Klarinet Archive - Posting 000197.txt from 2005/01
From: Allen Levin <alevin@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Leeson
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 17:06:30 -0500
I' ll respond, clarify and expand in a day or two. I wasn't being
critical. I like the book very much.
My computer has been out of service for a week and I have over 600 e-mails
to sort through.
Allen
At 02:15 PM 1/7/05 -0800, you wrote:
>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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