Klarinet Archive - Posting 000241.txt from 2005/11

From: or3mondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: Re: [kl] Outdated convention
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:16:47 -0500

Rien wrote:

> What do you call "a modern 'translation' of
> earlier music"? The Tom Parker version of
> Mozart's clarinet concerto? I think it is
> horrible. The Sch=F6nberg versions of classical
> pieces? they have a great quality, but were
> dictated by necessity, and anyhow do not
> violate the music.

Rien, I was not thinking about arrangements or re-writes for modern
instruments or editors who feel that they know more than the composer or
such.

There is plenty of room for discussion about such things, but that's not
what I had in mind.

When I was in school, a professor insisted that we read Chaucer's
"Canterbury Tales" in the original "old" (or "middle", I forget)
English.

The professor's statement was *NOT* that he wanted us to know a
different version of the English language. Rather, he felt that any
modernization --- no matter how strict --- loses some of the Tales's
original character and meaning. Certainly a modernization changes the
rhythm of Chaucer's language, but (so said the professor) other
'subliminal' qualities change as well.

One of our assignments during the semester was to write an essay which
compared a respected "modernization" of the Tales with Chaucer's
original. Our goal was to explain what 'attitudes' and 'feelings' were
either lost from or injected into the Tales as Chaucer had originally
written them.

In essence, this course introduced us to the study of "linguistics". I
doubt that any of us had the background knowledge or experience to draw
valid conclusions, but it certainly caused us to examine the "hidden"
content of a document.

Example: can a change in the rhythm of a sentence put emphasis on a
different word and thereby subliminally change the emotion which the
reader absorbs from the text?

....so I'm asking the same question about music manuscripts.

Obviously there are issues with the sloppy handwriting of some
composers. Ditto for rehearsal vs. performance vs, published parts.
Ditto for old paper and faded ink and other forms of damage. And I've
already put aside the problems of editors who "knew what the composer
really meant" or "what the composer should have written".

The same problems apply to books. In fact, I inherited a first edition
of Edgar Allen Poe, and I was unhappy to learn that I had a version
which had been smuggled out of the country a few months after the
original was published in order to escape copyright laws, and changes
had been made to Poe's original version in order to 'make sense' to
readers in a different country. Thus the book did not make me rich.

So, putting all such things aside, can there be something in an original
manuscript which conveys 'subliminal' information which would change how
a performer interprets even the most carefully 'modernized' publication?

That's what I was thinking about.

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