Klarinet Archive - Posting 000253.txt from 1999/05

From: Note Staff Unlimited <notestaff@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] In defense of Pamela Weston
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 20:54:26 -0400

Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu schrieb:

> 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
> =======================================
>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yes! What a beautiful dream!

"In defense of Pamela Weston", she has done tremendous things for the
clarinet / music world. Although I don't see the logic of arranging the
Schwenke arrangement, I am very grateful to have it. If she hadn't done it,
perhaps it wouldn't be so easily available. Actually, it's more a
transcription than an arrangement.

In fact, in her arrangement/transcription, she copes with the same problem
that the original arranger had: fitting the arrangement to the instrument.
Since a piano has a greater range than a clarinet or basset clarinet, there
are places where Ms. Weston makes similar breaks in the line to accomodate.

In further "defense", I wrote to Ms. Weston with a question about her
research and conflicting statements as to Stadlers return to Vienna after
Mozart's death. Ms. Weston was so kind as to reply with a thoughtful answer
although she didn't know me from Adam.

Like you say, Dan, any version for basset clarinet remains largely guess
work. In taking ideas from the Schwenke/Weston version, I did not go against
anything from the Winterthur manuscript or the 1802 AMZ review. The rest must
still remain "educated guessing". Thank goodness, it remains a great work
even so.

David
David Glenn
notestaff@-----.de
dl_glenn@-----.de

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