Klarinet Archive - Posting 001072.txt from 1999/09

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Improvisation, a reply to Lelia.
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 10:37:52 -0400

Steven J. Goldman wrote,
>Lelia is only partially correct in her interpretation of why certain
composers wrote out their ornaments. She is looking at specific composers
(Bach and Couperin) rather than the musical environment they were immersed
in. One could write a whole dissertation on this (and many have), but a quick
and dirty summery is what follows.>

IMHO you've given an excellent summary, quick but not dirty! Thanks. I'd
add only that although I oversimplified, I picked on those particular
composers *because* I wanted to make the point that generalizations are
dangerous: They're both exceptions to the conventional standards of their
environments.

IMHO, F. Couperin was a fussbudget even by French standards of his time.
Though his elaborate, idiosyncratic system of ornament notation is
first-rate, other composers scratched their heads over it and few of them
adopted it with any consistency. Bach's habit of dictating much of his
ornamentation caused controversy during his own lifetime. See Spitta's
biography, and also the chapter, "Bach as Seen by His Contemporaries," in the
compendium , _The Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and
Documents_, edited by Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel (revised edition, New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1966 & 1945). Bach did sometimes write out
ornaments for adult professional musicians, not just for students, and it's
well-documented that some of those professionals took offense. The exchange
of views on Bach's ornamentation between his contemporaries, Johann Adolph
Scheibe and Johann Abraham Birnbaum, published in that chapter, reminds me of
some of the discussions here on this list!

Much of the controversy had to do with the solo voice parts in the cantatas.
However, I don't mean to suggest that Bach always wrote out his ornaments.
He didn't. Musicologists have written entire books (I own several) just on
how to ornament Bach's organ music that he wrote for his own performance.
Some of it wasn't published in his lifetime. Where no autograph manuscript
survives, there's often good reason to suspect that an editor corrupted the
first edition.

Stephen J. Goldman wrote,
>And of course there may be times that he just didn't want anyone to screw
around with his music (of the little we know of the man, we know he wasn't
shy or particularly humble).>

Yes, his biographies are sagas of one battle after another (highly
entertaining stuff, BTW). His aggressive personality comes through in all
the portraits of him, even those made shortly before his death, when he grew
sick and frail. Maybe the increased furrowing of the brow and narrowing of
the eyes in the later portraits result from his deteriorating eyesight, but
the light of character, as the artists saw it, also shines through and
remains consistent from youth to end of life. To me, his eyes look not only
formidably intelligent but fierce, with eyebrows cocked in a perpetual
expression of challenge. I see a stubborn thrust to the chin, and lips
poised to curl upward into...what? An arrogant sneer? A snarl? Gleeful
laughter? Who did that man think he was, anyway?!

Well, he thought he was Bach....

He must have driven people nuts.

Lelia

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