Klarinet Archive - Posting 000548.txt from 2003/08

From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Tony=20Pay?= <tony_pay@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] Articulation in the Weber Concertino
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 07:14:46 -0400

--- Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.edu> wrote:

> It's great, isn't it, to discover that just about any articulation decision
> you make about a piece can be defended as well as any other (assuming of
> course that your critic doesn't claim to talk with God or the departed
> composer every morning).
>
> I had no idea that von Weber's autographs of the concertos (and I presume
> the Concertino) do not show articulation markings. More power to both of
> you!

Well, it's not that they don't show articulation markings. It's that they show
far too few articulation markings to convince you that -- say -- Weber actually
intended staccato whenever he didn't bother to write a slur. The same is true
of Mozart, of course.

A 'clean' copy, therefore, makes clear precisely which of the various possible
articulations the composer thought important enough to be bothered to write
explicitly.

There's another aspect, too. I remember once playing the (very interesting)
clarinet part to Verdi's 'Alzira'. There were some added accents in my part at
one point. I asked the conductor whether they were his markings. "Yes," he
said.

"It's only that I'm trying to work out what to do," I said.

"Well, I want you to do the accents I've written."

"Yes, I understand that. And I will do them. But...it's just that whether
they're Verdi's accents or your accents makes a difference to *how* I do them."

And it does.

Tony

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