Klarinet Archive - Posting 000042.txt from 2000/09

From: "Tony Wakefield" <tony-wakefield@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] An interesting story about Schoenberg
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 05:39:52 -0400

I`m told of an episode in the life of a clarinettist depping in the BBC
Symphony. At the rehearsal two young "up and coming" composers had presented
their scores for the first run thro`. One said to the other, "You first
while I shoot off for a coffee". So the rehearsal started with the remaining
composer sitting at the side. A few minutes into the rehearsal, the
conductor stops the orchestra, turns to the composer and beckons him to come
to the rostrum to explain one or two unclear items. The composer ambles up
to look at his score, and remarks, "Oh, but that is not my music!"

In Schoenberg`s music, was the pitch of individual notes not an "important
issue" quite so much as the "overall" perspective of dissonance? I would
hazard a guess that the work would not have sounded much different, (even to
ears of the perfect pitch variety) had Eb clarinets, C trumpets, cor ang, Eb
horns all been used also. Food for thought for the psychologists amongst
us? - redesigned quote - "If dissonance be the food of love, change to A
clarinet and play on" - Shakesfield, 2000

----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subject: [kl] An interesting story about Schoenberg

> "Arnold Schoenberg [was having a] rehearsal with a small Vienna
> Philharmonic group, in the '20s, for a performance of his
> Kammersymphonie. At one point the clarinetist Polatschek leaned over to
> whisper to Burghauser that he had just discovered he had by mistake been
> playing a clarinet in B-flat instead of the one in A specified in the
> score, and Schoenberg hadn't noticed it -- which led to Burghauser's
> suggestion that the musicians play wrong notes to see if Schoenberg
> would hear them, and their discovery that he did not hear them."

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