Klarinet Archive - Posting 000116.txt from 2005/01

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Will some kind soul ...
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 12:04:47 -0500

No. He never wrote out manuscript parts. He hired people to do
so, and sometimes the copyist was required to stay in Mozart's
room while he was doing the work, this to avoid the copyist
making and selling and extra copy of the score.

There are four stages of the work, and at every one corruptions
sneak in.

1. Copyist creates performance parts from the autograph.
2. Players play from the parts and write things on those parts.
(The most corruptions come here.)
3. At a later time a working score is made from the performance
parts in order to create a score. You can't create an edition
from performance parts. (Lots of crap gets in here because the
editor puts in what he thinks Mozart meant.)
4. Performance parts are engraved directly from the score.

In the case of another work whose manuscript was not available at
the time the first edition was made but surfaced more than 100
years later, these four stages resulted in over 800 changes in
the placement and/or intensity of the dynamics, 65 different
notes, 15 changed dynamics, and too many phrase and articulation
changes to count.

Bottom line: you work from the autograph or you lose all
likelihood of authority.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Audrey Travis [mailto:vsofan@-----.ca]
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 8:46 AM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: Re: [kl] Will some kind soul ...

Would it have been a normal practice for Mozart himself to have
written
out the manuscript parts from the autograph? If he did, then we
have a
reliable source. If this is correct, one is then able to create
a new
score just as reliable as the autograph (though it isn't in
Mozart's
hand) and we have original source information. Obviously it
would be
unassailable if we had the autograph, but our primary concern
for
performance must be original source material above all. Wouldn't
the
manuscript parts be original material?

Even if Mozart himself didn't copy out the parts from his score,
there
would have been extremely few errors (yes, I know I'm assuming).
But
there is no reason to assume a copyist trusted by Mozart would
have made
errors and every reason to assume Mozart would have checked the
parts or
remedied them after he heard them played by Stadler and his
orchestra?

Audrey

dnleeson wrote:

>So then, what is this "manuscript" that they used to prepare the
>1801 edition? And the only thing that makes any sense is that
>the "manuscript" to which they were referring was the set of
>performance parts prepared FROM the autograph around 1791. They
>certainly were "manuscript parts" but they were not THE
>MANUSCRIPT. They were simply copied out from the autograph.
>
>
>
>

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