Klarinet Archive - Posting 000530.txt from 2004/08

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] The making of K. 581
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 11:29:36 -0400

No. It is not the only Mozart work for basset clarinet. There
is an aria in Cosi that also has basset notes. In neither case is
any ossia material supplied.

There is an analogy here. Mozart wrote for a variety of pianos.
Whenever a new one came out, he sonatas show that he accomodated
the new high range by writing notes in that extended range. It
is kind of like the Stadler basset clarinet. He wrote notes in
that extended low range. In no case did he accomodate a piano
that did NOT have those notes. If you did no have those notes,
you did not play the piece.

There is even a case where he wrote a piano piece with a strange
high end piano part (just a few notes) that allow one to conclude
that he wanted to do something else, but that the piano for which
he wrote it would not go that high. So he takes the melody to
the uppermost limit of that piano, and then turns it around to go
elsewhere because he can't get where he wanted to go. The part
appears awkward but only if you know about piano ranges.

That phenomenon of finding an awkard passage in the part writing
is what caused Dazeley to write his famous paper in 1948 where he
said, "the clarinet writing in 622 is awkward and, because Mozart
was not an awkward composer, he must have had access to a
clarinet that went lower than the clarinet of today." (This is
not a direct quote, just a summary of what Dazeley said.) So
Dazeley saw that the part as we played it was awkward and had to
have implied a clarinet of lower range.

Smart as hell and changed the whole concept of Mozart's solo
works for clarinet.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: joseph.wakeling@-----.net
[mailto:joseph.wakeling@-----.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 8:14 AM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: Re: [kl] The making of K. 581

dnleeson wrote:

> The work was for Stadler. Stadler had the low notes.
> Why one earth write an alternative part? It made no
> sense to do so.

What's the situation with Clemenza di Tito as far as source
material goes?
Isn't that the only Mozart work for basset clarinet where the
source
definitively contains the basset notes?

(... with no "ossia", I imagine.)

Incidentally, how does Mozart write the basset notes in that work
(and for
basset horn)? I would imagine he uses bass clef as in the
Barenreiter and
Henle editions....?

-- Joe

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