Klarinet Archive - Posting 000556.txt from 2001/11

From: Virginia Anderson <assembly1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] A few facts about scary avant-garde noises
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 07:33:40 -0500

on 15/11/01 9:15 pm, Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay) wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Nov 2001 17:04:13 -0000, tony-wakefield@-----.net said:
>
<snip>
>>
>> Virginia can offer some quite curt replies at times.
>
> On this occasion, a correct if curt reply, I submit.

Thank you kind sir, she said. I recall a foreword to a medieval theory text
of perhaps the 15th C. (the part that is all "Deo Gratia" usually) in which
the writer was insisting that some composer (can't remember who) was still
worth a listen, despite having written his masses and motets some forty
years previously. In other words, our forebears would dismiss music as "so
last week" and wanted new stuff. And while older music was played in the
19th C., it was thought that Alkan's emphasis on Bach rather than newer
works in some of the come-back concerts he gave in his final years was
another sign of his eccentricity. And yet people think it's normal not to
like recent music.

Back to clarinet, Tony. I've been enjoying your discussion of the dangerous
avant-garde noise that is the Poulenc Sonata and glad to hear that the
Chester edition is close to the manuscript. Where is this available?

I've always tried to play the third movement as if it were a Carl Stalling
Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon backing: same quick emphatic changes of
mood and dynamics, the same almost casual technical brilliance. I do stress
that I play like the music for the cartoons and not the cartoons themselves:
there is no exploding package or catapult made by Acme hidden in the piano.

It would be nice to make these small changes on the off chance of playing or
teaching it.

Cheers,

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

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