Klarinet Archive - Posting 000186.txt from 1998/07

From: "Bert Amten" <major.bam@-----.se>
Subj: [kl] SV: [kl] Re: Mozart and the V word
Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 05:15:31 -0400

This sparks off a 40 year old question with me namely: How contemporary
should performers be in regard to composers and they way their works were
played when the composer lived?

The original reason was that when I was 17 years old I put this question to
Andres Segovia the famous guitar-player. At the time he was heavily ad-
vocating the use of Augustine strings. They are still produced and the main
material is some kind of nylon. This gives an entirely different sound to
the
instrument as well as it gives technical possibilities to the player that
the old
strings do not give. But playing Bach on them or old Spanish music gives an
entirely different sound. The harsh answer was something like: I am using
them
just because of the increased possibilities of expression that they offer
me.

This question has of course been up with a lot of friends that are
professional
musicians over the years. Not the least since the Swedish press to and from
fires off this question.

Should all the equipment be contemporary? Should the clarinetists play
on contemporary instruments and the violinists change their strings from
what they use today. How far should they go in their interpretation of the
music in regard to what was used when the composer lived? Should the
music only be played in contemporary houses.

It looks as if these issues are simple but they are not! For instance there
are
purists in this country (Sweden) advocating that a Mozart opera should only
be played in a contemporary opera house using instruments and even stage
settings of the time.

If you are as happy as I am living 45 minutes or so from the Drottningholm
Theatre
built 1764 - 1766 as a new stage for the Swedish opera and still in use in
it's
original shape, then it is easy to say that this is the correct way of
playing
Mozart. In the summer I could easily take that trip to hear operas being
played in
such a setting. It is marvelous I can tell you. (The house is not heated,
because of
the risk of destroying it, so it is only in use during summer time.)
But then the Met should never play any Mozart operas nor should
the Royal Stockholm Opera. Could we even afford to play operas in small
theatres like this, or would the music die? Should you force the public to
be
dressed in contemporary clothes as well (this has happened)? These ques-
tions could be transferred to any concert hall and any music that is "old".

If you decide on going the absolute "pure" way, maybe the VPO and other or-
chestras are right, namely that no one who was brought up and has his/her
musical schoolage outside of a limited area in Europe could have the "right
sound"/interpretation of for instance Mozart. Even the expression that "this
is music made by white males and played by white males" could eventually
be justified (I have heard opinions like this in Germany and Austria).

I believe that these basic issues has no definite answers, but they are
related
to both the issue on Ricardo Morales instrument earlier and the issue of
per-
formance practice that is discussed on this list right now.

In a way I think that we are avoiding these main issues and discuss only on
technicalities of what the clarinetists are doing, but most music is made
for
several instruments and is played in a certain environmental setting, and
then I think that we have to discuss the whole setting as a major issue
first
and come down to details such as wether to use point or stroke staccato
afterwards if there could be some kind of consensus. It is of course much
easier to speak about the details and avoid the discussion on the whole
performance in general.

So where is the limit on how far a musician should go when playing music
written
by for instance Mozart? Is there a limit? If not should musicians avoid
playing in
concert halls and opera houses built to todays standards? When playing for
instance
K622 on the correct instrument as of Mozart's time should the rest of the
instruments
also be as close to contemporary instruments as ever possible or should
clarinetists
otherwise refuse to play? If the clarinetist refuses then there is the
practical issue if
that clarinetist will have any more jobs? Should every interpretation be as
close to the original
playing as possible or is there a certain room for a more "modern"
interpretation? If there
is how do we determine the limit for this freedom of interpretation?

Plse do not flame me because of my language. I do know that English is not
my
mother language. It could well be that I have not translated German to
English
exactly either, but in essence what I wrote about VPO and what I heard in
Ger-
many and Austria is correct.

Regards
Bert Amten

-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Till: klarinet@-----.org>
Datum: den 6 juli 1998 14:49
Ämne: [kl] Re: Mozart and the V word

>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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