Klarinet Archive - Posting 000794.txt from 2000/07

From: "David B. Niethamer" <dnietham@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Weber Concerto derived from Mozart?
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 23:52:05 -0400

Two questions/observations:

1.) Was WAM's wife Constanze not a "Weber" before her marriage? And thus
some sort of relative, however distant, to CMvW? And if so, might CMvW
have had more than a passing knowledge of Mozart's compositions, and
especially K.622.

2.) I find some similarities in the character of the various themes from
the clarinet concerti of both composers. Both Weber and Mozart were
virtuoso pianists, and both were opera composers. I hear from both
composers a lot of passagework similar to what they might have played as
pianists. Perhaps Weber was a bit more concerned about how that
passagework fit the clarinet, and Mozart more concerned with making it
fit into the musical expression.

In both composer's concerti, there are female opera characters and male
characters, represented by the tonal characteristics of the different
registers of the clarinet. It's my understanding that these tonal
characteristics, which we try so hard to homogenize in the 20th century,
were quite distinct, and were exploited as distinctive sounds.

There's another little quirk that I find interesting. Baermann was
originally a clarinetist in a military band for some German duke or
baron. Weber (consciously or not?) seems to incorporate into each
clarinet work a dotted eighth/sixteenth rhythm with a distinctly martial
character - in honor of his clarinetist's past?

While CMvW had a wider harmonic palette and a wider range of expression
from which to chose in writing his music, underneath those general
stylistic differences there are a few similarities as well.

David

David Niethamer
Principal Clarinet, Richmond Symphony
dnietham@-----.edu
http://members.aol.com/dbnclar1/

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org