Klarinet Archive - Posting 001061.txt from 2001/02

From: fred jacobowitz <fbjacobo@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Landler of Mozart
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:38:56 -0500

Dan,
You may be right about the change in speed over
the years but by the same token, the other dances we
compare them to TODAY may also have changed. The proof
is in the hearing. You have to admit that playing
these "landlers" with the accents where they should be
is only really comfortable within a certain range of
speeds. It is pretty obvious that certain pieces, by
their very nature (i.e., the nature of the technical
passages) should go at a particular range of speeds.
Well, it is possible to figure out the same thing with
Landler-like music.
And you're also forgetting one thing: We know the
steps of the dances. The human body can only do the
steps so fast. So it is possible also to get a fairly
stable range of speed for these dances.
Just because we weren't there we shouldn't sell
ourselves short regarding our abilities to
reconstruct, through educated guesses, music of other
eras.

Fred Jacobowitz

--- Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net> wrote:
> Fred, thanks for the information, but I'm always
> concerned about using
> the practices of today and presuming that they were
> carried down
> unchanged for 200 years. To go to a contemporary
> Oktoberfest and use
> the dance style being done at such a thing gives me
> very little comfort
> that what I am seeing is what was being done ca.
> 1780. In fact, I'll
> take a further step. It is almost a certainty that
> what is being done
> today (even under the same name) is quite different
> from what was being
> done in the past.
>
> Your suggestion that the Landler is not a slow dance
> contradicts the
> variety of books on music history that I (and others
> on this list) have
> been looking at. The standard text suggests that
> the Landler was slower
> than the minuet.
>
> I don't suggest that you are wrong, only that the
> premise that
> contemporary activity is a mirror of the past is
> questionable.
>
> Dan
>
> fred jacobowitz wrote:
> >
> > Dan,
> > A Landler is hardly a "SLOW" dance. However,
> it
> > is considerably slower than the Waltz. The Landler
> is
> > actually similar in both feel and speed to the
> Minuet.
> > A standard speed is: Quarter-note = 144-156 on the
> > metronome. If you want to see a Landler done, go
> to
> > any Oktoberfest or find a German Dance Troupe
> > performance and you'll get an idea of the steps.
> > Essentially, a Landler is a couple dance in which
> the
> > dancers face each other and spin around on the
> > circumference of an imaginary circle enclompassing
> > dance floor.
> > The typical rhythm of a Landler indeed has a
> > stress on the 3rd beat which is almost as large as
> > that of the downbeat. The second beat becomes the
> > weakest one. A classic example of the Landler is
> 2nd
> > strain of the 3rd movement of the Brahms Clarinet
> > Trio. It was common at the time for composers
> > (including Mozart) to use the Landler in their
> lighter
> > music, such as Divertimenti.
> > How do I know this? I am both a folk dancer
> (and
> > have danced Landlers) and a folk musician (so I've
> > played them for dancers).
> >
>
> --
> ***************************
> ** Dan Leeson **
> ** leeson0@-----.net **
> ***************************
>
>
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