Klarinet Archive - Posting 000574.txt from 2003/08

From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Tony=20Pay?= <tony_pay@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] Articulation in the Weber Concertino
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 06:44:27 -0400

--- Ormondtoby Montoya <ormondtoby@-----.net> wrote:

> Tony Pay wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> I assume this refers to a difference between what an accent means today
> vs. what it meant then --- or perhaps to something that Verdi scholars
> have decided about his opera music in particular? I'd be interested to
> hear more details.

One way of putting it is to say that the composer's accents belong to the
'map', and an interpreter's accents to the 'territory'.

If Verdi wrote those accents, I need to look behind them and see how he
intended that they fit into the passage in question, because how you play an
accent is very context dependent.

Almost always what's required in an interpretation isn't anything as crude as a
written accent, which signifies an extraordinary occurrence. So an accent
added by a conductor has a different meaning, because it's not his or our job
to create extraordinary events in a piece of music. We have to find the ones
that are already there.

Of course, one can imagine circumstances in which this difference could be
blurred -- say, that the composer was the conductor, and made the suggestion
himself or herself.

Tony

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