Klarinet Archive - Posting 000430.txt from 2004/04

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Checking the clarinet part with the piano score
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:55:58 -0400

In message <004001c42c66$a5cae380$220018ac@wakeling>
"Joseph Wakeling" <joseph.wakeling@-----.net> wrote:

> Tony Pay wrote,
>
> > Witmark, 1943.
>
> I'm guessing my edition is the same (or else a facsimile), though that
> could be a big guess. Since my copy is in Switzerland and I'm in Denmark,
> it's not so easy to check. ;-)
>
> As I recall that edition contains a number of very questionable markings
> anyway, doesn't it? The obvious one being the tempo at the beginning of
> the second movement...

You mean that some people play it slower than written? I have to say that I
see nothing wrong myself with 'Andantino, crotchet = 69'.

> ... What I'm saying here is I'm inclined to feel the errors you point out
> are more likely sloppy editorial procedures than the heavy-handedness of a
> Great Clarinettist. Though I wouldn't bet on it. ;-)

No, I think it's deliberate. Four slur changes on page 1, five on page 2.
Many of them don't make much difference of course, but some do.

I'm reminded of the Gouvy Sonata Op 67, where the editor, one Jerry Pierce,
changed very many of the slurs in the clarinet part, and lots of other things
too, for no very good reason I can see other than he happened to think that
he knew better. This is a more extreme case: there are 13 differences
between clarinet part and score on the first page of the clarinet part, 17 on
the second...and so on.

Of course, if you think (wrongly, in my view) that the job of an editor is to
improve on what the composer wrote, perhaps you find all this unsurprising;
and at least Pierce left the original version in the piano score, unlike
Garbarino in the Castelnuovo-Tedesco Sonata, for example. But then, the most
amusing part of the matter has to be that he writes in a preface to the
clarinet part:

"The present edition...is based on the first edition published by Richault of
Paris....[this] edition contains surprisingly few errors and so outside of
correcting obvious misprints, the markings are all those of Theodore Gouvy."

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

... Mathmaticians do it by numbers...

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org