Klarinet Archive - Posting 000581.txt from 1995/05

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: I think I never posted this
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 14:03:36 -0400

I wrote the material below in response to an inquiry on the octet
version of the Gran Partitta but I don't think I ever posted it.
I do so now and am sorry that I took so long to answer. That is
not in my nature to delay things.
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With respect to the Gran Partitta in the wind octet form, I
think you really want to know two things: (1) where can you
buy it or get it, and (2) what is the general consensus with
respect to its authenticity?

The first publication of the complete 7 movement work (though
without the opening 14-measure adagio in the first movement)
occurred in 1801, two years before the publication of the work
in its original 13-instrument version. The first printing offered
the composition as if it were two completely separate
compositions. The first consisted of movements 1, 2, 3, and 7
and the second of movements 5, 4, and 3 (in that order). That
is the way it has appeared ever since.

It was published a number of times over the last 200 years,
sometimes one of the octets, sometimes the other. The most
recent publication was from Edition Peters about 20 years ago
as edited by Einstein ca. 1954. Unless it has been published
since that time, it is no longer available anywhere. You would
have to go to someone who owns the music and get them to
copy it. I happen to own the music.

In 1991, the Dutch musicologist Bastiaan Blomhert presented
a paper at the Salzburg Mozart Kongress that addressed the
question of the authenticity of the octet arrangement. His
paper appears in the 2-volume edition of the 1991 Mozart
Jahrbuch and it is in English, though I believe he delivered it
in German. Blomhert argues strongly for the authenticity of
the octet arrangement and even goes so far as to say that the
8-wind version precedes the 13-instrument version.

I do not find his arguments convincing. In fact, I believe them
to be seriously flawed though I have not said so in a scholarly
journal. It would be inappropriate of me to come out with a
scholarly paper that attacks another scholarly paper unless the
latter were to have broad acceptance in the musicological
community. That is not the case. Besides, I
said that the octet versions were transcriptions from the
original in a paper on the Gran Partitta for the Mozart
Jahrbuch in 1976 and I see no technical reason to change my
opinion now.

In fact, I don't find the octet arrangement convincing. It is a
very scrawny substitute for the larger version mostly because
there is no true bass to the octet. One needs a
16-foot bass or else the bottom drops out of the group. For
those of you who have played the Krommer nonets without a
contra, you know exactly what I mean.

The bottom line, at least from my point of view, is that these
arrangements are pleasant enough but have no characteristics
of a Mozart original composition or an arrangement of any
sort. The voice leadings are inconsistent with those of Mozart,
the loss of the two basset horns has presented the octet with a
problem that it cannot solve; i.e., the transformation of 4 solo
instrument pairs into 3. And the bass line has not been
satisfactorily incorporated into the octet version leaving chord
spacings that lack sufficient balance.

One final thing: why two octets? Why not one and how did the
movements of the two get selected? Two octets would have
been easier to sell (and more profitable) than one an hour long.
As for how they got to be in that form involves a knowledge of
some cryptic remarks on the autograph of the Gran Partitta's
13-instrument version (now in the Library of Congress).

The first page of each of the 7 movements has symbols that
appear cryptic and were until Dave Whitwell and I suggested
a solution to them in 1976. The symbols are these:

Movement 1 1
Movement 2 2
Movement 3 3
Movement 4 2X
Movement 5 1X
Movement 6 3X
Movement 7 4

Whitwell and I suggested that these symbols represent the
order of the movements in the two octet arrangement, one of
which consists of movements 1, 2, 3, and 7, and the other of
which consists of movements 5, 4, and 6 (in that order). It
seems to work.
====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================