Klarinet Archive - Posting 000148.txt from 1998/07

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [kl] Re: Mozart and the V word
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 08:29:59 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.71
> Subj: [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.

In effect, what you state is that no arguments that can be advanced
on the basis of reportorial information can possibly satisfy you,
and in that case, you are a free agent to do as you wish.

Since this is the case, it does not pay to continue such a dialogue.
Do as you wish. Make up the rules as you go along. That is
probably enough to get you a gig or two with the New England Polka
band that does all the White Eagle Halls of Massachussets. It will
not get you far in the world of music that I suspect you would like
to belong to.

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.

Let's change tactics. You talk a great deal about music with no
heart. Let me be absolutely serious in the following question:
do you really believe that the human heart has any role whatsoever
in music except for the pumping of the blood through the body?

I doubt if you do believe that, somehow, the heart is engaged in
emotional issues. That's poetry and love stories. In life, the
romantic and/or sexual impulse (which is really what we are talking
about when we speak of this element of music) comes from somewhere
other than the heart. It is clearly not the liver, the spleen, the
left lung, etc. So what organ in the human body (and it is not that
organ either) is responsible for the erotic or romantic in music?

Without become too personal, exactly what part of your body produces
all of this romance about which you seem to be inordinately attracted?
You infer that intellectual approaches to music are as exciting as
programming your computer, so you certainly know where that aspect
of music comes from; i.e., the head. OK. I'll accept that.

But from where does all the gooey stuff come that attracts you, and
once we understand where it comes from, then maybe we can find a
way to understand it better.

The difficulty in speaking about music precisely is that eventually
you have to be so precise that you wind up throwing out a lot of
junk that has become almost biblical over the years, like "dark
sound" and "play from the heart" and "German style" and those
million phrases that have absolutely no meaning (and even less
value) that have become a part of your belief system.

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

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