Klarinet Archive - Posting 000308.txt from 2001/05

From: David Glenn <notestaff@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] Swiss clarinet symposium and Hoprich's low B-natural
Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 03:18:56 -0400

Dan,

It's late but I'm gone the whole day and most of Saturday so I'll just touch
on a reply. I know I tend to place more importance on what I feel is right.
You are more concerned with being as scientifically impartial as possible.
I'm glad you are that way. I wish I was more but I have to accept that I am
not...

Daniel Leeson wrote:

> David Glenn wrote (about the presence of low notes on the basset
> clarinet and my statement that this was only an assumption until
> Poulin's discovery of a picture of Stadler's basset clarinet):
>
> "Yes, a major revelation - but there was already hard evidence. There
> was the Winterthur manuscript and there was the review in the AMZ of
> 1802. I'm sure you know this but I don't know why you might not consider
> it to be evidence. Then there were smaller pieces of evidence: low
> notes here and there in Mozart's clarinet music, mention of a
> "Bassklarinet", etc. All slightly more convincing evidence than about
> the devil."
>
> The Winterthur manuscript has absolutely nothing to do with the presence
> or absence of low notes on a basset clarinet. The Winterthur manuscript
> is for a basset horn. Thus the existence of low notes there is
> completely irrelevant to the assertion that low notes existed on a
> basset clarinet. The fact that a basset horn had such low notes has
> never been without absolute proof. Such is not the case for the basset
> clarinet.
>

But it does change to clarinet in A - I believe at bar 145?. In any case
there are basset notes right up to bar 198. That may not be proof but it is
very hard evidence.

>
> The review found in the AMZ of 1802 was not known much before the late
> 1960s. Furthermore, there were strong arguments against such low notes.
> For the case of those notes found in Cosi Fan Tutte, the great English
> musicologist, Sir Donald Tovey, argued that Mozart had made a mistake
> about the range of the instrument.

Dan, you don't really believe that Mozart, who knew the clarinet so
intimately could make a mistake in the range, do you? Although, come to think
of it, I think I've seen Mozart notes written down to low G (beyond basset
range) and that would have probably been mistake. OK - it's possible but it's
not likely. Again, you're right: It's not proof, only evidence.

>
> And finally, the presence of unexplained and not-understood text about a
> "bassklarinet" in matrial of the period can only be understood to be
> reference to a basset clarinet in hindsight.
>
> All of this is evidence. None of it is proof.
>

OK

>
> So I suggest again that, while there was a great deal of speculation
> about the rational necessity to have an instrument with low notes on it
> for the last 60 years or so, until Poulin's discovery of that picture in
> Latvia (I think I said Lithuania in my original note), there was never
> proof that Stadler's instrument really did have them.

There was also found the list of debts owed to instrument maker Lodz at his
death which included two extended clarinets for Stalder. Stadler not only
did not pay Mozart the 500 florins for the concerto but he also did not pay
Lotz for the two basset clarinets! I don't yet know if this is proof - or
only evidence. And again, I believe it's a fairly recent "discovery".

>
> And I'll go one further. There is no hard evidence that he used those
> low notes in either K. 622 or K. 581. I believe he did. You believe he
> did. We all believe it. But there is no manuscript of either work to
> confirm it, and all the places that we are inventing to have low notes,
> are simply educated guesses. There are already serious differences of
> opinion on which low notes should be used where. Hacker's edition is
> different that Baerenreiters. And there is a musicologist in Boston who
> says that they are both wrong.

Alan Hacker says in the intro to the Mozart concerto, "...there is bound to
be a degree of guesswork in any further reconstruction..."

>
> David, you and I really do not have an argument on this matter, but I
> think it is important to distinguish between what we abolutely know, and
> what we think happened on the basis of rational analysis.
>
> In my lifetime the basset clarinet has passed from not known about at
> all (until Dazeley's paper of 1948) to a situation where you can buy one
> at a local music story. That's very postive progress, to be sure. But
> proof is another matter entirely and, prior to Poulin's discovery, it is
> very possible to argue that all of that was nothing but speculation
> based on evidence of a very uncertain kind.
>
> --
> ***************************
> ** Dan Leeson **
> ** leeson0@-----.net **
> ***************************
>
>

Ciao,
David

>
>

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