Klarinet Archive - Posting 000281.txt from 1997/10

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: K. 622 on Flute (was Re: clarinet works)
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 22:26:35 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.95
> Subj: K. 622 on Flute (was Re: clarinet works)

> Dan Leeson has responded to the comments which follow, suggesting that the
> Mozart Concerto could be played on a flute or horn.
>
> > I am in total agreement Shelley. Mozart's Concerto seems as though it
> > could be played on a flute, or horn, and is a little more generic when
> > it comes to using the specific flavor the the clarinet.
>
> Dan's comments follow:
>
> >>If you were a hornist or a flutist you would not make this statement.
> >>The tessitura of K. 622 is beyond that of either a flute or a horn.
> >>It is also very unidiomatic for flute and the horn could not conceivably
> >>execute 50% of it. It would be ludicrous for either instrument to attempt
> the work.
>
> It may well be ludicrous to do on flute, but James Galway has done it and put
> the evidence in a recording. I believe he has changed the key to G. I'm not
> sure why this was done, but it certainly doesn't help him to play some of the
> arpeggios without "compressing" them (sort of forcing three octaves worth of
> notes into two octaves!).
>
> The flute playing is excellent (if you like Galway's style), but Mozart's
> structure is severely distorted.

This reminds me of a joke about the Tsar of all the Russias.

Two poor farmers were speaking and one said that he had heard that
the Tsar ate blini every day!

"What?" said the first. "I've never eaten them in my life. How
can he eat them at will?"

The second said, "Why don't we make them. I'll get a recipe and
we'll make a few and eat them to see if we like them."

The two agreed, got a recipe and started to make the blini.

"The first ingredient is 3 cups of the finest flour," said the first.

"We don't have any flour."

"Try sawdust."

So that is what they use for the flour.

"Next, add 1 cup of heavy cream."

"We don't have any cream."

"Use water instead."

So they make a second substitution. And they do this for ingredient
after ingredient. Finally they come up with some that looks vaguely
like a blini and the first one takes a bite of it.

"Ptui!!!" he says. "I simply cannot see what the Tsar sees in
blini!"

So Galway took the Mozart concerto, changed 60% of the arpeggios
so that they could be played on the flute, put much of it an
octave or even two higher than where the orchestral scoring
demands it, substituted water for cream, sawdust for flour and...

"Ptui!! I don't see what the public sees in the Mozart clarinet
concerto."

>
> Don Yungkurth (DYungkurth@-----.com)
=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
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