Klarinet Archive - Posting 001281.txt from 1998/03

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: Scott Morrow's view of arrangements
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 17:39:55 -0500

> From: MX%"sdm@-----.47
> Subj: Re: This business of instrumental substitution

>
> (tirade clipped here)
> >
> >This is the slippery slope that one gets to in all these
> >instrumental substitutions, from Till Eulenspiegel's
> >D clarinet part, to Mozart K. 622, to Sousa marches played
> >by a band without an E-flat cornet, to a wind quintet
> >arrangement of Beethoven, Op. 103. In every case, pitch
> >has been preserved, but timbre, character, and composer
> >intent have not.
> >
> >It is unchecked instrumental arrogance to presume that these
> >things don't matter and that there is no significant impact on
> >the music as a result of these decisions.
> >
> (more tirade clipped)
>
> Dan,
> Just to add a philosophical wrench into your always-eloquent apoplexy:
>
> When I was at Drexel University, I played in the Colonial Ensemble, a
> wind ensemble that played music which was popular in America during the
> Colonial and Early Federalist periods. This music ranged from imported
> European music (Mozart, Beethoven, etc.) to field marches and two-steps.
> Our performances were "narrated" by a history professor who gave the
> audience insight into the time period.

> The opera pieces we played by Mozart (and Rossini, etc.) were all
> written for wind octet: it was apparently the practice at that time to
> transcribe popular operatic scores for these more manageable "dance bands"
> for balls and soirees. I also remember hearing of a letter from Mozart to
> his father in which he mentioned this practice and was thrilled that
> "everyone was dancing" to music from his opera.

Scott, if you ever have the opportunity to do any research into this
kind of music (which was called "Harmoniemusik") you will find that
the preponderance of it was discovered by both David Whitwell of
Cal State Northridge and me. We were writing treatises on the use and
origin of harmonie arrangements of Mozart operas about 40 years ago,
and I am afraid that these works were not written for balls and soirees
as you suggest. They were arrangements made for the Austrian nobility
who liked opera very much and wanted them played as dinner music or
as concert music for their private concerts. Now this doesn't change
what you said very much and you were pretty close to the mark, but I
wanted you to be aware that the entire Harmoniemusik movement as it
exists today with all the publications of Mozart operas for wind octet,
and Beethoven piano sonatas for wind octet, and Haydn Symphonies for
wind octet, etc., etc., is, to a great extent, my doing.

As such, God has delivered you into my hands!!

You may be under the impression that composers, knowing that these
activities were going to happen to their works were happy about them
and accepted them as a part of doing business. But the one case
that you mention (i.e., Mozart writing to his father) doesn't say
anything at all that you suggest it does. What it says (and I am
quoting) is "I must hurry to make an arrangement of Entfuhrung aus
dem Serail for harmonie for if I don't someone will beat me to it
and make the money."

Now I don't care if Mozart arranged his work for harmonie, but you must
not tell me that someone else doing this thing had the composer's
approval and consent. And as a result of having that "approval and
consent" it is all OK, and it's a free world, and let's do what we
want, thankyou. Now, below, you have a question and I will answer it
in the right place. See below.

> Now the question:
> If the composer KNOWS this is an accepted practice of the period
> (ie., altering the instrumentation, and thus, timbre, of the composition),
> and is happy that the music is so well received (in this altered form),
> couldn't we extrapolate that the composer might not mind a more minimal
> alteration, such as using a clarinet in a different key?

No. We can not extrapolate what you suggest. I don't know what the
composer did and did not mind and neither do you. That is equivalent
to saying, "If Mozart had had a tenor sax he would have used one."

How do I know what he would have done under such circumstances?

In effect, your entire argument is nothing more than an accelleration of
the slippery slope about which I spoke. It justifies anything. It
tolerates anything. It suggests everything and all under the assumption
that what we want to do is OK with the composer.

> I realize this is a specific case, and thus not applicable to every
> composer who ever lived and died without specifically stating his/her
> wishes. And I also realize that the modern analogy could be extrapolated to
> a composer riding on an elevator, smiling as he watches the other passengers
> humming along to his melody seeping into the car through the sound system!
> But this brings us back to the dilemma: at what point do we cross the
> line between helping the composer's work get out to the public and
> bastardizing the music?
>

I'm very bad at broad philisophical arguments. I don't think we ought to
cross the line at all. That's what I'm saying, right or wrong, so it
is not appropriate for you to ask me where I think we should cross a line
that I don't think should be crossed.

> -Scott
>
> Scott D. Morrow
> DNA Synthesis Core Facility
> Department of Biochemistry
> The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
> Baltimore, MD 21205
> (410) 955-3631
>
=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================

   
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