressed and divorced from the discussion.

Charles writes that "I opine that if an astute composer like Mozart didn't
write it in the music, he must have considered it negotiable ...common
practice of the day notwithstanding."

God has delivered you into my hands Charles. Exactly the opposite is
the case and every serious performing musician in the world needs to be
trained in the various meanings implied by the absence of explicit
instructions.

As I mentioned earlier, the field of study known as performance practice
exists because the way music is written down is insufficiently precise to
describe exact execution requirements. This is complicated by assumptions
that composers make when creating handwritten scores.

Composers (including Mozart, of course), even contemporary composers
are explicit only with directions that are not absolutely obvious to
an informed, contemporary performer. Yet, because these assumptions
change with time, what requires no explicit direction in one age is
not at all obvious to a later one.

In the case of Mozart, I assert that the first measure of every movement
of every Mozart compositions was expected to be played forte if no
dynamic marking was present. This was Mozart's assumption: no opening
dynamic means "forte." It was not negotiable. It was not decided on
by vote. It was the accepted performance practice of the day. Given
a sheet of music that had no dynamic mark in the opening measure meant
to play loud and every performer knew it just as every performer of
today knows what to do when the stock arrangements says "Tempo di
Rhumba."

This 18th century standard of performing behavior can be confirmed by a
look at any Mozart autograph score. He never (!!) wrote opening
dynamics for any movement of any work unless it was to be executed
other than loudly. But today, musicians no longer assume that "forte"
is the inaugural default, so every opening dynamic must be explicitly
given.

If one were to accept Charles's view that "if ...Mozart didn't write
it in the music, he must have considered it negotiable" would encourage
somewhat chaotic performances. Few standards of tempi and even character
would exist since so much was not written down in an 18th century
score. One of the things that one learned as an 18th century performer
was how to play the music on the page consistent with the standards of
the times. It is a lack of knowledge of what those standards were
that causes us to play Mozart's music in a very unMozartean fashion
in the 20th century. It is not an uncommon problem; i.e.,
there is some music that is so old, that we have lost a knowledge of
how to interpret its notation and it cannot be played at all.

I suspect that what Charles is used to (as we all are)
is playing from music that has been through an editing process by
someone who has solved many (though not all) of those problems for him.
So when he begins the Serenade in E-flat, he begins in "forte" because
that is what the editor interpreted the absence of a dynamic to mean.
Certainly the autograph in Mozart's hand has no dynamic there. I have
inspected it on several occasions and I own a copy of it. But there
are 20 other things that Mozart tells the player of the E-flat serenade
and most of us miss it, including the editor who prepared the music
for Charles' performance. That is what performance practice matters
deal with. And it is very dangerous to take a loose-cannon
approach and suggest that we 20th century musicians are somehow
exempt from these responsibilities.

More in a couple of days.