Klarinet Archive - Posting 000117.txt from 2007/03

From: "Keith Bowen" <bowenk@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Stravinsky's "Three Pieces" (was: [kl] Kell)
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:19:42 -0500

Lelia,

Thanks for an interesting post.

As you say, Stravinsky was paranoid about performers following the score -
he was an early creator of the modernist, positivist view that the work IS
the score, not really anything to do with the performer. So I think it
undoubtedly true that whatever the circumstances of the composition his
intention would be for players to follow his orders exactly.

The irony is, as pointed out by Richard Taruskin, that he didn't follow his
own orders. He recorded some of his works five times over his career and
deviated greatly from his own metronome marks, in different ways. Whilst you
could say that as the composer he was allowed to do so, this varied from his
stated allegiance to the score as the musical Work and the "Werktreue"
(fidelity to the work) philosophy that he demanded. Or to put it another
way, once the composition is done, the composer is 'merely' another
performer.

So in the end this is an unanswerable question; and as Tony has also pointed
out, in the face of the audience it is the performer who has to engage and
please the audience and "make the music work".

Keith Bowen

-----Original Message-----
From: klarinet-return-90257-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org
[mailto:klarinet-return-90257-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org] On Behalf
Of Lelia Loban
Sent: 08 March 2007 02:05
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] Stravinsky's "Three Pieces" (was: [kl] Kell)

Since I'm still waiting for Amazon to send me the Kell boxed set, this
message is not a commentary on his performance of Stravinsky's "Three
Pieces" because I've never heard Kell's version. However, this thread made
me curious about exactly how far Stravinsky went, in telling the performer
what to do. I looked up the edition of the score filed in the Library of
Congress. The cover (with this spelling) identifies the edition as, "Igor
Strawinsky. Trois Pihces pour Clarinette Solo. Didiie a Werner Reinhart
(1919). Executies pour la premihre fois le 8 Novembre 1919 a Lausanne par
Edmond Allegra." The cover also indicates that this is a joint publication
by J. & W. Chester of London, Rouart, Lerolle et cie of Paris, and Maison
Chester of Brussels. Inside, the first page of the score gives J. & W.
Chester's copyright date as 1920 and Chester's stock number as 1551.

The call number, M72 .S, got me three different copies of the score (in the
Library of Congress's Performing Arts Reading Room, LM113), but although
the handwritten notations indicate that the library logged in two copies in
1920 and the third in 1923, it appears to me that they're all printed from
the same set of plates. The publisher would have been required to submit
two copies to file for U. S. copyright, but one of those would stay in
Copyright Office storage as a non-circulating, archival copy. It appears
that three identical copies of the same edition arrived in Performing Arts
at different times simply because one came from the publisher and the
others from two different private donors (one from Burnet C. Tuthill in
1920 and another, anonymous but stamped with the logo of a Paris music
store, Durand et fils, in 1923). The LoC has no other editions. I'm
curious whether any of the following information deviates from the
composer's autograph copy, which I have not seen.

For the first piece, a subtitle specifies, "Preferably Clarinet in A." For
the second piece, the subtitle specifies, again, "Preferably Clarinet in
A." For the third piece, the subtitle specifies, "Preferably Clarinet in
Bb." All three pieces fit onto only three sides of 10-1/4-inch by 13-inch
pages.

At the top of the first page, a note appears both in French and translated
thusly into English: "The breath marks, accents and metronome marks
indicated in the 3 Pieces, should be strictly adhered to." This edition
supplies metronome markings for all three pieces. It provides twelve
breath marks in the first piece, fourteen in the second and fourteen (one
of them optional, in parentheses) in the third. The breath marks are
reasonably spaced throughout and, since there are so many of them, combined
with that written instruction, they indicate that the clarinetist should
breathe at those points and nowhere else.

The first piece is marked, "Sempre p e molto tranquillo," with a metronome
marking of quarter note = 52. Asterisks appear above four measures, each
time above an eighth note of lowest F- sharp. An eighth note of low
E-natural follows each of the first two of those F-sharps. An eighth note
of lowest F natural follows each of the second two F-sharps. The
asterisks lead to an instruction at the bottom of the page, in French and
in English: "(on the Boehm clarinet) play this F# with the little finger of
the left hand." Stravinsky was notoriously a control freak when it came to
performance practice, but, assuming it's true that these marks are all his,
that's a rather extraordinary degree of instruction--to the point of
distrusting the performer's technical skill (the fingerings) and
musicianship (the breathing marks).

With no musical context, the alternative right-hand and left-hand
fingerings for those three notes make no difference in either the tone
quality or the pitch, since the alternate fingerings open and close the
same keys--but the choice of fingerings does make a difference in the
*quality* of playing in the context of *this* score, because it's much
easier (and avoids the risk of an extraneous "grunt" between notes) to play
the F-sharp left-handed and then the following E or F with the right hand.
However, that fingering is an exceedingly obvious choice, even to an
amateur such as myself--so much so that, until the discussion here and on
the bulleting board made clear that musicians attribute the instructions to
Stravinsky, I had assumed an editor wrote that fingering and perhaps the
breath marks as well, as aids to students who might work on the music.

