Klarinet Archive - Posting 000234.txt from 2003/09

From: Dan Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] von Weber's Concertino, Op 26
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 13:30:15 -0400

Mark Charette wrote:

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Steve White [mailto:bass.clarinet@-----.net]
>>Now that I am further along as a player, with more
>>endurance and
>>greater understanding of the pieces, I would write my own as Mr.
>>Neidich did
>>and vary it accordingly at each individual performance. This is the way
>>that I always understood cadenzas should be.
>
>
>>>From my understanding - it depends.
>
> http://www.classicalarchives.com/dict/cadenza.html
>
> Mark C.

The description is a good one. But cadenzas are duplicated from one
individual to another, or from one performance to another, either
because a particular soloist does not have the skill to write a proper
one, or else because s/he is perfectly satisfied with using someone
else's ideas on the subject. But perfect satisfaction nothwithstanding,
that does not mean that to do so is a satisfactory approach to the problem.

The purpose of a cadenza was to demonstrate the imagination of the
performer in that s/he was expected to take some (or even all, in
extreme cases) of the melodies of the movement and instantaneously and
spontaneously combined them into a brief fantasy. In the case of Mozart
who might use as many as 6-8 main melodies in a movement, his own
cadenzas used only 3 or even 4, some fragmented, creating the fantasy on
those selected, and then get out of it.

While cadenzas are often spoken of as vehicles for showing the
performers skills, those skills are not technical but imaginative. And
they allow the performer to share the role along with the composer of
being a participant in the creative process.

If you want an example of a well-known composer who had no idea what a
cadenza was, take a look at the Ibert cadenza to the Mozart clarinet
concerto. First, there is no cadenza in the Mozart concerto and that
was big mistake number 1. Second, the cadenza is about 8-10 minutes
long which is a giant Fatty Arbuckle of a cadenza when Mozart's own
generally take up 45 secs. to 1 minute at most. Third, he drags in
every cat and dog that he can so that he can make the clarinetist into
the Jascha Heifitz of clarinet players, all of which is invented to
shine the spotlight on the technique player, not the point of the
cadenza in any case.

That the Joachim cadenza to Brahms violin concerto is played all the
time, is testament to the lazyness or the ignorance of cadenza practice
on the part of violinists. That the Brahms cadenza to the Mozart piano
concerto K. 491 is still used is a further testament to how little is
known of who is supposed to be the boss in a cadenza. And that hardly
any conservatory graduate is aware of what a cadenza is in the first
place is testament to how poor this aspect of our music education system is.

Dan

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

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is supported by Woodwind.Org, http://www.woodwind.org/