Klarinet Archive - Posting 000522.txt from 2003/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Basset Clarinet
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 00:45:48 -0400

On Wed, 21 May 2003 17:22:39 +0200 Joe Wakeling said:

> Tony Pay said:
>
> > It's the only acceptable version, as it's the only one without
> > editorial interference (added dynamics, and such-like) in the
> > clarinet part.
> >
> > However, the 'octave higher' clarinet versions in the Barenreiter of
> > several passages that were originally in the basset range can
> > arguably be improved -- bars 145-7 for example.
>
> Are these passages an octave up just in Barenreiter's "regular clarinet"
> part, or in their basset part as well? It's not clear to me from what
> you say.

I meant, just the octave transpositions that were necessary in order to
make the 'basset' version playable on the standard clarinet. Both the
basset and the standard version are printed on the same part in the NMA.

To go into that a little more: as Dan has said, some of the 'basset'
notes you want to include would be conjectural in any edition. However,
there are some basset notes that we can be sure Mozart wrote. In these
cases, what has been done by the anonymous arranger is evident, and if
we want, we can change it. For the sake of the discussion, I'll pick
bars 145-7 again.

The second and third of these bars are mentioned by the anonymous
reviewer of the Breitkopf and Haertel edition of the concerto. This
review was published in the Leipzig Allgemeine Musicalisches Zeitung of
March 1802. The reviewer says that the notes occupying the first
quarter notes of both bars 146 and 147 should be heard down the octave
compared with the B&H version, because the piece was written for a
clarinet whose compass extended to low C.

Moreover, we have all three bars in Mozart's hand in the Winterthur
fragment. Adopting the convention that 'ordinary clarinet' C and C#
appear as c and c# (and octaves above as c', c#', c'', c#'' etc) whilst
notes obtainable only on the basset clarinet are in uppercase, the three
bars as written by Mozart are:

c-C-e-g c-e'-g'-c' e''

C-f#-a-c f#'-a'-c'-eb' f#''

C#-e-g-c# e'-g'-c#'-e'' g''

Now, what B&H, Andre' (published same year as B&H) and NMA all do with
this is the following:

(c-c)-e-g c'-e''-g''-c'' e'''

c-f#'-a'-c' f#'-a'-c'-eb' f#''

c#-e'-g'-c#' e'-g'-c#'-e'' g''

In my view this spoils Mozart's original in two ways. The bars are not
all the same shape, since the second and third turn back on themselves.
Furthermore, the first bar goes higher than the successive ones, and
this ruins the upward movement of the sequence.

A more recently adopted solution has been:

c-g-e-g c-e'-g'-c' e''

c-f#-a-c f#'-a'-c'-eb' f#''

c#-e-g-c# e'-g'-c#'-e'' g''

...which just replaces the first occurrence of C by g and transposes the
next C and C# up the octave. This is better, but the sequence of lowest
notes in each bar -- namely, e, f#, e -- turns back on itself. In my
view, it's psychologically more convincing to have the third bar be:

c#-e'-g-c# e'-g'-c#'-e'' g''

...so that the sequence of lowest notes runs, e, f#, g.

The other solution has been to put *everything* up the octave from the
first occurrence of the C, so that the passage starts with an eighth
note c and thereafter is as Mozart wrote it, but an octave higher.

However, this is now generally thought to be too dramatic an effect,
mainly because it involves a high G; though I have to say that an
excellent player can make it sound quite natural. And the argument that
Mozart never wrote a high G elsewhere doesn't really bite, because
no-one is pretending that Mozart wrote the piece for ordinary clarinet
in the first place. It always was an arrangement for a restricted
instrument, and is therefore bound to be unsatisfactory in *some* ways.
It's just a question of where you prefer your unsatisfactoriness:-)

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

.... (A)bort, (R)etry, or (I)nfluence with hammer.

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