Klarinet Archive - Posting 000577.txt from 2004/08

From: Audrey Travis <vsofan@-----.ca>
Subj: Re: [kl] The making of K. 581
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:28:13 -0400

Dan
How do we know that Mozart's music had a rough surface texture? And
how/why did we get the transition from rough to smooth by the time of
Brahms? Are there textual sources?

Audrey

dnleeson wrote:

>
> Music in Mozart's time (and even moreso in earlier periods) had a
> very rough surface texture. Tonguing was much more prevalent.
> Listen to Bach's fast trumpet music. Mozart's manuscripts show
> lots and lots of tonguing. But they also show slurring too, so
> one cannot presume that the absence of articulation is a mistake.
>
> But by the time Brahms came around, it was important for surface
> texture to be smooth, with no tongue to make the surface rough.
> That is a characteristic of romantic music. SMOOTH. And that was
> the style of music that Macellus was emulating. It was
> beautifully done, but it was Mozart's music with Brahms surface
> texture, which is just as inappropriate as Brahms music with
> Mozart's surface texture. Marcellus what a magnificent
> clarinetist but I never thought he knew very much about how music
> from various epochs differed, one era from another.

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