Klarinet Archive - Posting 000124.txt from 2005/02

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Language issues when researching Mozart?
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 15:29:27 -0500


Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Ormondtoby Montoya [mailto:orm1ondtoby@-----.net]
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 12:02 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] Language issues when researching Mozart?

Dan, I'm still struggling with the concept that a notation which
is
catalogued in Grove has escaped attention for all these years.

DNL: It escaped attention because so few people look at
manuscripts, particularly very rare ones, carefully enough. One
day you don't see it and the next day you do. Same thing
happened to me in the matter of the excised m. 111 in the 5th
movement of the Gran Partitta. The manuscript has been generally
available since 1939 and people could even buy microfilm copies
of it. But nobody looked at the measure in question. When I did
and put forward the argument about the elimination of the
measure, all I got was scorn. And today, there are lots of
people who insist that I have made an error. There is not much
one can do about that. Sooner or later, they will all do it the
way I have suggested because it is not a matter of taste or
opinion. It is a matter of serious examination of the
manuscript.

You mentioned that you have discovered a translation error in one
of
Mozart's wife's letters. Was this a modern error (last 25
years), or
was it something older that involved translating from German to
Italian,
and perhaps finally to English? (I assume that German was
Mozart's
wife's primary language?)

DNL: It might not have been an error. The letter is Constanze's
from May 30, 1800 and in it she used the word "andre," or at
least that is what is printed in what is supposed to be the
official version of the letter; i.e., Bauer and Deutsch, The
Letters of Mozart. I suggested that the word should be "andere"
or "other." But there is the possibility that the way she wrote
it might have been considered correct than. There were no
spelling rules at that time. Orthography is a relatively modern
invention.

I ask this because I've noticed that expressions and instrument
names in
Mozart holographs (the facsimiles that I've seen, and also the
holograph
that Library of Congress brought to my town last year) are
written in
Italian, not German. I can imagine that customs of the day
prompted
Mozart to use Italian in his scores, but presumably German was
his
primary language --- in his personal letters and so forth. Why
did (if
they did) the Italian musical community have such a 'lock' on
musical
language? Perhaps because the major patrons of the day were
Italian?

DNL: Mozart's second language was Italian because Salzburg was
not a part of Austria at the time of his birth. It was more
Italianate than German in some ways. Salzburg was a city/state
all of it's own and did not become Austrian until a later time.
Italian was the language in use for everybody, even in France,
when it came to notations and abbreviations in manuscripts.

But culturally much of what is today Austria was very Italianate
in its culture. And Mozart was as fluent in Italian as he was in
German. He was not as good in French, and he spoke a little
English. But culturally he was more Italian than Austrian,
though later in his life he considered himself German.

Go figure.

Thank you,
Ormond

+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Fri Feb 4 09:21:11 EST 2005 - 127 dononrs, 113 to go |
| The 2005 Woodwind.Org Donation Drive is Underway. |
| Please visit http://secure.donax-us.com/donation for more |
| information. Help Keep the List Going! |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org
Sat Jan 29 11:56:46 EST 2005