Klarinet Archive - Posting 000437.txt from 1998/10

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: RE: [kl] 1234/2341
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 11:35:19 -0400

On Sat, 10 Oct 1998 08:15:13, hickling@-----.Net said:

[snip]

> Where accents fall is a matter for the player's understanding of what
> the composer probably wanted, filtered through her or his experience
> and musical taste.
>
> If the first note of four 16th notes doesn't get a slight emphasis, in
> order to preserve clarity of the subdivision and distinguish it from
> a triplet or a five-note run, whatever that might be called, then you
> have a bland, arhythmic fog. Some scores might call for this. Debussy,
> for instance, clearly wanted no strong rhythmic feeling in many of his
> works. But on the whole, I think the idea of no accents is utter
> nonsense.

At this point, we might limit our discussion to why the use of the word
'accent' is a difficulty -- it tends to mean something out of the
ordinary, something applied to the music. That's what Fay was objecting
to, I think. But you are also right, in that we almost never play an
unmodulated group of 16th notes, just as we almost never speak an
unmodulated sequence of syllables when we read poetry.

The key to resolving this difficulty is to see that we may create
perceptual groupings without involving ourselves in making accents. A
useful analogy for this is the analogy between a sequence of groupings
like 1234, 1234, 1234 and a sequence of shallow, non-breaking waves on a
calm sea. The beginning of each wave, like the beginning of each bar,
has more energy, in some sense, than the rest of the bar, but there need
be no discontinuity, or accent. It is a natural modulation.

When phrase marks are written, often against the bar, in *classical
music*, the 'normal' structure for the group of notes under the slur is
the same. This means that a normal classical slur is essentially a
diminution of energy, corresponding to the bowstroke of the period --
and again, there need be no discontinuity between bowstrokes, just as
there need be no discontinuity between non-breaking waves, nor
discontinuity between syllables in speech.

This greater energy at the beginning of a bar or classical phrase may be
represented in a variety of ways: warmer, more energetic, brighter,
louder, more insistent or more stroked are a few ideas to be going on
with, but by no means all of these would appropriate to any one
particular passage.

Remember in all of this that I am just talking about what *normally*
happens -- what the rules of the *style* are. There is no implication
that these rules are prescriptive. They are rather a background against
which expressive playing may take place.

When there is no such stylistic background, we have to resort to writing
in lots of dynamic marks, and tinker with dynamics to organise the
balance. Wind and brass players write in fortepianos on held chords,
for example.

Mozart wrote no such dynamics into his scores and parts, and he
was nothing if not a working professional.

Why do we need to?

Mozart also took the trouble to write in slurs that modern players, and
editors, very often change.

Do we think that he didn't know what he was doing?

Tony
--
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