Klarinet Archive - Posting 000491.txt from 2004/08

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] The making of K. 581
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 11:41:47 -0400

Tony Pay and I have been having a discussion about the first
printed edition of K. 581. He suggests that since the first
printed edition has few editorial markings, that it is probably
reasonably close to Mozart's intentions. And his argument is
from a clever and observant point of view.

He says, what most editors do is put stuff in, not take stuff
out. So if the first edition has few of the things that editors
normally put in to show their involvement, the absence of them
suggests that there were not many editorial markings put into the
music in the first place by Mozart.

I suggest that the first printed edition is AT LEAST two
generations away from the manuscript and probably three, and at
each of these stages, done by different people (of unknown
skills) at different times, things happened that cause a complete
collapse of authority to that first edition.

First generation: the creation of a set of performance parts from
the manuscript in Mozart's hand. On the basis of the typical
work of an 18th century music copyist, it is wrong to assume that
those performance parts represented an accurate picture of what
Mozart wrote. I don't know what they said, but I can make an
educated guess that there were wrong notes, incorrect placement
of dynamics, incorrect intensity of dynamics, miswritten rhythms,
a goodly number of errors in both articulation types and pattern,
and finally an uncountable number of changes in phrase shapes.

Second generation: these performance parts, presumably used to
play the work and thus would have many penciled markings in them,
were then used by someone to produce something else, which itself
was used to engrave the plates that made the first printed
edition in 1803. Because the manuscripts of both the concerto
and the quintet were said to have been lost by that time, it is
wishful thinking to presume that anything other than the
manuscript parts were used in this effort to make engraved
plates, no matter what the AMZ suggests (which is no better a
guess than I can make).

But it gets worse. The clarinet part of the quintet had to be
modified, and someone was paid to make those modifications. If it
was not modified, who would buy the work? Who could play the
work? What is the market estimate for a composition that cannot
be played by any clarinetist other than Stadler, because it
required a special instrument? So the clarinet part, at least,
was modified to an unknown degree, and this was probably done in
the creation of a score (made from the performance parts) which
was input to the engraving process.

If that is the case, we have THE THIRD GENERATION, namely, the
making a score from which the engraved plates were made (which
can be thought of as a fourth generation). How many of you look
like your great grandfather?????

It is inconceivable to me that these two, maybe three, and
possibly four generations of work took place leaving the first
printed edition as representing much of what Mozart wrote, at
least in terms of articulations and phrase shapes.

While Tony's argument is very strong about editors not taking
things out, but rather putting them in, it fails on two counts.
First is the two, three, or four generation problem spoken above.
And second it fails because Mozart's scores were very much
complete.

If the first printed set of parts of 581 are barren of editorial
markings, then this anomolous situation did not arise from the
absence of those markings in the original manuscript score as
Mozart wrote it.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

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