Klarinet Archive - Posting 000068.txt from 2005/01

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Leeson
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 22:42:48 -0500

I've got to admit that I don't know what you are saying. Exactly
to what are you objecting?

Insofar as your comments about Mozart, it is not that he found
figures that sounded good. It was what he did with the figures
he had available to him that made them sound good. Whatever
figures he used are traditional 18th century musical oratory used
by 100 other composers, but he did something with them that
elevated them to another level. In fact, in examining how
Sussmayr wrote, for example, it turns out that the two men
favored the same intervals and cliches almost all the time. It's
like two chefs who buy the same ingredients, as you would expect.
But one makes a nice lunch, and the other makes a masterpiece.

As for his not writing music for clarinet until he found players
capable of playing them, I point out that he was writing clarinet
music in his early teens. The "Concerto ossia Divertimento," K.
113, with two effective clarinet parts was written when he was
15. The fact that he did not use clarinets even more was not
because he did not have great players available to him, but
rather that he had NO players available to him, at least not in
Salzburg as is believed to be the case. Not until he got to
Mannheim did he have an opportunity to write for them.

As for his not writing music for instruments of limited capacity
(such as the trumpets and trombones you cite), he wrote 15 non
Requiem masses in Salzburg with trombones and trumptets in more
than half of them.

I guess I am grappling to find out what it is to which you are
objecting. What book? What section? What page.

Allen, if I jumped on you and said, "That was a terrible
operation you performed," you might be a little taken aback
because of a lack of identification of which operation and when,
and what are the precise details of whatever it is I am objecting
to.

Could you clarify, please. I don't know which way to turn right
now.

Please sit down more calmly, and tell me what it is that you find
troubling. I can't figure it out from you note.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Allen Levin [mailto:alevin@-----.net]
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 1:38 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Leeson

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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