Klarinet Archive - Posting 000164.txt from 1994/11

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Music and smiles
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 09:56:34 -0500

Jim Sclater's note reminds me of a dual standard that exists in music today
and that resulted in a very fine pianist getting a roasting in a review of
the NY Times.

Consider a singer doing a concert aria or an aria from an opera but not
in the operatic setting. That person is expected to do a little play acting
while performing to show the drama of the music. So, for example, a
person doing Figaro's "Aprite un po" from Marriage of Figaro, would be
expected to bring out some of the humor by smiling at the appropriate moment.
The aria is about the constancy and faithfulness of women, and that has
always been a subject where authors have made great jokes or great tragedies.

This would be even more true if a basso buffo were singing the Catalog aria
from Don Giovanni, an aria that deals with the high number of seductions
that have taken place, country by country. It is a funny piece, and any
singer who did it straight faced would be brutalized by the critics as an
unfeeling artist.

Now consider the analogous situation with instrumentalists. Many of the Mozart
piano concerti contain some very funny music, or perhaps I should say music
with humor. Yet pianists play this music with an unsmiling, almost
funereal demeanor. They are so serious, that often the charm and humor of
the music is lost. Nowhere is this more true than in the final movement of
Beethoven's first piano concerto, when the pianist launches into a section
that sounds like a Samba. It is a great and wonderful joke that Beethoven
made, and to play it so somberly ruins the punch line.

A pianist I know did one of the Mozart piano concerti in NY at the Mostly
Mozart and he beamed like a headlight during the funny parts, he turned
and smiled broadly at the audience during the musical jokes, and he got
pasted for doing so. He was accused of mugging, something that singers
do every day to highlight the meaning of what they are singing.

This is the dual standard to which I referred. Instrumentalists are
expected to play funny music with the same seriousness of purpose as
if they were playing non-funny music, and it diminishes performances.
The public behavior of performing instrumentalists has reached a norm
that is often out of character with the emotion they are supposed to
be portraying in the music.

All of this discussion began because I said that I played the Prokovieff
Overture like it was the Brahms quintet and it was dull. I meant that
to be a description of how I felt it came across when played so somberly.
If the audience does not laugh when I play funny music, somehow I am not
transmitting an important emotional message.

You all know the violin/clarinet duet in the Milhaud trio: now that is
a funny piece. I expect someone in the audience to wet their pants when
I play that, that's how funny I think it is. There is not much of aplace
to smile and make funny faces when you are a clarinet player so the humor
has to like in the style of playing.

Most of the great clarinet solos in the Rossini overtures are so
wonderfully funny that the audience should break up when they are played.
But I don't hear or see that element in performance today.

Ever see the expression on the faces of the audience at a good opening
of Rhapsody in Blue? Ear-to-ear grins!!!

Mozart once wrote to his father that he played one of his piano concerti
and at a certain place, he put in some kind of a musical joke. (He does
not describe it.) And then he said that the audience stopped the
performance cold! Right then. They would not permit the movement to
continue unless it were replayed, and he had not even finished the movement.

I did not think when I mentioned the Prokovieff that I was opening a
can of worms by mentioning my opinion about humor in performance, but maybe
it is a topic worth discussion. In what way can and should we invest the
music we play with an emotional life based on the emotion within the piece
we are performing? Certainly vibrato adds greatly to tragic material since
it simulates the action of sobbing to some degree. It also warms up the
emotion of the melody to hear it waver (I think. This is all opinion, not
fact.).

Klezmer playing has mined this field of performance practice very nicely
by using sobs, smears, and jokes as part of the tradition.

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

   
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