Klarinet Archive - Posting 000208.txt from 1999/05

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] In defense of Pamela Weston
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 03:35:28 -0400

I'm at a very big disadvantage here because I have not seen Pamela's
edition of K. 622 so I really can't comment on it. But insofar as
her (or anyone's) use of basset notes, no one has any authority. The
problem is a peculiar one and it has no precedent in clarinet playing
and possibly no analogous situation in all of printed music.

What Mozart wrote for basset clarinet is unknown. The autograph
has disappeared and we'll probably never see it. (More on this
below.) So what we have all been playing is based on an edition
made in 1803 which presented the music for traditional clarinet.
Whoever edited it, edited out the basset notes and I have no idea
what that person's source for the edition was.

So no basset clarinet version was ever printed until about 30 years
ago and that one and every one since then has been an editor's guess
as to where to put the low basset notes in the solo part. Therefore,
Pamela's basset clarinet version is (at least in terms of the
precise text she suggests) no better nor any worse than say the
Barenreiter edition that I reviewed for The Clarinet about 20
years ago. None of them have any authority.

The fact of the matter is that the entire text of K. 622 as we
have known it and played it for traditional clarinet cannot be
substantiated with anything that existed during Mozart's lifetime.

I am sure that Pamela (or anyone) given the kind of freedom one
gets in editing an important work for which there is no
authoritative source can go off the deep end and put a lot in
it that s/he personally likes, even if it is stylistically
questionable.

But I'm really going too far here because I don't know what Pamela
did IN ADDITION TO HER CHOICE OF BASSET NOTES. That seems to me
from all the notes on the matter to be the central issue here. And
I'll have to get a copy of the edition to see for myself what is
going on.

But I'll tell you my dream, and it is a recurring one based on
a real life incident. I was in the Austrian National Library in
Vienna doing some research and was taken downstairs to view the
things I needed to see. One the way, and lining the halls from
floor to ceiling were big bags of things, each one the size of
an army duffle bag. There must have been thousands of them taking
up space in every corridor.

So I asked my guide what those bags were and he said that it
was manuscript music from mid-1700 all the way up to mid-1800
and it had been bagged and moved around for the last century.
No one really knew what was in those bags. And to compound
the situation, that is the way at least 50 libraries are in
Europe; i.e., lots of stuff that no one has had any time to
get around to for 100 years or more.

And now to my dream: I always dream of going through those bags
and finding the autograph of K. 622. And then, like an erotic
dream in which I am about to play hide the salami with Rita
Hayworth or someone equally beautiful, I always wake up at that
instant with the image of the first page sharp in my mind. In
my dream I know it to be the Mozart autograph but I have no idea
how I know it because the image of the first page goes out of
focus the moment I wake up.

I'll tell you one thing. I like to think of myself as an honest
person, but if I ever found something like that, it would go
underneath my shirt and out the door so fast that your head
would spin. Then I'd make a xerographic copy for the Mozarteum
in Salzburg, send it anonymously to them, and put the original away
in my own safe deposit box until the heat blew over -- say 200
years or so -- while I looked at it once a week over those two
centuries. Then I'd sell it at an auction in Southebys for
about $5,000,000.

Some dream, eh??

=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================

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