Klarinet Archive - Posting 000242.txt from 2007/02

From: "Keith Bowen" <bowenk@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Kell
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 07:49:33 -0500

Mmmm yes, good points. But there is the evidence that Mozart used it in slow
movements. So I suppose you are saying that it should be used only when one
is sure it is appropriate. And presumably we don't have any way of telling,
other than musical sensibility?

I like the tagline!

Keith

-----Original Message-----
From: klarinet-return-90121-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org
[mailto:klarinet-return-90121-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org] On Behalf
Of Tony Pay
Sent: 26 February 2007 11:41
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Kell

On 26 Feb, "Keith Bowen" <bowenk@-----.com> wrote:

> Dan
>
> Maybe one could think of it [rubato] as the time-domain analogue to a
> harmonic suspension?

Trouble is, using rubato is also the time-domain analogue of playing out of
tune, or of playing a wrong note -- if it's not appropriately applied
rubato,
that is. You're still faced with the problem of characterising
'appropriate'.

Dan's position, that rubato induces a sense of confusion that is in the end
resolved, *may* be either appropriate or inappropriate at a given point in a
piece of music. It may help to give a further sense of freedom to a gesture
that that already 'wants' to be free, true; but it may also obscure the
perception of an important musical structure.

The Mozart K503 example (yes, details please, Dan) speaks of something that
is already composed into the music, not something applied by a performer --
as indeed, I suggest, does your 'harmonic suspension' analogy, even if only
by implication. That Mozart was able to induce an instability appropriate
to
the music at one particular point doesn't mean that a performer will be able
to do so equally effectively at some other point in the piece, where Mozart
may well have had other expressive concerns in mind. So you cannot justify
rubato, just as you cannot justify embellishment, *in general*. Both can be
good or bad, and both can be completely inappropriate.

There is a further danger: if not well-motivated, rubato and embellishment
can very easily take the attention of the listener off the music and put it
on to the performer *as a personality*. For the drooling fans, this may not
be a problem whatever the piece, because their attention is *already* off
the
music. But for many of us, for quite a lot of repertoire, that's NOT what we
want -- see the tagline:-)

Tony
--

_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339
mobile +44(0)7790 532980 tony.p@-----.org

...one is aware of witchcraft without noticing a single magical gesture...
(C.D.F.Schubart on the harpsichord playing of C.P.E.Bach)

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