Klarinet Archive - Posting 000191.txt from 1996/06

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re Craig Hill's note on clarinet sound characteristics
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:27:49 -0400

What a thoughtful, intelligent, and well written note. I enjoyed it
enormously. Read it several times as well. It is one of the joys
of being on this list that one has a chance to read and digest such
thoughtful analyses (coupled with some damn fine prose).

Our differences in perspective become manifest in a statement such as
"The passage that Dan quotes is fine but why not go to the primary
source: the instruments themselves. He who has ears let him/her hear!"

The minute one leaves objective historical data and makes the transition
to subjective assessments of how something sounds to him or her, one
gets on the fast downhill slope to hell!! It is so very easy to say,
"but it sounds the same" (or "different" or anything). One is voicing
an opinion. They are terrific things to have and to hold, but in any
discussion of this kind opinions on how something sounds to you (or
to me or to anyone) are worthless. There is no way to measure how
something sounds. So one can say anything or make any assertion and
neither be contradicted or supported. It's opinion.

The worst tools available for deciding historical/musical issues are
the human ears. They hear what the mind tells them to hear. I just
got done with a two year study of the Mozart Requiem (that was published
in the 1996 Mozart Jahrbuch) that says outright, that people reject
Sussmayr's authorship here and there because they don't want anyone
but Mozart to have been the author of that work. So all evidence to
the contrary is objected to with the statement "But Mozart would not
have written it that way. He would have written it this way." Or else,
"That section is not good enough to have been written by Mozart" whatever
that means.

How do I know what he would have done? How does anyone know what he
would have done?

How does anyone make a firm decision based on how something sounds to
him or her.

Personally, I hear an enormous difference between clarinet types, but
I cannot offer this as evidence any more than I agree to accept someone
else's opinion as evidence.

We are in a very emotional business, music that is. Every time we
play something, we do so based on our opinions of how something should
go (coupled with a knowledge of period, of course). But when we leave
the performing arena and enter the arena of historical study, the
ears have to go, the emotions have to go, the opinions have to go.
The only thing that stays is hard, measurable evidence. And opinions
are not a viable substitute for it.

Evidence is what counts. It can only be contradicted with more
evidence. Opinion that the old evidence is dead because it is old
and "I hear the difference" is, in my view, worthless information.

One final point, the suggestion is made that "if a composer has chosen
a key, and then is 'forced' by virtue of the key to choose a clarinet
that s/he feels doesn't suit the music, then the solution is imply
DON'T WRITE FOR THE CLARINET."

Excellent point and it is exactly what Mozart does!! Examine the
long scene-to-scene, key-to-key writings in all the ensembles of
Figaro. He is zapping along using clarinet and the key changes.
Sometimes he continues use of the clarinets (in a different pitch),
and sometimes he stops writing for clarinets until whatever causes
him to want to include them happens. Then they are back in again.

AT least in the case of Mozart, he did not use clarinets when he
did not want to use them, or else their key signature gave him
problems of choice of which one to use, I think the former more than
the latter. This is also true in Beethoven, though to a lesser
degree and more in his ballets than in his only opera.

None of these minor disagreements cause diminshment of respect I
have for that wonderful note and I hope and look forward to many
more like it. They make my day! They make 'em good in Australia!!

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

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org