Klarinet Archive - Posting 000025.txt from 2005/11

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Driving Dan NUTS
Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:19:03 -0500

Grand Potato. That's a good one!!

But let me talk about the idea of a "correct misspelling." While
it is incorrect to say that there were NO spelling rules in 1800
(which is the approximate date when "Gran Partitta" was written
on the manuscript of K. 361), there were very few spelling rules.
People spelled things almost the way they chose to spell them.
Thus, in 1800, Gran Partitta was a perfectly valid spelling. The
phenomenon of using 20th century rules of grammar and spelling
applied to 18th century words is, of course, going to result in
the natural assumption that the 18th century word is misspelled.
But that is only because dictionaries had not yet begun to codify
spellings to the point where, generally, only one form of a word
was used with all other forms becoming obsolete. You can see
this today in dictionaries where a few words have two or even
more spellings, and almost all of these deal with double letters;
i.e., spiting vs. spitting; comon vs. common. In almost all
cases, the double letter form was selected. And this makes
"Paritta" more correct that "Partita."

Bottom line, it is not correct to say that Gran Partitta was a
misspelling in 1800, and this naturally brings up the problem of
changing the grammar and spelling of words from that era to fit
this era's rules.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: KEVIN J FAY [mailto:kevinfay3020@-----.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 9:56 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Driving Dan NUTS

Ken Shaw posted:

<<<. . . [t]oward the end of the story, she talks about playing
"Mozart's
Granpastita" -- I suppose the Italian version, rolled out thin
and cut
into various shapes -- oboes, clarinets, basset horns, bassoons,
horns
and contrabassoon (oops, double bass).>>>

In college, we referred to the Gran Partita (or, if you insist on
the
correct misspelling, the Gran Partitta) as the "Grand Potato."

Sophomoric, true - but then again, we were sophomores.

kjf

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