Klarinet Archive - Posting 000660.txt from 1998/10

From: "L. BORCHERT" <lborcher@-----.Edu>
Subj: [kl] Imagery and Performance (was Stravinsky 3 Pieces)
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 01:21:17 -0400

>
> I think there are two people in all three movements -- a man and a woman.
> What they are doing, I will leave to your imaginations. (I bet Dan knows --
> even if there aren't any trills!) ;^)
One of the factors that help make the art and practice of music a
universal language is the vagueness, as well as the specifics, that are
inherent. This may seem to be a paradoxical statement but consider for a
minute: If a person did not know the story of Til and Strauss's
interpretation of that legend, would they be able to pick up the story
just by listening to the music. The answer, which has been scientifically
tested, is: no they are not able to come up with the same story. Each
person came up with a unique story-line if they were so encouraged to do

that. This has been tested on other pieces as well.
When I was in an undergraduate psychology class, we had to design
a psychology experiment. I chose to do the age-old, kindergarten class
practice of playing a piece of music and having as many of my friends as I
could talk into it, draw a picture to the music. Much to my surprise, to
the sounds of Holst's _Planets_, they all had similar emotional content in
their pictures, generally being tired, lonely, stressed, etc. Guess what
time of the semester it was - the week before finals. The process was
more of a Rorschach test in that it sampled and tapped into the emotional
attitudes of my friends who participated.

I may be droning on here, but the point does relate to Stravinsky.
Regarding stories to the movements, I once had suggested to me that the
first movement was a Russian lullaby, the second a chase scene between a
butterfly (beginning) and a cat (begins in the middle section), with the
third being set in a jazz nightclub. Whether or not you agree with those
ideas, the practice of trying to understand musical content through the
imagination of story lines is a very common practice. The idea is, that
if you as a performer are better able to understand the piece, then you
can more effectively communicate that to your audience. If you haven't
tried doing this, you may be in for a pleasant surprise. For me, it makes
it much more fun. :-)
Some other suggestions:
-Weber, "Concertino" and especially the first concerto - an opera plot
-Poulenc, "Sonata" a Charlie Chaplin film
-Cavallini, "Adagio and Tarantella" - a party at a villa in Italy

> Also, we know that he had specifically pitched clarinets in mind for each of
> the movements but what system did he have in mind ... or doesn't that matter?
Whatever clarinet Werner Reinhart, the dedicatee, played or the
one Edmund Allegra played when he premiered the work in 1919.

Respectfully,
Laroy

Dr. Laroy Borchert
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM 88003

-------------------------------------------------------------------------