Klarinet Archive - Posting 000614.txt from 2001/11

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Composers' arrangements
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:48:59 -0500

On Wed, 07 Nov 2001 10:18:23 -0800, oliver-seely@-----.net said:

> I had a recent pleasant encounter with a violist friend and her pianist.

[snip of account of trial performance of Septet arranged for piano,
clarinet and 'cello using the original viola part]

I didn't read Oliver's interesting post the first time round with the
attention it deserved.

Can I ask a couple of questions of Oliver to get the situation clear in
my mind?

I'm a bit confused, because I don't really know whether you're talking
about entering one piece (and using bits you've already entered), or
about entering an arrangement (and using bits you've already got from
the original).

> ... in recent days I've sequenced the cello part for the trio (then
> changed from the bass to the alto clef), but using the copy and paste
> feature of Finale, essentially redoing what Beethoven did for the
> cello when he reduced the septet to a trio.

Here, I thought that you were creating a new viola part by transposing
the existing cello part, which you already had in Finale.

> It was an interesting exercise because very little of the Opus 38
> shows any creativity at least as regards the cello part, which is
> about equal parts cello and bassoon from the septet and to a much
> lesser extent about equal parts viola and French horn. Every so often
> his creative juices got going with short strains that are not found in
> the septet, but the biggest offering emerges in the 5th movement, the
> Scherzo, which in the septet has somewhere around a 10 measure repeat
> toward the beginning with the melody given to the French horn.
> Beethoven gave the first strain to the piano and the second to the
> cello as an echo, keeping the total number of played measures the
> same.

So do you mean that you had the Finale score of the original Septet
available; and the fact that you could use that quite a lot was a
valuable insight into how Beethoven had done the transcription -- that
is, more by mechanical than recompositional means?

> Krommer delighted me in an opposite sense: just as soon as I figured
> I could copy and paste one staff to another with a third transposition
> up or down and some manual shifting here and there to fourths, Krommer
> surprised me with an original part which I'd then have to return to
> and enter manually.

Here you were just entering the one work, right? There was no
transcription involved, apart from using the material from one
instrument to help in entering another.

> Mozart remains for me the most original...

(Whatever you meant by this, it doesn't surprise me!)

> ...I can't copy and paste anything of his because there is too much
> manual clean-up after doing so. It's easier simply to put everything
> in note by note at the outset.

I wonder what happens if you try to use the wind parts of K388 to
transcribe the string quintet version? My guess is that you wouldn't
have much luck, because of the way in which Mozart worked.

But doing that would be the comparable thing to Beethoven's op20/op38,
no?

Tony
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