Klarinet Archive - Posting 000515.txt from 1995/05

From: Fred Jacobowitz <fredj@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Performance practice and the cultural clarinet
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 06:40:59 -0400

Dan,
RIGHT ON!

Fred J.

On Tue, 16 May 1995, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:

> Dunja's note on Bulgarian clarinet playing as well as the many notes
> on klezmer performance and Greek clarinets in G, etc. got me to thinking
> about the matter of performance practice and its relationship to all these
> disparate styles.
>
> There have been postings on this board that refuted the notion of a
> set of performance guidelines for (for example) the classic period saying
> something to the effect that the poster "was a modern and contemporarily
> trained player and did not believe that he or she was bound by the
> strictures of classical performance practice when playing classical music."
> That person might say, "That was then. This is now."
>
> And yet the performance practices of klezmer music are such that if one
> were to ignore them completely (under the same argument of being a
> modern person etc., etc.) what would come out might very well be good
> clarinet playing but bad klezmer. I would suspect that this would be
> equally true for Bulgarian playing, Greek playing,or any cultural
> specialty. One can't ignore the traditions!
>
> So to be a culturally acceptable player (such as Don Byron, an Afro
> American playing klezmer), one simply must become acculturated in the
> musical traditions (i.e., read "performance practice") of that music.
>
> And to be a musically acceptable player one must also become acculturated
> in the musical traditions of any composition including eingange and
> improvsiation in the classic era, for example. For without them, one
> is precisely in the same boat that I would be in if I were to try and
> play Bulgarian music; i.e., the right things would simply not come out.
>
> Alternatively, if no one had every heard Bulgarian clarinet playing and
> I were to give a concert of nothing but that, explaing that Bulgarian
> playing is always done in dungarees and a turban, the audience, not
> having any experience with the form might very well think that this was
> Bulgarian playing. Of course it would be more sham than substance.
>
> And that is exactly what happens when we play the classical period repertoire
> for clarinet today. It has been so long since anyone heard it done
> with the appropriate traditions, that playing in dungarees and a turban
> is thought to be fully sufficient to achieve the proper level of classical
> performance traditions!
>
> The bottom line is that one is certainly permitted to ignore the traditions
> of the music of any epoch, but one should not think that the playing of
> music from that era can be effectively accomplished with no knowledge of
> those traditions.
>
> It's a lot like music theory. Until you learn the rules, you are not
> permitted to break them. A musician who breaks rules s/he does not know
> is an ignoramus. A musican who is trained in the rules and knows how to
> break them is a genius!
>
> ====================================
> Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
> (leeson@-----.edu)
> ====================================
>