Klarinet Archive - Posting 000134.txt from 1994/06

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Gran Partitta
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1994 23:04:41 -0400

For Noreen:

There has been nothing new added to the history of the Gran Partitta
since about 1976 when Whitwell and I were published in the Mozart
Jahrbuch. There is an outstanding question having to do with the
dating that Alan Tyson has brought up. He notes that the watermark
of the paper used in the Gran Partitta has appeared in no work
after 1782 whereas Whitwell and I have assertedthat late 1783 to
early 1784 is a correct date based on a whole variety of things.

But except for this single issue, nothing new has arisen with respect
to the history and background of that work for the last 18 or so years.
And unless I screwed up somewhere, there are not going to be any
questions to raise. We very much closed the book on for whom the
composition was created, when, why, where, how, and even who played
the first performance and which of the seven movements were done
in 1784 when it was played in Vienna for the first time. And anything
was left out of that article in the Mozart Jahrbuch, was covered when
Zaslaw and I did the edition for the Neue Mozart Ausgabe and had to
write the German preface.

Tell me what is left to discuss and I'll discuss it. Surely you do
not subscribe to the theory that Mozart wrote the work for his
wedding serenade, do you? That bankrupt theory was advanced by
several people based on nothing but wishful thinking.

Surely you do not accept as fact that the work was written for
Munich performance in 1780?

Surely you do not accept as fact that the work was originally two
separate works whose movements have come together into a single
work by magic? That was the fanciful theory of George de Saint
Foix advanced in 1926 and since discredited.

Surely you realize that all editions published from 1801 to 1976
had thousands of errors, all of which have been corrected in the
NMA volume.

And if I may comment on the instrumentation you suggest, it is
indeed unusual. Since you are unable to obtain the instrumentation
for which the work was written, I can understand that you are
making substitutions, but my joke on the matter was right to the
point. A work such as the GP does not exist solely as a bunch of
tunes, or an architecture of form. The texture of the instruments
themselves make that piece what it is. By using instruments other
than that for which the work was written, you deviate to major
degrees in terms of what is going to come out. The tunes will be
the same, but little else will.

Do not misunderstand me. I don't care if you do the work with tenor
sax, but you should not put forward the argument that the changes you
are planning to make will have little impact on the piece. Using
English horns in place of basset horns impacts the registers in which
the notes sound because the English horns cannot get down low enough.
Thus, from time to time, you will have notes an octave out of register
and this impacts what the piece sounds like, to say nothing of the fact
that the character of the English horn is so different from that of
a basset horn.

But you know all this and I only bring it up because it appeared to me
that you were not giving enough recognition to the severity of the
changes you were making.

I have no idea how many performances I did of the work where the conductor
would make arbitrary changes and say, "If Mozart had had a contrabassoon
he would have used one." But one can add to that that "If Mozart had had
an accordion he would have used one." The argument holds no value. It signs
Mozart's name to the conductor's speculations.

If a conductor does the work with contrabassoon because he or she prefers
a contrabassoon, that's OK with me. Just don't tell me that Mozart
would have done it that way. That goes too far.

So I repeat, "I don't see what the Tsar sees in blini!" and if you don't
see the applicability of the joke, I apologize for having put it forward
into the discussion.

Dan

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

   
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