Klarinet Archive - Posting 000182.txt from 2007/05

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Re: Kell revisited
Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 20:13:07 -0400

I am sorry to have to disagree to some extent with what Vann
Turner wrote about music being an interpretive art and not a
reprodutive one. That statement is not so terrible, but the next
one is. He says, "Since so little of the actual sound can be
notated, composers rely on the taste and sensitivity of the
performer to bring to life the penned notes."

No so. Composer relied on the knowledge that the performers knew
a thing or two about performance practices.

While taste and sensitivity are important, to be sure, to neglect
the issue of "performance practice" is to deny the practices to
which performers of that era adhered. In effect, you have to
know a great deal about how players of an era interpreted the
compsoser's directions. You just can't throw up your hands and
say "taste and sensitivity." That leads to chaos.

Let me give you an example. In Mozart's time, the opening dynamic
of a movement was assumed to be "forte" unless some other dynamic
was in place. So any performer looking at a work, copied by a
knowledgeable copyist of that era and not seeing any dynamic at
measure 1 automatically played the passage "forte." That was the
performance practice. Nobody said, "but my taste says to open
'piano.'"

Performers learned this because those were the rules of that
period. Taste and sensitivity had nothing to do with it.

I'll give you another example, but without the solution. You
figure it out on the bases of senstivity and taste.

A composer of the 18th century writes a minuet with two trios.
The minuet has two sections, one 8 meansure, the other 12
measures. Both are repeated. The two trios have the same
construction of 8 and 12, with repeats. At the end of trio 1, it
says, DC. At the end of trio 2, it says, DC.

The question is about repeats. Do you play repeats in the minuet
on the da capos? Both da capos?

This quesiton is much harder because it has nothing to do with
taste. You have to know what performers of that epoch did when
those circumstances arose. And exactly that case arises twice in
the Gran Partitta, which has two minuets, each of which has two
trios.

It is safe to say that, under certain circumstances, the VERY
LAST THING that one should employ is taste and sensitivity.

Performance practices change with time. If today you are playing
with a dixieland band, and the solo cornet is doing a 16 measure
solo on 'The Royal Garden Blues." You look up and the bassist
(who is the leader of the band) is shaking his head at you in
invitation. That's a signal for you to do something. It is a
contemporary performance practice. You know it because that has
happened to you and others dozens of times.

When it comes to the rules, taste has nothing to do with it.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: MPWord -- Vann Turner [mailto:vjoet@-----.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 1:54 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] Re: Kell revisited

Ted,

I agree: Music is an interpretive art, not a reproductive one.
(Though it is
probably safer to talk about reeds on this list!)

Since so little of the actual sound can be notated, composers
rely on the
taste and sensitivity of the performer to bring to life the
penned notes. It
becomes a partnership between composer and performer.

I stand with Leonard Bernstein in his lament that Harnoncourt
appropriated
to period instruments the classics and the Baroque. Toscanini
conducting the
Partita and Fugue is glorious, and a partnership between Bach,
the arranger
and the orchestra.

(I'm wondering about the 2 wrong chords Tony mentioned. Repeated
twice, it
was of course a conscious decision, not a sloppy one. I'm
wondering if the
parts they played from had a misprint, or if they consulted the
manuscript
and found their printed version wrong. I'm not a musicologist, so
I'll leave
the investigating to the scholars.)

Best wishes,
Vann Joe
(amateur)

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