Klarinet Archive - Posting 001094.txt from 2000/07

From: "Tony Pay" <tony_pay@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Two notation questions
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 10:20:51 -0400

Roger Shilcock wrote:

>what other reason would Brahms have for doing it?

The two slurs in the first bar and the slur in the first half of the second
bar are each two beats long. The next note in bar 2 doesn't need a slur if
it's written as a dotted half-note, and the next three beats (all that there
is in bar 3 in this notation) lie under a single slur in Brahms's
manuscript, contra the Peters edition, where the eighths are separated --
wrongly, in my opinion. (I'm pretty certain that the change is not by
Brahms.)

Generally in Brahms, I'm quite concerned to use the classical language of
phrase-shapes, creating rhythms that fall sometimes with and sometimes
against the structure of the bar. The older notation makes it clearer that
the 3-beat long E is one entity, one shape, corresponding to the shape of
the 3-beat phrase that follows. The more modern notation makes it look as
though the last quarter is 'tagged on' to a half-note. The difference is
psychological, but in my view not thereby insignificant.

So, to sum up: the phrase structure of the theme is: three half-bar phrases;
two three-quarter-bar phrases; one full-bar phrase.

All this is explained in more detail in my 'Phrasing in Contention':

http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet/Study/Phrasing.html

mostly in reference to Mozart's music.

But Brahms's music uses similar classical techniques, and his use of phrase
marks has a similar meaning.

Tony
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