Klarinet Archive - Posting 000478.txt from 1995/11

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Martin Pergler makes an observation
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 22:15:15 -0500

I was fascinated by Martin Pergler's note. In it he gave his assessment
of Neidich's playing and was quite specific about what it was he did
not care for. There were actually two issues: one had to do with his
playing (speed of stacatto for example) and one had to do with something
that Neidich did. The exact words were: "between the chord ending the adagio
and starting off the allegro, he puts in a cl[arinet] cadenza, arpeggiating
down and then meandering up. This doesn't appear in the parts of the
edition I have seen."

That comment of Martin is the subject of this note. It is a perfect
example of 99% of the players having strayed so far from a knowledge
of how to play music of this epoch that when someone (like Neidich)
comes along and does what the composer directs him to do, he is subject
to criticism. Martin, you could not be more in error, though it is not
your fault. I suspect that you, like most players, have little training
in what constitutes the subject of performance practice and it is a lack
of knowledge of the practice that caused you to say what you said.

In music of all periods, certain practices are assumed by all professional
players. No one writes it down. It is that everyone knows about it
and all do it that way. It is the practice of the day. For example,
today we play minuets and trios in a very special way: first time
through, all repeats; on the da capo, no repeats. You won't find it
written down anywhere, but when players get together, that's what they
do. It is the current performance practice for minuets and trios.

In the classic and very early romantic repertoire, there were
performance practices up the gazoo. Composers dropped hints here and
there, and players did exactly what it was that was hinted at. Everyone
knew it. Everyone did it.

Take the cadenza, for example. The composer never said, "Play a cadenza
here!". It was not necessary. Instead, he put out the cadenza signal,
and there was only one such signal. He put a fermata on the tonic
chord in the second inversion. That is a very unstable chord, and the
signal was to the soloist to resolve that instability through a very
stylizied dramatic cliche called the cadenza. Most 18th century players
could make them up on the spot. They knew where to do it, when to do it,
how to do it, and it was part of their training.

The place to which you are referring in the Beethoven sextet is not
a tonic chord in the second inversion and, therefore, no cadenza is
requested there and Neidich, whatever he did, did not play a cadenza there.
This is not just a matter of words, but of what a performer was supposed
to do when the composer called for a cadenza. He or she did cadenza things
and Neidich is not doing cadenza things at the point you mention even
though you used those words in describing what he played. You, like most
people, feel that when the orchestra stops and the player plays alone for
a while, that must be a cadenza. No way!!

The same problem occurs in the Mozart concerto and Mozart clarinet quintet.
Everybody talks about "the cadenza in the Mozart concerto" despite the fact
that there is none, there never has been, and it is damn unlikely that
there is ever going to be one.

So what is it that Neidich is doing at that spot?

Another signal that all classical composers put out was to place a
fermata over a dominant 7th chord at very dramatic places in a
composition, usally where there was a change of key or a change of
tempo, which is exactly what is happening in the Beethoven sextet at
the very point you mentioned. Look at the music. That is a dominant
7th chord. And to any working musician of the 18th century that meant
only one thing: EINGANG!!! which in English means "lead in."

The player was expected to do Eingang things and whatever they were,
they were miles away from cadenza things. The only similarities are
that both are introduced by fermatas and both cause the soloist to play
alone.

There were three rules to an Eingang and Neidich follows every one:

1) the instrument which is to play the melody AFTER the
dominant seventh chord is the person who plays the Eingang.
That's the clarinet and that's why it was Neidich who did it.
In the Gran Partitta at m. 14, it is also the clarinet. In
the Mozart piano/wind quintet, it is the piano. Take a look!

2) the Eingang generally ends a semi tone before the first note
of the new section; i.e., the 7th of the scale, though the
second of the scale was often used. In this way, the lead into
the new melody was made very cleaning and directly and most
comfortably for the audience. The alternative is to have the
melody played with no basis of a beginning; i.e., there is no
lead into it.

3) keep the Eingang to about 15 seconds tops (although there
are a few cases in Mozart concerti in which the Eingang that
was put in by Mozart for a student who did not know how to do
one was given a big hint). Some may be a little bigger, but never
as long or as involved as a cadenza because the two things
are not the same, serve different purposes, and have different
rhetorical functions. Oh yes. The Eingang was invaraibly
improvised on the spot.

So to call an Eingang a cadenza is like calling a baseball a football.
They are both balls, to be sure, but calling one the other will get you
killed in some areas of the country. And calling an Eingang a cadenza
would have gotten you killed in 1790.

So Neidich, on seeing the signal given to him personally by Beethoven
at that point in the composition made the right decision, did exactly
the right thing, and is criticized by you for doing it.

It's simply a case of the preponderance of clarinet players (and
musicians in general) having no knowledge of what it is they are
supposed to do when playing music of this period other than
playing the written notes (and they should not even be doing that
all the time).

This is not a criticism of you. It is a criticism of our entire music
education system which gives the impression that music is a laissez faire
activity in which anyone can do anything they wish and it causes music
to have little appropriate stylistic distinction between compositions from
different epochs. It makes Tchaikovsky think that his Mozartian suite
is just like Mozart's music. He must have been crazy to have written that
piece and think that he was paying homage to Mozart. He was paying homage
to his own ignorance about what were the constituent parts of Mozart's
music. That he loved Mozart's music is clear. That he had no idea of
what made it tick, is also very clear.

One can do whatever one wishes, of course, but if one adopts that attitude
then Mozart will sound like Brahms which will sound like Stravinsky. The
most serious problem facing any student of music today is that they are
generally not trained in the performance practices of the music periods in
whichthey will be obliged to play. They all have great hands, and
magnificent sounds, and sensational instincts, but there is damn little
discipline that says "Music of this period has certain special character-
istics and it is my business to make sure that these are displayed."

Neidich is doing exactly what we should all be doing and he deserves
no criticism for the doing of it. One might not like his execution,
but one cannot argue with his scholarship.

Have a nice day.

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