Klarinet Archive - Posting 000159.txt from 1999/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Pamela Weston's Mozart
Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 01:23:41 -0400

OK, Dan, I was lying there in bed, and I thought I might have unduly
disturbed or excited you, so I got up a bit early to tell you that all
it is, is that Pamela has based her edition on a contemporary
arrangement of the concerto for fortepiano and string quartet that she
has dug up.

The arrangement is by C.F.G. Schwencke (1767 - 1822), and it was
published between 1799 and 1805 by Boehme.

A lot of it is pretty much unplayable on the period clarinet, and I
think it's a bit of a disaster all round that it's been published in
this way, as a *version* of the clarinet concerto, as opposed to being
published as an interesting arrangement of it. (You might pick up some
ideas about contemporary embellishments, it's true, but that's all.)

It should make lessons 'interesting', if students turn up with it.

The point for me is that the first part of the first edition is so close
to the Winterthur fragment that such a fortepiano arrangement doesn't
really cast doubt on the veracity of the first edition, any more than
does the version for viola, whereas Pamela seems to think the contrary;
and the almost routine filling out of long notes and constant trills and
embellishments in the arrangement, which she incorporates wholesale,
might have been necessary on the fortepiano, but aren't necessary, or
indeed idiomatic, on the clarinet.

Anyhow, the purpose of embellishment, as you've said, isn't to *start*
with something different from what the composer wrote -- and for me it's
quite clearly that, certainly without any doubt at all in the first part
of the first movement.

You have to see it, really, diminished 7ths, chromatics and quintuplets
and all.

But of course, you might have a different opinion of it.

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

... If I save the whales, where do I keep them?

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