I've been listening to the recording of "Three Pieces" by American
clarinetist Andrew Simon on his CD, "Hot" (Musicians Showcase MS 1002). I
have mixed feelings about this recording because I don't quite like the
way Simon labors the legato notes in No. 1. It sounds as if he's raising
and/or lowering his tongue during sustained notes, giving them a "waow"
sound--turning them into dipthongs. I think that's an unnecessary
affectation. But I love his energy and authority in No. 3. Simon recorded
the "Three Pieces" and the other short works (some solo and some with
pianist Jon Klibonoff) on this CD live at S.U.N.Y. Purchase, July 1998.
Here is the complete commentary for "Three Pieces" in the
anonymously-written liner notes:

>Stravinsky wrote the '3 Pieces,' the first
>major work for unaccompanied clarinet,
>in 1919, for amateur clarinetist Werner
>Reinhart, a Swiss banker who had financed
>the composition of 'L'Histoire du Soldat' a
>year earlier. The '3 Pieces' were written after
>Stravinsky made the decision to leave Russia
>and become a French citizen. Also at that
>time he abandoned his advanced techniques--
>dissonance and primitive rhythms--for a style
>that was classic in its precision, clarity, and
>emotional restraint. Indeed, at several points
>in the '3 Pieces' Stravinsky is so specific as to
>write out the exact fingerings he requires.
>The third movement is the composer's
>conception of the jazz clarinet, circa 1919.

Minor quibble: The liner note implies that Stravinsky wrote in a lot of
fingerings. As I indicated above, he only specified the fingerings for
four repetitions of one note, in one piece. But that's an interesting,
telling juxtaposition: 1. Stravinsky wrote the pieces for an amateur. 2.
Stravinsky left extremely detailed instructions, even including some of the
fingerings.

It's not unusual for a composer to specify clarinet in Bb or clarinet in A,
but isn't it unusual for a composer to specify fingerings on clarinet
music? (Even in piano compositions, editors have added nearly all the
fingerings that so often appear in published scores--and pianists feel free
to ignore them.) How good a player was Werner Reinhart? I can't help
wondering whether Stravinsky's notes to assist an amateur musician might
never have been intended as instructions for a professional musician. But,
if that were the case, then why would he publish the instructions?--so,
maybe (probably?) Stravinsky did feel he needed this level of specificity
for everybody. I assume professional clarinet players do use that
left-handed F-sharp fingering, because it's the more convenient, intuitive
choice, but what about all of the breathing marks? I realize I'm offering
a swift slide down the melting glacier here, because it might seem not much
of an imaginary plunge from, "Oh, he wrote that fingering to help an
amateur" to, "Oh, the choice of which clarinet to use...." No, I'm not
advocating that performers today tumble all the way down to *that*
decision. But perhaps the breathing marks fall somewhere in between.
Simon does follow them. Is he typical? Or do professionals sometimes
decide that those marks Stravinsky wrote for an amateur don't apply to a
professional?

Tony Pay wrote, re. "Humility in the face of the score,"
>>There are clearly some scores in the
>>face of which humility isn't necessary;
>>I need only cite the half-page that my
>>8-year old nephew has just produced.
>>(His effort needs all the help it can get
>>from me:-)

Sometimes it's the reverse, too: The composer, writing for a particular
performer, accomodates the perceived need. To turn your comment around,
Tony, would you write a piece of music differently if you intended for your
8-year-old nephew to play it than if you wrote it for yourself?

Tony wrote,
>>....here's an edited version of something I wrote
>>for a seminar I led for the Orchestra of the Age
>>of Enlightenment last year, that is a sort of summary
>>of my position.
[snip]

>>First, how do we approach a score when we perform it?
>>
>>Second, looking behind this, what philosophical stance do we bring the
asking
>>and answering of the question? (What did we ASSUME?)
>>
>>And third, where does answering the first two questions get us?

The composer asks the other side of the same questions: How is the
performer likely to approach the score (What has this performer done in the
past? What are this performer's strengths and limitations?), and how much
(and how?) do I need to influence that approach in order to encourage the
musician to play the piece to sound the way I want it to sound? Since
Stravinsky's no longer available (except by seance...), I think that as an
amateur musician, probably quite a lot inferior to Werner Reinhart, I have
no business deviating from any specific instructions a composer leaves; and
since I think that I play "Three Pieces" better if I follow the
instructions in any case, I'm not tempted to blunder off in an original
direction by confusing ignorance with creativity. However I wonder how
modern professional performers think Stravinsky might have answered these
questions for his "Three Pieces."

Lelia Loban

------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------