Klarinet Archive - Posting 000264.txt from 1996/04

From: Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns%cl.cam.ac.uk@-----.BITNET>
Subj: Re: Dan, Scott, Michelangelo and improvement
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 14:28:40 -0400

I believe there's a confusion here. The original poster (whose name
I've, characteristically, forgotten -- nothing personal) asked "what's
wrong with _improving_ a piece?"

Dan gave a good example of "improving" Michelangelo's David, in a way
that would hardly be acceptable anywhere. Dan was making a point, and
was therefore being extreme.

Dan's example provoked a diatribe from Scott D. Morrow, where (if I
read him correctly) he was saying that interpretations can quite
reasonably change. I don't believe Dan was denying that.

Perhaps I can offer a more realistic example. Mozart did an
arrangement of Handel's Messiah, to `improve' it for Viennese ears.
Beethoven, shown this stuff, famously said that Handel's work would
have done perfectly well without improvement.

Nowadays, Mozart's arrangement is occasionally given; it's quite fun,
but it's not Handel. It's always introduced as what it is: Mozart's
arrangement.

Now suppose that Stoltzman happens to think he can "improve" K.622;
suppose he were to write out his improvements, and someone were to
show them to (say) Michael Berkeley (a name that springs to mind as
the last composer I heard talking -- he has a radio show here).
Michael B., mild mannered man though he is, would hardly say less than
"it could do without improvement". I don't claim that Michael B.'s
opinion is on a par with _anything_ that Beethoven might have said; I
would merely claim that he has valid cause to talk that way.

But maybe Stoltzman's stuff could catch on; in that case, surely one
would like to hear people describe it as an arrangement?

However, it's not as easy as all that.

Last month, I heard a stunning performance of Bach's St. Matthew
Passion, given in English by the (London) Bach Choir plus a small
chamber orchestra. The Bach choir is *huge* ... probably ten
(twenty?) times the size of anything Bach might have used. When I got
home, I put on Ton Koopman's `original instruments', small choir
recording of it: nothing like...

Was the London performance an interpretation of Bach, a translation of
Bach, or an arrangement of Bach?

I really don't know.

To come back to K.622; there are those who can't be bothered to do
other than play it beautifully. It was from such a recording that I
learnt to love the piece, in the 50s. Now we've the benefit of
enormous research into the piece, the development of bassett
clarinets, and truly astounding technique on the part of the world's
solo clarinettists. How many recordings were there in Bruce Currie's
collection? How would one characterise them?

I'll bet there are a good many that Bruce can tell the difference
between, by ear, in a very short time. Even in passages where they're
playing the same notes, with pretty similar articulation, they're
different. They're *interpreted* differently.

IMHO, there's room for Stoltzmanian acrobatics (if he can find a
market for them), but they're not really the "real thing". I believe
that, with a work of the character of K.622, there'll be
interpretations enough to satisfy most tastes. Let's not claim we're
"improving" something of the stature of K.622...

Robin Fairbairns