Klarinet Archive - Posting 001255.txt from 2000/05

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Mozart Quintet
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 18:08:59 -0400

Michael has submitted a review of the music, not a performance, of
Mozart's A major clarinet quintet by someone named William McNaught. To
sum it up, McMaught finds large portions of the work to be dull,
uninteresting, etc., etc.

Well, if that is the way he feels about the piece, it's OK with me. I
am not bothered if someone does not like what I like, or vice versa. Is
there an issue here? If so, I don't see it. It is simply one man
expressing his opinion.

Dan Leeson

Michael Bryant wrote:
>
> Not a masterpiece?
>
> MOZART' S CLARINET QUINTET
> A record review by William McNaught ( 1883-1953) for some years Editor of
> The Musical Times, in which publication this article appeared in August
> 1945.
>
> Ready as I am to be put down as a Mozart addict, I cannot join in the chorus
> of praise that echoes round this work. An example resounds from the
> editorial chapter by Rudolf Gerber, in the Eulenberg Edition. The writer
> refers to the 'unparalleled melodiousness' and 'transcendent beauty and
> sublimity' of the quintet. 'The senses and the soul have entered a synthesis
> which is sensed' (he sonorously sibilates) 'by the listener in the noble and
> tranquil I curves of the development as well as in the individual thematic
> inventions.' Moreover 'The soulful sensuousness of the first movement swells
> into a supernatural chant' etc. (Please excuse this sacrifice of space in a
> season of scarcity). In short, he considers it a good work. Shall we have a
> look at it?
>
> The first movement is everything that perfection could be as far as the
> double bar. Then something flies out of the window. The development section
> is surely one of the driest that Mozart wrote in any important work - and
> after such an opening! First the chief tune, originally in A is played in C,
> the modulation being beautifully done. Then the strings take up the
> clarinet's first entry, an arpeggio figure, and relentlessly plug it from
> key to key in the dullest fashion for thirteen two-bar phrases. Presently
> the clarinet says, 'well, if that's all you can think of, I may as well be
> in it ; so it hops up and down the ladder six times. And that's the
> development section; you would have to look a long way to find another with
> so little Mozart in it. The passage comes to rest on the dominant of A,
> ready for the lead into the first subject. This is where we expect Mozart to
> be at his cleverest and wittiest. Instead of which he just does nothing
> about it.
>
> The recapitulation shows that unstrained and natural variation on the first
> statement which we expect of Mozart's craftsmanship, and there is a lovely
> bit of coda. Altogether a high-grade Mozartian movement but for that large
> blot in the middle. The Larghetto has a tune twenty bars long: isn't it
> rather ordinary, and does the movement rise from the plane of smooth,
> elegant Mozartian commonplace? Have a look at the slow movements in the new
> edition of the string quartets and judge whether the Larghetto is not
> eclipsed by all of them. Try also the Minuets, and see whether the one in
> the Clarinet Quintet is in the same street. The finale Variations: Mozart
> seldom put down a more trivial tune; and listen to the first side (Columbia
> DX 1187-90) and tell me where in Mozart's hundred best works you will hear
> such tonic-and-dominant, and so much repetition (apart from the repetitions
> dutifully made by the players). Many of Mozart's variation movements are not
> repetitions in effect; this one is very much so.
>
> In sum - the sum, that is, of one personal opinion - the quintet is grade A
> in the essential parts of the first movement, grade B elsewhere, perhaps
> grade C in some of the finale. (These grades are entirely within the field
> of Mozart's music; if one finds abundant virtues in the finale, as one must,
> it is because Mozart's grade C covers them). The quintet is, of course,
> beautifully written for the partnership of strings and clarinet. There are
> no off-days for Mozart the stylist. But if the music of the work is to
> employ our superlatives, what language can we use for the string quartets,
> the best-known string quintets, the oboe quartet, the divertimento for
> string trio and other works of like quality and inspiration? The quintet is
> played beautifully in every way by Reginald Kell and the Philharmonia
> Quartet (Columbia DX 1187-1190).
>
> MB
> Michael Bryant, Michael@-----.uk
> Tel (messages 24hrs) & Fax by request
> +44 (0) 20 8390 3236
> http://www.bryant14.demon.co.uk
> Rosewood Publications url:
> http://freespace.virgin.net/s.westmeath
>
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--
***************************
** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
***************************

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