Klarinet Archive - Posting 000136.txt from 2005/01

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] RE: Klocker
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:45:05 -0500

At 10:40 PM 1/10/2005 -0800, Ormondtoby Montoya wrote:
>Adam Michlin wrote:
>
> > Do you have any other thoughts as to why
> > 622 does not contain a cadenza?
>
>There's always the possibility that Mozart wanted to express this
>particular composition in exactly his own way --- rather than allowing
>the performer to do it.

Yes, of course. This attitude, however, was not typical of the classical
era composers. Mozart seemed quite comfortable trusting his performers to
execute cadenzas as evidenced by the many earlier wind concertos lacking
composed cadenzas and yet clearly indicating his desire for a cadenza.

I can't cite the K numbers, but I do believe the extant cadenzas we have
composed by Mozart stem both from Mozart's writing down his own improvised
cadenzas and writing out at least one cadenza for a pupil. I'm sure Dan
will correct me if I am wrong. These all come from the piano concertos, of
course, I have to admit I have not looked at the violin concertos.

622 is the odd man out in terms of cadenzas, but this is only one of the
unique features of 622. 622 is significantly longer than any of Mozart's
earlier wind concertos. It is also significantly more harmonically advanced
than any of Mozart's earlier wind concertos. The first movement alone shows
Mozart's late life discovery of and influence by the music of J.S. Bach and
also contains many modulations to distant keys (distant in the context of
the classical era, of course) and by novel method. All of these could be
related to why Mozart chose not to put a cadenza in 622 (it could be as
simple as "the piece was long enough already", for example).

But I'm really interested in Dan's thoughts on the matter.

>Or to put it another way, does K.622 contain a 2nd inversion tonic that
>leads along the normal cadenza path, but the fermata is absent and
>therefore there's no cadenza?

Not to my knowledge.

>I don't remember which composer, but I remember reading in a concert
>program that the autograph signals a cadenza, but the composer also
>wrote out a "preferred" cadenza because (the composer said in his
>letters) he didn't trust performers to understand what would be the
>proper cadenza.

This sounds like Beethoven, who was very influential in the whole idea of
composers being the sole contributor to the compositional process. I can't
say I blame him, but it would be unwise to assume that Mozart and other
pre-Romantic composers felt such distrust for performers as a rule.

-Adam

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org