Klarinet Archive - Posting 000824.txt from 1999/01

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Subjective and Objective
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 22:55:04 -0500

On Sun, 17 Jan 1999 19:52:21 -0500, klarinet@-----.net said:

> What is really exciting to me, is not the stuggle with the instrument,
> but what we can create together when we work together; then not just
> I, but listerners get excited.......remember the listeners, everyone?

I agree. But I think you'll find that the notion of exciting
performance being in some way connected with restriction is a valid one.
Many top-flight performers speak of it.

It's not that you want performances to be imperfect -- it's that the
relationship of the player to what he is playing is also communicated,
and can even be one of the most important parts of the communication.
That certainly involves the listener.

It's often pointed out that the bassoon solo at the beginning of the
Rite of Spring has lost much of its meaning now that people play it so
fluently. Orchestral players are going back to playing it on the French
basson to recreate the tension. (This is a somewhat crude example, but
there are more subtle ones.)

I definitely have found new ways of thinking of the Mozart Concerto
during the years since I started playing it on a period instrument, as a
direct result of working at the technical difficulties.

In composition, it's almost a commonplace. Poets discover new ways to
say things because they have to satisfy a rhyme and rhythm scheme in
poetry, and Schoenberg had to create a new system to 'work against' when
expanded chromaticism burst open, making *anything* possible.

It does rather seem as though you can't have something important for
nothing. Why is it that we can readily imagine that a perfectly even C
major scale over the full range of the clarinet might be really
exciting in an appropriate context, but are quite sure that an equally
perfect glissando with one finger on the piano wouldn't be?

And when Busoni made his transcriptions of Bach violin music for the
piano, why did he have to complicate the texture to the extent that it
became virtuoso music for the new instrument, in order to get anywhere
near the same effect?

Going back to the original subject -- of course, you can say that the
new improved clarinet will make even more complicated music possible,
and that's true.

But I doubt that it will help Mozart much -- indeed, most players of
today are looking for Mozart instruments in precisely the opposite
direction!

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

Believing Truth is staring at the sun
Which but destroys the power that could perceive.

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