Klarinet Archive - Posting 000873.txt from 2003/05

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Marches for marching
Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 13:30:23 -0400

Dan Leeson wrote,
>Why should it be surprising that Sousa wrote marches
>for a concert band?
>
>Mozart wrote minuets as part of his symphonies, Bach
used MANY dance forms within the constructs of his works,
>and several contemporary orchestral works use dance forms
>(the Lindy, Rhumba, etc.) in their works.

Yup. Operas are full of marches for orchestra, too; and Berlioz wrote a
splendid "March to the Scaffold" in "Symphonie Fantastique," for orchestra.
Woody Allen notwithstanding, I don't expect to see cellos and string basses
march that one down the street any time soon. It's a sit-down march all
the way. A composer does need to give realistic consideration to how well
a certain type of ensemble is likely to perform the music, though.
Orchestras can handle marches, but....

Case in point: I'm using the Sibelius note processing program to write a
ragtime march that I heard in my head as a symphonic sketch. Yesterday, I
watched a 1982 Kultur video of the Houston Grand Opera performing Scott
Joplin's ragtime opera, "Tremonisha." Gunther Schuller prepared the score,
for a fairly typical pit orchestra. (For people in the Washington, D. C.
area: Video Vault in Alexandria, VA rents out this video. I think it's out
of print.) "Tremonisha" is a true opera, sung through, and definitely
needs operatic voices. The result, in this performance, is an
unsatisfatory hybrid, to my ears. Most members of the cast get it. The
orchestra doesn't get it. The classically-trained strings, especially,
play Joplin's jazz almost straight-up. They don't swing it nearly enough.
They sound as if they just don't know how to feel ragtime.

Country fiddlers probably would sound better, and by 1982 it should have
been possible to find enough excellent country fiddlers who all could have
read the music--but under union rules, management might have had to pay for
the regular pit musicians, too. So there they sit--I was going to write,
"stiff as starch and twice as white," but that would be as racist as saying
black folks shouldn't play Mozart. Of course they should; and there's no
natural reason why a pit orchestra, even one that's mostly white, can't
play Joplin with an all-black cast, either--but in the real world, how many
classical orchestra musicians (including the black ones) know how to play
jazz well?

After I finished watching and listening to that video, I went straight
upstairs to my computer, fired my virtual orchestra and re-scored my
ragtime piece for concert band. I'm re-writing all the string parts for
clarinets and saxophones, even though my computer's sound card makes
saxophones sound like kazoos. Ritual disclaimer: No, I'm not putting
myself on Scott Joplin's level, obviously. I'm an amateur and a novice
composer. Even so, I do not, ever, want to hear any orchestra play my
ragtime (such as it is...) the way that orchestra played Joplin.

Lelia Loban
E-mail: lelialoban@-----.net
Web site (original music scores as audio or print-out):
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban

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