Klarinet Archive - Posting 000285.txt from 2007/05

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] R. Kell, Part 6: Weber
Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 15:43:31 -0400

Lelia's comments about the Weber publication in some edition and
Kell's apparent adherence to it deserves some additional comment.
First I thank her for her analysis because it brings a
significant difference between clarinet playing of the pre 1960s
era and today, with the years of 1970-1985ish being the years of
transition years.

Before 1960, you could barely trust any edition that presented an
editor's name larger than the composer's. Editing of that era was
done under the supposition that the editor knew what the composer
meant, and generously modified everything in sight to give the
player the benefit of his/her knowledge about what was on the
composer's mind.

Today, the editor is supposed to tell you what the composer
wrote, not what the editor thinks he meant. And that is not
always easy because of handwriting peculiarities, inconsistencies
in articulation types, and occasional mistakes.

It is also safe to say that many early editors didn't make the
slightest effort to find out what the composer wrote, partly
because the location of autograph manuscripts was in an untidy
condition. And even if a manuscript was found, it was often
marked up by this or that person.

The necessity to go to the source, and only the source, and
nothing but the source is a relatively new phenomenon, dating
from approximately in the 1970s.

So when Lelia mentions the Cundy Bettony editions as sources, I
get the shudders because no Cundy Bettony edition was ever very
reliable or authoritative. It was shlock Boston publishing house
that used paper doomed to extinction in 10 years, maybe 20. It
turned brown and rotted.

Schirmer was equally bad. A famous case of a Schirmer
publication was the Mozart Keggelstatt trio. It was a disaster!
The source used by the editor was a trio arrangement of the piece
for violin, viola, and piano. And because the violin part was
taken from the clarinet part, there were all sorts of changes to
avoid the low notes that the clarinet could play but the violin
could not.

Well, this editor, edited the piece by transposing the violin
part onto a B-flat instrument without changing any of the notes
back to what they were in the original clarinet part. So in the
minuet of the trio, the luscious arpeggios of the clarinet were
all lost because they had been taken from a transposed violin
part.

International was also no great shakes. The edition of K. 452
perpetuated some very serious errors.

Today, you have some very authoritative publishing houses really
knocking themselves out to tell you what the composer wrote.
What he meant is not the issue, only what he wrote. You figure
out the problems and how to solve them without having somebody
else in the guise of an editor doing the hard work for you. That
is partly what your education enabled you to do, in theory at
least.

But even so there are troubles even with the very best of
editions. You have the Henle edition of K. 622 advertising
itself as "an authoritative edition" even though it has no
authority at all. It's a good edition, in that the page turns
are good, the printing is clear, and the paper is fine quality.
But what relationship it has with Mozart is anybody's guess.
That's true with the Barenreiter edition, too.

It is a problem that we not only must face, but also recognize
that it is our problem to solve, not someone else.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Lelia Loban [mailto:lelialoban@-----.net]
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 9:49 AM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] R. Kell, Part 6: Weber

Reginald Kell, Part 6: Weber
Reginald Kell plays the Weber Grand Duo Concertant in E-flat, Op.
48
(recorded in 1953, from Decca LP DL 9744) on Bb clarinet, with
Joel Rosen
on piano. Kell's tone quality sounds good to me here, only
slightly on the
piercing side, and he rarely uses the "slangy" phrasing I've
disliked in a
few of the other recordings. The clarinet sounds close-mic'd.
Unfortunately, the piano sounds as if it's in an echo-chamber
across the
room.

I tried to access Tony Pay's pdf posting of the score copied from
the
original manuscript,
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/download.html/1,764/webe
rduo.pdf
but my computer couldn't read it.

I'm handicapped in discussing specifics, because I've got only
the clarinet
part (what a shame, because the piano part sounds like a
monster!), in a
suspect edition, the old Cundy-Bettoney "Clarinet Classics, Solo
Bb
Clarinet Parts from the Works of Great Masters, Vol. I." I
bought this
copy used. The Library of Congress hasn't got this edition.
This printing
fails to identify the copyright date or the editor. From the
typography
and the worn condition of the printing plates, it's clearly a
reprint of an
older edition, probably from the 19th century. The copyright
must have
expired. This Cundy-Bettoney printing has no title page or
colophon page
(apparently an intact copy: it never had these pages) and omits
any
original title pages and colophon pages from all of the seven
works
included. I think this copy came off the press shortly before
Carl Fischer
took over the C-B catalog, because the only reference to Fischer
anywhere
in/on it is a rubber stamp on the front that says, in all-caps,
"Cundy
Bettoney Catalog is now owned & operated by Carl Fischer, Inc..
55-62
Cooper Square, New York, N. Y. 10003." The Cundy-Bettoney
address on an ad
inside has no Zip code. Can anyone identify the editor and the
date of
this edition?

Without a trustworthy edition that includes the piano part, and
without
greater knowledge of Weber than I've got, I won't discuss the
specifics of
Kell's performance in detail--but this is one of my favorite
recordings in
the set: ghostly in the Andante con moto, moody in the Rondo from
523-576,
and lighthearted elsewhere in the outer movements. I'm
suspicious of my
own reaction, though, because it may not be a coincidence that
I'm
enthusing over Kell's recording of one of the pieces I know the
least about!

Kell's phrasing matches what's printed in the Cundy-Bettoney
edition
(though he follows his usual practice of going farther than most
musicians
in cutting accented notes short for emphasis). If any of his
notes aren't
the same, I failed to catch them, except that, in the first
movement at bar
I-129, Kell and Rosen don't take the repeat. (Phooey!) Where
Kell has an
option at bar 196, naturally he takes the showier one, the high
road down
(on the Bb clarinet score, from g 4 lines above the staff down to
e three
lines above the staff, then down to the first c# above the staff)
instead
of the low road up (mid-staff c# on the staff up to 4th space e,
then
top-line g).

The Library of Congress lists only three printed editions (and
doesn't list
the Cundy-Bettoney one):
Fentone, ed. by Pamela Weston, 1989
International, ed. by Reginald Kell, 1958
French, no publisher, editor not named, 1815 (first edition?
manuscript?
LoC has a negative photocopy in the Performing Arts RR that I
haven't seen
yet and may be able to copy)

I found some pros and cons on the Kell vs. Weston editions in the
Klarinet
Archives, from serveral years ago, that make me think I would
rather not
use either of those editions if there's any good alternative.
Opinions
welcome.

Lelia Loban
The devil, with his foot so cloven,
For aught I care may take Beethoven;
And, if the bargain does not suit,
I'll throw him Weber in to boot.
--Charles Lamb, "Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers,"
1830

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