Klarinet Archive - Posting 000063.txt from 2005/01

From: Allen Levin <alevin@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Leeson
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 22:33:39 -0500

I'm now up to page 100. I find the argument about style persuasive; but
not complete.

A composer's vocabulary derives from many sources. Some may be as simple
as figures he/she finds easy to play or sing. Others may derive from the
limitations of the available instruments. Much of Mozart's idiomatic
vocabulary of figures (particularly scale figures) seems (in my opinion) to
derive from both the virtues and limitations of the clavichords and early
forte-pianos. He had a knack for finding figures that sounded good. He
didn't get into much writing for the clarinet until there were performers
who had the technique necessary to play them. (Except for the music for
glass harmonica, it doesn't seem that he wrote a lot of exposed music for
instruments of limited capacity - like the trumpet and trombone - unless he
tailored the music idiomatically to those instruments.) If the Stadler
brothers had appeared a few years earlier there might have been even more
music for the clarinet family.

Anyone with an ear and half a brain will - consciously or otherwise - adopt
the idiomatic vocabulary of the original composer. The result may not be
perfection; but it will be recognizable. Remember the Haydn "Mozart"
quartets and the Mozart "Haydn" quartets? Imitation was truly the most
sincere form of flattery - and evidence that the imitator was a master of
the compositional craft. In the instance of the Requiem, it wasn't
publicly recognized flattery - and that must have driven Sussmeyr to
distraction as the years passed. In the beginning, the widow coudn't
afford to have it public. Later on her need was to protect and enhance her
husband's reputation.

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