Klarinet Archive - Posting 000200.txt from 1997/06

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: Improvisation
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 21:57:03 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.05
> Subj: Improvisation

> All this talk about improvisation got me to thinking. I have never heard
> anyone mention ever having picked up any good Mozart "licks" anywhere...or
> even Vivaldi licks....or Stanley Drucker licks. I guess if I ended the
> Mozart Concerto or Brahams Sonata with the "shave and a haircut six bits"
> lick it would be alright in someone's opinion. I can see someone being
> creative when coming up with a cadenza, but for the most part I much rather
> hear someone play the music as it was intended to be played. If you want to
> improvize spend your time doing it to something other than the standard
> clarinet literature.
>
> Just my unsolicited opinion.

Gary, I appreciate the time you took to give us your views. And I don't
have any problem if it is something that you don't wish to do, and for
any reason. And it also may be that not only don't you want to do it,
you don't want to hear anyone else do it at a concert that you attend.

But when you say that you would "much rather hear someone play the
music as it was intended to be played," then I am afraid that you
are on extraordinarily weak ground. Music of the period to which
we are referring (and only that period, I should add) was definitely
created with the assumption that it was going to be improvised upon
during performance. The fact that you have a thing against doing it
simply speaks to how far we have gone away from the original
intentions of a composer of the late 18th century. Because if you
were a colleague of Stadler and performing ca. 1785, and did not
do this thing, then you would have put an extreme restriction on
your career, just as if today you could not transpose. It was a
required skill then.

If you think that the discussion has been about interpolating
"shave and a haircut, six bits" as you said, then clearly we
don't have much basis for discussion since no one has made
the slightest suggestion that such an approach is rational.

>
> Gary Hopkins
>
=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
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