Klarinet Archive - Posting 000208.txt from 2007/06

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Brahms Quintet harmony question
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 07:36:31 -0400


I asked about a passage in the Brahms Quintet, Op. 115, Adagio, bar 70 (9
bars before E), where in the parts, the second violin has a g-sharp, then
(on the same line later in the same bar), no accidental on g, so that it
stays sharped, while in the full score, there's an accidental g-natural on
that later g.

Gary Van Cott writes,
>In the Henle edition these notes are G# and the
>two pages of editing comments don't say anything
>about this measure.

Thanks very much for checking! The editions seem to agree that this g
should be sharped. Last night I listened to several recordings and it
sounds to me as if the second violinist always plays g-sharp, so there
seems to be a general consensus that the Simrock full score must have a
misprint. I'm surprised that the Breitkopf and Henle editors don't mention
it, because the version in the full score creates a significantly less-edgy
passing tone.

On the thread, [kl] (Accidental) Usage Question, Dan Leeson writes of a
problem in Mozart's notation:
>>If one is looking at, for example, a oboe
>>part and finds that the note "c" has an
>>unneeded natural sign, one looks backwards
>>to see where the note was previously given
>>otherwise. But often, you won't find it because
>>the natural sign was put on a "d" for a B-flat clarinet.
>>And until I figured out what he did, it drove me crazy.

I wonder whether a Simrock editor may have created a similar confusion
uneccessarily in the Brahms Quintet. At the end of the bar I wrote about
in the Adagio, the clarinet in A has b-flat (orchestral g-natural) an
octave higher on that same ensemble chord. I wonder if the editor thought
that the clarinet's g-natural meant the second violin should have
g-natural, too, so he wrote it in on the full score--but, meanwhile,
whoever edited the parts only saw the second violinist's line, where
apparently there must not be any accidental natural in the Brahms autograph
(otherwise, the three different Breitkopf editors who had access to the
autograph or a microfilm of it should have spotted the accidental left out
of the Simrock part)--and so the editor of the parts, possibly the same
editor with a short memory, left the g alone as a sharp.

Although the first edition full score and parts have the same publication
dates (1892), I think Simrock published the full score separately, because
it's a different size, smaller than the folio- sized parts; although, at
approximately 6-1/2 inches wide x 10-1/4 inches tall, it's quite a bit
bigger than the nearly-microscopic Eulenburg miniature no. 239, thank
goodness.

Lelia Loban

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