Klarinet Archive - Posting 000064.txt from 1994/03

From: Cary Karp <nrm-karp@-----.SE>
Subj: Re: Mozart and authenticity
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 03:14:40 -0500

On Thu, 3 Mar 1994, Dr. Ronald P. Monsen wrote:

> Should Mozart playing be imaginative? Vibrato? On an 18th century repro
> duction instrument? Oh oh!

I take it this comment was made with a smile. Nonetheless, it touches on
the quintessential aspect of the "authenticity" question. Present-day
performers often make the blanket assumption that Mozart (or anyone of
the other "old guys") met scrupulously on his own terms is a sure bet to
be less "expressive", "interesting", "musical", "captivating", "relevant",
etc, than is any performance instinctively generated on the basis of our
contemporary musical notions. There is also an assumption that period
virtuosi using period instruments were somehow technically and musically
inferior to modern virtuosi using modern instruments. (Yes -- modern
instruments can do things that period instruments cannot do, but this
also works the other way around. I'm talking about the way tools work for
the job for which they are intended.)

Many musicians who have taken the trouble to study period practice have
determined that there is nothing much new under the sun of musicality,
and that an "historically correct" performance can also be superlative in
terms of every current musical criterion by which it might be judged.
Indeed, an unquestioningly applied patina of modern affect is quite
likely to detract from the musical value and impact of a period performance.

Why on earth is it so hard to accept the assertions that Mozart knew
best what Mozart wanted, that his performer contemporaries knew better
than we do how to realize this, that we might find their notions of
performance perfectly satisfying even when judged with present-day
perceptions, and (at the very least) that it would be worth our taking
considerable pain to understand what they were on about before dismissing
it out of hand ????? (Oh yeah -- right -- I forgot, we're better
musicians than they were. Sorry :-)