Klarinet Archive - Posting 000274.txt from 1995/12

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Sean Talbot's inquiry about Handel's Messiah
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 06:49:02 -0500

In the latter part of his life, Mozart was asked to to make three
arrangements of Handel choral works, one of which was Messiah.
They had been scheduled for performances in a church that had no
organ and a redo of the orchestral parts was suggested to overcome
that limitation.

Mozart got the gig and began it simply enough. The Overture and
first tenor aria ("Comfort Ye My People") are simple clarinet
parts that give block harmony. But then, his genius overtook him
and he began to use the clarinets in significant ways.

I played the Handel/Mozart Messiah several times and always found
it a remarkable arrangement. Of special note is his use of
clarinets to introduce chromatic harmonies foreign to the Baroque
era in the bass aria "The People Who (that?) Walked In Darkness."

The problem is that in doing the marvellous things he did, Mozart
also created a strange style; i.e., it's a baroque piece with
classical, even early Romantic, harmonies and orchestral usage.
An analogy would be Schoenberg's transcription for orchestra
of the Brahms piano quartet. It's incredibly magnificent but
changes the nature of the piece.

If you take the Venus di Milo and put a hoop skirt on it, you have
an idea of what happens when you clash styles. Nothing wrong
with a hoop skirt. Nothing wrong with the Venus. But they have
problems when you put them both together.

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