Klarinet Archive - Posting 000244.txt from 2007/02

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Kell
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 10:20:51 -0500

There are two places in the first movement of K. 503 where Mozart
has soloist slip into 7/8 time (even though it is written in 4/4
time). The first is at m. 208-210. Following the first note of
m. 208, the piano music becomes arythmic. And the longer the 7/8
is sustained, the more psychologically uncomfortable does one
become, without even knowing why this sense of confusion exists.

The second occurence is found in the parallel passage at m.
393-395.

An interesting exercise for those who look this up is to note how
Mozart gets OUT of 7/8 time. After all, once he gets himself
into that situation (which is easy to do), it is very difficult
to find an elegant way out of the problem in which he has placed
himself. He could, of course, simple let the 7/8 passage get
repeated again and again until the rhythms reseoved themselves.
Any two conflicting rhythms will eventually come together. For
example, 3/8 and 5/8 will come together again in 15 8th notes.
4/8 and 11/8 will come together in 44 8th notes. (It is called
"the least common multiple.")

I used this example in a lecture I gave called "Mozart and
Mathematics" in which I tried to show how Mozart invested his
music with mathematical complexities. It is just like two sine
curve with different periods running simultaneously. They
quickly go out of phase with one another, but can you predict
where they will go back in phase. If one sine curve has a period
of 2-pi and another has a period of 3-pi, they will stay out of
phase with each other for a period of 6-pi. It's simple but
elegant mathematics.

For anyone who has had a class in the calculus, it is a very
ordinary problem to have two out-of-phase sine curves running
simultaneously, and the to be asked the for area between the two
curves between points x and y.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Pay [mailto:tony.p@-----.org]
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 3:41 AM
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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