Klarinet Archive - Posting 000621.txt from 2001/01

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Gran Partitta and its problems
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 14:20:51 -0500

My dear friends and colleagues on the KLARINET list, it seems to me to
be a worthwhile piece of information to let you all know what a terrible
mess the history of the Gran Partitta is (and has been) in for more than
two centuries. This business of the subtitle is but one example of the
more than a dozen complex problems having to do with this magnificent
piece that are, despite the work of some of the best scholars living and
dead, still unsolved.

I touch on a few points here so that you can understand the complexities
in trying to deal with the history of this work, of which the subtitle
is simply a minor detail.

First and most troubling is the fact that we do not know when or for
what purpose Mozart wrote this work. You will find a lot of speculating
from me, from Alan Tyson, from Alfred Einstein, from everyone all the
way back to Ludwig von Koechel, but the fact remains that no one KNOWS.
I think I do, but a lot of that is ego.

Even if the work was written as a composition of 7 movements OR was
written as a composition of 4 movements to which were added 3 movements
later in life has been and continues to be an important piece of its
history.

Was it conceived of as a work for string quintet when Mozart was 12?
That is a theory put forward by Koechel himself. I think he was as in
error as he could have been but the assertion is still part of the
work's history.

Were its variations originally written as a quartet for flute and string
is a theory that still floats around. It's nonsense (sez I,) but who
knows?

Was it written for Mozart's own wedding is still, despite every piece of
evidence to the contrary, still spoken of by someone as important as
H.C. Robbins Landon as being true.

Was it originally for wind octet and later transcribed for 13
instruments?

These are important questions. The subtitle is much less so. And the
performance issues, the most important of all, are manifold. I remember
one very pleasant experience I had to play the work under Tony Pay's
direction with the San Diego Symphony and he and I spent hours talking
about the puzzling connection to the coda in the fifth movement. So
there are practical matters involved, too.

The main problem with the history is that there is almost nothing in
Mozart's lifetime to understand what was on his mind (or what time it
was) when he conceived and executed this work.

Further, after his death the manuscript was still in his wife's hands
and she sold it in 1803 at which point it promptly disappeared and
didn't surface again till after the First World War. To complicate the
matter further, a set of printed parts appeared in 1801 and it is
absolutely certain that these parts were not produced from the
manuscript because they are so awful (and are also the source of the
1875 B&H parts from which the Broude Brothers parts are taken).

In 1917 the manuscript was bought by an American physician living and
practicing in Vienna, and when he died his son got it. Mind you, for
purposes of influencing a printing of the work, the original manuscript
had never been seen by anyone much less used and would not be until
1979.

In 1939 or 1940 it was bought by the library of Congress where it sits
to this day. A facsimile of the manuscript was produced about 20 years
ago. Einstein was asked to do a critical edition around 1950 but he
died and the project was abandoned.

Not until the 1960s did anyone realize that every single thing written
about this piece, to say nothing of the state of printed parts, was
completely and totally in error. Though what is correct about this
piece is by no means figured out yet.

To sum it up, it is the most important and influential piece of wind
music ever written and we are all carrying buckets of wrong information
about it, how to play it, and what constitutes playing it correctly.

As I said, the subtitle is a minor issue, but even that needs to be
gotten authoritatively (even if misspelled) considering the importance
of the work.

When I was asked in 1970 to edit the work for the Neue Mozart Ausgabe, I
considered myself the luckiest man who ever lived, and I have never
changed my mind about that. Musically, the editing of all the Mozart
wind serenades (with Neal Zaslaw of Cornell) is the most important thing
I ever did in my life, with the exception of fathering my children and
marrying my wife.

So if I seem rigid in my interpretation of things, let me suggest that
this piece needs a lot of protection because its history has been so
badly abused in the past. Most every clarinetist I ever met who played
this piece is equally protective of it, as should be the case.

--
***************************
** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
***************************

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