Klarinet Archive - Posting 000495.txt from 1999/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Winterthur and Weston
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 03:25:56 -0400

On Tue, 11 May 1999 17:20:14 -1300, leeson@-----.edu said:

> > We'll all appreciate your efforts, Dan. At least after putting the
> > fragment out into the public arena we can all argue from common
> > ground.
>
> OK. I'll do it, but I need an address to send it to.

This is all getting a bit out of hand. This morning, I will take my
copy of the fragment (which I removed also from NMA) to a good copying
shop, have it copied, and send it to Mark, whose address I already have.

So, don't bother, Dan.

I was the one who thought the fragment worth looking at, so I should be
the one to do it. I just thought that someone might have it handier,
that's all.

By the way, I'm not suggesting that anyone will learn anything new from
the fragment. It's been incorporated in NMA, and most of what is in the
solo part is transcribed in Brymer's book (why not all of it, for
heaven's sake? damned publishers, probably) -- though it's nice to see
bars 88 and 89, in what I'd say is their more potent form, actually in
Mozart's handwriting. (We could discuss that when everyone can see what
we're talking about.)

My point was simply, and apologies for making it again, that it's very
clearly written even if incomplete, and an important piece of evidence,
particularly because the source for the first edition must lie
chronologically between the Mozart autograph and the first edition, even
if that source wasn't the autograph itself. (Dan said, "Whoever edited
it, edited out the basset notes and I have no idea what that person's
source for the edition was.") The fragment itself is obviously before
any of that.

So the fact that the fragment and the first edition differ in the solo
line so little, apart from the basset notes, constrains how different
the autograph might be from the first edition, at any rate for 199 bars,
and again, apart from the basset notes. And I'd say that 199 bars is a
large enough sample to take seriously. So Schwenke's elaborations go
out of the window as a credible source for what Mozart intended for the
solo line.

David Glenn has the sensible approach to all this, I'd say. Look at
NMA, look at Winterthur, look at AMZ, look at Schwenke...oh, I'm sorry,
we can't do that, can we?...well, look at what *Pamela Weston* thinks we
ought to look at in Schwenke, out of the context of his string parts,
ignore all the dynamics that Weston or Schwenke add, not to mention the
ones added by the Trio di Clarone et al, and then *look at the whole
score*, and come to your own conclusions about how the Mozart concerto
best comes to life.

That bit about the whole score is too often forgotten, of course. I
heard Thea say the other day, apropos someone's clarinet part:

"You realise, of course, that the composer *never ever saw* what you're
looking at there?"

<Blank incomprehension from the student>

Nice one, Thea. I wish I could persuade her to join in here, but she'd
think it would take her away from more important things.

Which reminds me.....

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

... Computers can never replace human stupidity.

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