Klarinet Archive - Posting 000516.txt from 2004/09

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] A little Monday morning present for all
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:40:38 -0400

dnleeson wrote:
<>

> That's a cop-out. You and I without raising a sweat could develope a
> rational reason for doing the Kegelstatt with a tenor sax. It's in the
> right range. The character of the sound is distinct. If Mozart had had
> one he would have used one. I love the tenor sax, etc. etc.
>
> Personally I don't care for transcriptions because I am of the opinion
> that the music loses a great deal of interest in certain forms.

I think it would have been a cop-out if I hadn't included the caveat "if
you can make something musically interesting out of it". I absolutely
agree about the potential problems of transcriptions destroying aspects
of the music.

My feeling is that a transcription is fine so long as it has its own
musical sense which matches or comes close to the original in quality,
and so long as the reason for the transcription is openly
acknowledged---"This isn't what Mozart wrote, but we felt it produced
interesting musical results in its own right." Just making a
substitution without telling people is a different matter.

You probably know much more about this than me, but it seems to me that
for a long time in classical music, including Mozart's day, instrumental
transcription and rearrangement was a pretty idiomatic element of
performance. Most rearrangements don't survive because they're not as
interesting as the original. But that's not an argument against *all*
rearrangement, just an argument against doing things that get in the way
of musicality.

> Meyer makes this kind of an unexplained substitution far too
> frequently and based, in my opinion, on her own personal taste; i.e.,
> the contrabassoon in K. 361, for example. It is NOT what Mozart
> explicitly requests in that work, and a basset horn is not what Mozart
> explicitly requests in the Kegelstatt.

Sure, I accept that. It's just I'm not sure that it's the "personal
taste" side that is the problem per se, more a case of either destroying
a musical sense that exists, or making changes without being open about
the process.

-- Joe

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