Klarinet Archive - Posting 000673.txt from 2001/11

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Turns in music ca. 1820
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 15:41:03 -0500

I can't add anything to the specifics of the particular Weber concerto
but it might be worth noting that Tony's point about Baermann adding
something to the text is historically very sound (though I can't comment
on the particular ones involved).

There appears to have been a three stage process in which performance
habits underwent a dramatic change. Up to about 1800 maybe a little
later (it's hard to be precise here), many performers changed the text
by improvising on the spot. Some (including Stadler even) might write
in a suggested change to the text once in a while (I have at least one
such example of him doing that very thing) but it was part of the
training at that time to be able to take the written text and improvise
on it both melodically and, in the case of a keyboard instrument,
harmonically also. The two best examples of people who did that are
Beethoven and Mozart. Both men were valued as composers, and they were
worshiped because of their improvisational skills.

But as the technique was used less and less, performers became less and
less adept at the task and then stage two started to come about. A
performer would take text, write all sorts of improvisations in it, play
it that way and, perhaps, even publish it that way with a marketing
announcement that "the concerto of Herr Weber has been improved upon by
the written improvisations of Herr Baermann." And that is one of the
many reasons why so much of Weber's music was altered by the performer;
i.e., it became the fashion to do so. The general principle was the
more notes, the better, or don't play one note if you can do 100 in the
same time period.

Eventually, stage 3 came about and that's roughly at the age of
Schumann, where the idea of changing another composer's text began to be
considered akin to a sacrilege. The principle involved was to have
"authoritative" perfomances, by which it was meant that a slavish
attachment to the score became the norm. The heritage of that can be
found in conductors of the early part of the 20th century, such
Toscannini, for whom change (except that which they liked) was an
anathema.

To a great degree we are still in that stage, though efforts to go back
to stage 1 have been moving forward, though slowly, since around 1970.

You still see and hear the remnants of stage 2 whenever you hear a
trumpet player do the Carnival of Venice variations. Those were all
performer developed, and the purpose of such efforts was to demonstrate
technical brilliance. Clarinetists did it too, and the Weber concerti
of today are in a state of uncertain authority because of the many
alterations that were done to them, and even published as being
authoritative. The general idea was that music should serve the
performer, not the composer. It was thought to have been written to
allow the player to show off. And did they ever!!!

There are several "improvements" made to Mozart operas in which it was
announced that "Herr Mozart's music was improved by the addition of 11
arias by Herr ..."

Go figure.

Dan Leeson
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** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
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