Klarinet Archive - Posting 000123.txt from 2001/04

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Evidence to support a performance practice
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 11:34:47 -0400

Roger wrote (and to which Nicholas Cox also replied in a separate note):

>However, it does not support the use of vibrato for clarinet in the
>18th or 19th centuries as a common (or uncommon) performance practice >for that time period. In fact, the lack of any writing from that time >period referencing vibrato on the clarinet is more supportive of the >lack of it as a performance practice than anything else we have (or >have not) seen.

That's one interpretation to be sure, Roger. But there is another. The
absence of documentation about a performance practice from an era cannot
be take to mean that the practice was, therefore, not in effect. In
fact, exactly the opposite point of view can not only be put forward and
was very much the case in several significant performance practice
cases.

The most important performance practice for singers in the period of
time encompassing Mozart and up to about 1820 was performer supplied
instinctive and impetuous improvisations on material supplied by the
composer. Yet not a single technical manual exists (or has been found
to date) that explains the practice, how it worked, when one did it,
etc. In effect, the generally accepted theory as to why this apparent
contradiction exists is that the practice was so common, so ordinary, so
well-known, so thoroughly taught by every vocal teacher in the
Italian/German/Austrian/French school of influence, as well as heard in
every opera house in Europe, that it was considered unecessary to write
about it. Coals to Newcastle!

Only recent discoveries of private letters as well as interpretations of
cryptic remarks about the practice has caused a refocus on the matter.

All of this is by way of saying that there are two interpretations that
can be given to the absence of evidence. The first, of course, is the
one you suggest; i.e., the thing under discussion was never done. The
second is that it was ordinary that no one bothered to write about it.
One heard it every time a singer opened his/her mouth.

I would suspect that there are practices in common use today that will
wind up in 100 years with no supporting documentation. Certainly, you
can find nothing but word of mouth about how Hungarian orchestras play
marches, but go to Budapest and ask anyone there, and they will give you
a 2 hours discussion on the matter. Is there anything documented about
how to play a Strauss waltz in the Viennese fashion. We all know how to
do it, of course, and we all do it. But where is documentation that
discusses how to artificially develop the Viennese lilt?
--
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** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
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