Klarinet Archive - Posting 000921.txt from 1999/09

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Improvisation, Marcellus, etc.
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 23:52:06 -0400

gtgallant wrote,
>[snip] Back in the "day", performers were often judged on how well they
could improvise cadenzas, pieces, etc. [snip] I believe that if one is to
play "old" music, one must live in the past and observe the composers/periods
intentions. If Bach himself embellished his own compositions in a Baroque
style, why would a performer assume they are smarter than him and not
embellish? The answer is ignorance, low intellect, stupidity, lack of musical
understanding, immaturity, etc, etc. There are no buts, excuses, or "special
cases". A boring, ignorant performer gives a boring, ignorant performance.>

I also prefer to hear performances by musicians who respect the composer's
musical tradition (to the extent that we understand it) rather than impose
modern concepts on old music, but in a discussion of Baroque improvisation,
J. S. Bach can serve as an example both for and against improvising on
Baroque compositions. I wish I could hear him improvise. Better known in
his own lifetime as an organ virtuoso than as a composer, he travelled around
not only giving improvisational recitals but playing one-on-one challenge
matches, pitting his improvisations against those of other organists.

He embarrassed many a rival. My favorite story (repeated in most biographies
of Bach, including Philipp Spitta, _Johann Sebastian Bach_, Novello & Co.,
1889, now available reprinted by Dover): French organist Jean Louis
Marchand, then living in Dresden, boasted a lot, in public, about his own
prowess. Predictably, Bach challenged him to an improvisational duel.
Marchand accepted, but at the last minute, he stood up Bach and the audience
waiting at a nobleman's salon and sneaked out of town!

Yet Bach also anticipated later musical tradition, in that, to a much greater
extent than most Baroque composers, he tried to limit performers'
improvisations on his own music. Like F. Couperin, Bach wrote out his
ornamentation in far more detail than was common at the time. Enough
autograph manuscripts of Bach survive to make clear that he sometimes (though
not always) even wrote out ornaments in full, instead of using conventional
symbols for mordants and so forth. In fact (citing from Spitta again),
Bach's inclination to dictate exactly what musicians should play or sing
offended some of them. How dare this -- this *mere composer*! -- tell them,
the virtuosi, how to ornament his notes! They expected to treat the written
score as something closer to a jazz chart, I guess, something more like the
notes Handel sketched out for his own improvisations as soloist in his organ
concertos. (Those "scores" of the solo parts for Handel's organ concertos
are drastic later reconstructions.) It seems to me that Bach usually
indicated the places where he wanted the performer to improvise. In cases
where there's good evidence that Bach, not an editor, wrote out the
ornamentation in full or used a specific and clear sign for a particular type
of ornament, I think altering it in performance is no different than
altering a modern composer's score.

The same goes for F. Couperin, who worked out an idiosyncratic system of
ornament notation and left detailed directions on how he wanted these
ornaments played. (See the reprints of his instructions in Dover scores of
F. Couperin's keyboard suites.) He not only wrote in copious ornamentation
in finicking detail but drove his publishers crazy with his careful
proofreading. He made them reprint when he caught errors (though scholars
have found some misprints and alleged misprints to fight about, naturally).
Therefore, in the rare cases where F. Couperin wrote in comparatively
*little* ornamentation, as in "Les Barricades Mysterieuses," for example, I'm
persuaded that if he'd wanted ornaments, he would have written them, so I
don't like to hear a performer add them. It's necessary to take even Baroque
composers case-by-case instead of generalizing too much about them.

People who play Baroque music (or Mozart, for that matter) on modern
clarinets complain of anachronism at our peril anyway, although I'm not
terribly careful about this sort of thing. I liked those tacky, overblown
old Stokowski Bach transcriptions all along and noted with glee that this
year, Leonard Slatkin performed one of them with the National Symphony
Orchestra. I do think original Bach is *better* than Stokowskized Bach,
fortunately for me, since purist preferences are so much easier to defend
than anachronistic ones!

Still...it's possible to overdo anything, even historical correctness. My
last piano teacher felt so strongly about avoiding anachronism that during
the seven years I studied with him, he never assigned me any Baroque keyboard
music because he thought those composers never wrote for the piano. He
assigned me only one Mozart sonata and complained the whole time that it
really ought to be played only on fortepiano, not on his Steinway. I would
have loved access to a harpsichord, but since that option didn't exist for
me, the teacher's attitude strikes me as excessive. Better Bach on a piano
than no Bach. Better Bach on a kazoo than no Bach; although I never had to
make *that* choice! ;-)

I never made any futile attempt to argue with him. (Today I wouldn't
consider an argument futile. The inventory of Bach's possessions when he
died included an early fortepiano. Other inventories show that Purcell,
Scarlatti and F. Couperin had access to fortepianos through their employers.)
I sort of forgot to mention to my parents that he never assigned the Baroque
music I spent much of my time practicing at home. If my mother had found out
how rigid he was, she would have switched me to another teacher. I didn't
want a different teacher. I respect my teacher to this day, even
though...well, let's just say that if he spins in his grave every time I play
something on the "wrong" instrument, he'll be the fittest corpse at the next
Zombie Jamboree.

IMHO, better to play great music wrong than not to play it at all. The
mistakes or differences of opinion themselves are interesting history for
their own sake. I'm not convinced the performances of Marcellus will
disappear. Pianists still learn from Walter Gieseking, for instance, even
though his wrong notes and romantic interpretations are completely
unacceptable by today's standards.

Lelia

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