Klarinet Archive - Posting 000006.txt from 2007/07

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Reginald Kell: Part 10, Brahms Quintet, Op. 115
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:04:32 -0400

On 2 Jul, "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net> wrote:

> Simrock writes these slashed tremolos as if they were *pairs* of 64ths,
> with regular braces connecting what appear to be note stems, though they're
> not! The dangling *real* note stems (here, usually quarter-note stems) to
> tell the musician how long to hold the tremolo are easily overlooked, and
> in practice, the innocent string player is liable to find himself or
> herself seriously out of sync, jumping ahead of the others to the next bar,
> before realizing that an apparent pair of 64th notes, played as such, is
> really a slashed tremolo of quarter-note total duration. (See Simrock's
> second violin in the Adagio, II-61-69, for annoying examples.)
> International and 1989 Breitkopf update that visually confusing typography
> in favor of slashes that don't attach to any stems of their own and don't
> come anywhere near touching the note stems, so that there's no chance of
> confusion. I've never seen an autograph of this score and am curious how
> Brahms wrote these tremolos.

He wrote them in the 'visually confusing typography' -- which, in his
defence, isn't confusing at all in the score, as each beat lines up with the
corresponding beat of the more conventionally notated melody (usually in the
clarinet).

But even in the parts, it's child's play to get used to compared with the
variations of notation that modern composers often throw at you:-)

Of course, to play the piece even remotely successfully, a string player
needs to be not only 'not innocent' of the clarinet line, but to know it
intimately. And such knowingness is totally trivial to come by nowadays via
playing along with a disc a few times; funny how people don't bother to do
that -- see:

http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/10/000377.txt

Tony
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