Klarinet Archive - Posting 000135.txt from 1998/07

From: "Dee Hays" <deerich@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: Mozart and the V word
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 20:49:03 -0400

Still it behooves musicians to know as much as they can about the
performance practices of the era in which a piece of music was written. If
you don't know them, you won't have them available as an option. In other
words, you have limited your interpretation possibilities by the very fact
of not knowing them. An artist must know and understand his / her tools in
order to make the most effective choices in communicating his vision. Even
if you choose not to follow the practices of that era, you should know what
they are and why you are choosing to do it differently. After all e.e.
cummings did not choose his writing style out of ignorance of correct
English but out of a very thorough understanding of English and a specific
concept of what he wished to achieve.

Dee Hays
Canton, SD

-----Original Message-----
From: Paulette W. Gulakowski <pollyg@-----.com>
Date: Monday, July 06, 1998 7:10 PM
Subject: [kl] Re: Mozart and the V word

>P: Dan, that was well written and argued cleanly. However, I still say
>it is not really possible to know how an 18th century performer actually
>sounded and whether or not that sound matched the composer's intentions.
>How would Beethoven know??? No written descriptions, no matter how
>detailed, can describe a sound. Even a recording is not totally
>adequate. Music is NOW. Anyway, I write more from the perspective of
>the consumer and the teacher. I am not, and never wanted to be, a solo
>performer. I've heard music with no heart - music lauded by those
>blessed with erudition - and I'd rather spend the time programming my
>computer to play that way than listen to it in many cases.
>
>Down, girl, and thank you all!
>
>Paulette
>
>On Mon, 06 Jul 1998 05:47:09 EDT "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu"
><leeson@-----.edu> writes:
>>At least three different people have advanced the argument that
>>we could not possibly know what the performance practices were
>>in Mozart's day, so that the entire discussion that suggest that
>>these practices were important is both irrelevant and specious.
>>
>>To which I can only inquire, "What planet have you been living on?"
>>
>>The subject of performance practice, particularly that of the
>>18th century, is one of the most enormous areas of specialized
>>musical research. And if you start reading the literature now,
>>you might by 102 when you get about half way through it.
>>
>>There are a ton of books written by performers and composers of the
>>epoch that speak in great detail about how they played the
>>music of their period. And to suggest that this vast body of
>>literature does not exist or, worse, is unimportant, is
>>collossol arrogance run amok.
>>
>>It is also true that there is a great deal of information about
>>performance practice that we don't know, for example, the precise
>>difference between a stroke stacatto and a point stacatto, and
>>which repeats to take in a minuet, and whether all trills ended in
>>a nachschlag, or how seriously clarinet players of Mozart's day
>>took the details of non legato passages.
>>
>>I suspect that those who offered the opinion that we don't know
>>anything about how Mozart and his contemporaries played his music
>>were really saying, "I don't know anything about it so it cannot
>>be very important." And that, dear friends, is a dangerous
>>attitude to take because it presumes that the sayer's knowledge
>>constitutes the common knowledge.
>>
>>Someone else, in rebutting the arguments offered about the
>>importance of dealing with the details of performance practice
>>went so far as to offer some suggestion about how the music had
>>to come from the heart and "how we play the beginnings of
>>trills is not very important."
>>
>>To which I can only add, that great power in music performance is
>>knowledge of the minutiae and details. It is also the remark of
>>someone who knows very little about trills and, therefore, thinks
>>that how one plays them is of very little importance.
>>
>>Insofar as music coming from the heart, that is the kind of remark
>>that is heard from an amateur on the fringe of the music business.
>>It is a hollywood understand of music. Music comes from the head
>>and the heart has little to do with it.
>>
>>In sum and substance, any performer who approaches K. 622 knowing
>>nothing about the practices of the late eighteenth century (those
>>practices governing how one approaches and performs works of this
>>nature) is simply arrogant.
>>
>>
>>
>>=======================================
>>Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
>>Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
>>leeson@-----.edu
>>=======================================
>>
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