Klarinet Archive - Posting 000025.txt from 2001/09

From: Virginia Anderson <assembly1@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Re: bellison and k. 622
Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2001 03:57:36 -0400

on 1/9/01 9:15 am, Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net> wrote:

> I really feel badly about having given the impression that Bellison did
> a poor job on K. 622. The fact of the matter is that he did that
> edition at a time when an editor felt that it was his job to do three
> things: (1) improve on the original, (2) make lots of changes so as to
> give a potential buyer the idea that he was getting something special;
> (3) take out as many uses of the tongue as possible because the romantic
> approach to Mozart was to have long, uncluttered lines. The fact that
> 18th century music had a much rougher surface than music from later
> periods was simply not known at that juncture of history.
>
<snip>

> But as an edition to use for contemporary times, it just won't do. The
> articulation style alone makes it sound like a Brahms piece. And the
> stuff that he adds in "to make it more beautiful" makes me gag. Not
> because Bellison did it, but because anyone would have the stones to do
> it.
>
I, too, had the Bellison to play the second movement for solo festival when
I was a kid, and learned to make fun of it when doing edition comparisons at
university. And yes, the Bb edition should be forgotten - there are more
suitable pieces for pre-university students.

However, the interpretation, though not telling us much about Mozart, it may
tell us a lot about performance practice of Bellison's early days (the
Brahms factor of which Dan speaks). Several years ago an interdisciplinary
arts course I taught in about British Victorians did a section on
productions of the _Messiah_ in the latter half of the nineteenth century
and the way it was perceived by the people of the time. Now that we may be
historically distant enough, though, has anyone thought to mount a
Norrington/Age of Enlightenment Orchestra-type reconstruction of a 19th-C.
performance, using the Bellison (and perhaps other early editions)? Or are
we not distant enough?

Cheers,

Virginia
--
Virginia Anderson
Leicester, UK
<vanderson@-----.uk>
Experimental Music Catalogue: <http://www.experimentalmusic.co.uk>
...experimental music since 1969....

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