Klarinet Archive - Posting 000240.txt from 2007/02
From: "Keith Bowen" <bowenk@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Kell
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:38:21 -0500
Dan
Maybe one could think of it as the time-domain analogue to a harmonic
suspension?
Keith
-----Original Message-----
From: klarinet-return-90110-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org
[mailto:klarinet-return-90110-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org] On Behalf
Of dnleeson
Sent: 24 February 2007 18:21
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Kell
I agree with Tony that the specifics of Mozart's note to his
father had to do with a slow movement, but this should not be
interpreted as limiting rubato only to slow movements. I'm not
sure if anyone has ever established why tempo rubato, or the
robbing of time, is such an intensely interesting phenomenon. But
I'll try here.
When not playing in tempo rubato, the beats all occur
simultaneously, as you would expect; i.e., everybody is on
1-2-3-4 simultaneously. Nothing strange with that. It's the
normal world.
But when one member executes rubato, there are now two tempi
working simultaneously if only for a short period, namely the one
played by the orchestra or string quartet, the other by the
soloist. And these two tempi go out of phase with each other
another, and the 1-2-3-4 beats are falling in different places
within the time period that the rubato is in effect. That is
both a chaotic situation and an interesting one. Charles Ives
does it with two marching bands going down the street at the same
time. It drives you crazy while it is in effect, and you hope
that the two will come together and resolve the fact that the
tempi are not in phase? It is almost impossible to play this
Ives music without closing your mind to what the other group is
doing.
In my opinion that is what makes rubato such a remarkable
phenomenon, because just when you think the rhythmic world of
18th century music is going to fall apart, the robbed time is
repaid at the end of the phrase or bar, and one is back in the
stable world of 1-2-3-4, with everyone hitting the beats at the
same time.
It happens so fast in Mozart that you really don't have a chance
to get seriously confused, as one does in Ives. But Mozart does
this very thing (i.e., having two tempi go out of phase with one
another) though in a much longer episode in the C major piano
concerto, K. 503. There the solo piano slips into 7/8 time, even
though your internal drum is set at 4/4 time. So the two rhythms
(one in the piano at 7/8, the other in your head at 4/4) go out
of phase with each other for quite some time, perhaps 2 or 3
measures, and before you realize that the world is about to
collapse, Mozart resolves the problem and everyone gets back into
4/4 times. If you wish, I'll give you the exact location in K.
503 where this happens.
And that is what I think rubato does for music.
Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Pay [mailto:tony.p@-----.org]
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 8:49 AM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: Re: [kl] Kell
I wrote:
> None of it was tied down to anything specific.
I except Dan Leeson's remarks about Kell's rubato.
But even that needs to be more specific, as Dan and I have
discussed
previously; see:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2001/02/001055.txt
Playing rubato 'just in general' does nothing. Mozart said
(letter to
Leopold Mozart, 24 October 1777) that "..in tempo rubato in an
Adagio, the
left hand should go on playing in strict time." But this says
nothing about
what Mozart used his rubato FOR. Kell's sort of rubato isn't in
an Adagio,
and for my money mostly has precisely the effects you DON'T want.
Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd
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tel/fax 01865 553339
mobile +44(0)7790 532980
tony.p@-----.org
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