Klarinet Archive - Posting 000275.txt from 2006/03

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] G.B. Shaw and the corno di bassetto
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 18:26:45 -0500


Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: dnleeson [mailto:dnleeson@-----.net]
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 12:10 PM
To: klarinet@-----. org
Subject: [kl] G.B. Shaw and the corno di bassetto

I am fairly sure you all know that G. B. Shaw's pen name when he
did music criticism was "corno di bassetto." But I never knew
how he chose it. It was while reading, "Shaw on Music" as
published in pocket book form by Doubleday, that I came to learn
how and why he chose it. I have always loved the music writings
of Shaw, and was particularly impressed by the fact that he was
born in the year of the centennial of Mozart's birth, 1856. In
1891, the centennial of Mozart's death, he wrote the most
remarkable music criticism about the performances of Mozart music
saying, "I shall never hear a satisfactory performance of Don
Giovanni." And it was because of his efforts, that a great deal
of reintroduction of Mozart's music to the English musical scene
took place. Here are his comments about the selection of the pen
name, Corno di Bassetto.

"I was strong on the need for signed criticism written in the
first person instead of the journalistic 'we'; but as I then had
no name worth signing, and G. B. S. meant nothing to the public,
I had to invent a fantastic personality with something like a
foreign title. I thought of Count di Luna (a character in Verdi's
Trovatore), but finally changed it for Corno di Bassetto, as it
sounded like a foreign title, and nobody knew what a corno di
bassetto was.

"As a matter of fact the corno di bassetto is not a foreigner
with a title but a musical instrument called in English the
basset horn. It is a wretched instrument, now completely snuffed
out for general use by the bass clarinet. It would be forgotten
and unplayed if it were not that Mozart has scored for it in his
Requiem, evidently because its peculiar watery melancholy, and
the total absence of any richness or passion in its tone, is just
the thing for a funeral. Mendelssohn wrote some chamber music for
it, presumably to oblige somebody who played it; and it is kept
alive by these works and by our Mr. Whall. If I had ever heard a
note of it in 1888 I should not have selected it for a character
which I intended to be sparkling. The devil himself could not
make a basset horn sparkle.

"For two years I sparkled every week in The Star under this
ridculous name, and in a manner so absolutely unlike the
conventional musical criticism of the time that all the
journalists believed that the affair was a huge joke, the point
of which was that I knew nothing whatsoever about music."

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

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