Klarinet Archive - Posting 000051.txt from 2007/10

From: "Daniel Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] The effect of technology on performance practice
Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 11:53:12 -0400

Yesterday, I received a CD containing performances of K. 622 and K. 581.
Both were done around 1951.

When it came to the variations movement of K. 581, I was surprised to hear
the performance even though almost every recording of the clarinet quintet
made in the early days of record buying did the same thing. Specifically the
variations movement was played entirely without a single repeat (as was the
minuet and two trios movement).

The main reason behind this kind of performance was directly related to
technology: with 78 rpm technology, one could not get very much onto a 12
in. record, the standard size for classical music. So rather than break up a
movement and permit it to occupy two disks -- thereby increasing the
price -- changes were made to the music -- such as elimination of repeats
and even faster tempi -- that resulted in a performance just long enough to
fit on a single disk, about 5-7 minutes.

In the 1945 era when I was a young and impressionable player, I would hear
such performances and presume that the players, knowing better than I did,
had good musical reasons for playing no repeats at all. And to some unknown
degree that practice invaded performances for quite a time, and even remain
to varying degrees in today performances. Only when superior technology
(such as the 33-1/3 revolution) began to allow more music on a single disk,
did the situation begin to change. But even so, the damage had already been
done with respect to K. 581. In the 1960s and even 70s, I heard many live
performances of the Quintet with no repeats in the variations movement, and
few repeats (limited to Da Capo only) in the minuet.

Insofar as Mozart minuets go, the elimination of repeats is still standard
practice. The perfomance practice of almost any minuet (including the two
in the Gran Partitta, and the pair in K. 375) are often played this way:
Minuet (all repeats), First trio (no repeats), Da capo (no repeats), Second
trio (no repeats), Da capo (no repeats). Variations on this scheme are also
heard, sometimes doing repeats in one trio, but not the other.

So to some extent, the limitations of recorded performances in the late
1940s, the 1950s and even later, continue to have an impact on players of
today; i.e., when we hear a restored perfomrnace of a player from the late
1930s play a set of Mozart variations without repeats, we tend to figure
that this was an accepted performance practice.

It seems to me that this is clearly a case where performance practices was
entirely under the control of the available technology, that the practice
continued long after the technology got better.

Peculiar situation.

Dan Leeson
dnleeson@-----.net
SKYPE: dnleeson

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