| Brought to you this hour by |  | Advertising and Web Hosting on Woodwind.Org! |
Klarinet Archive - Posting 000083.txt from 2008/03
From: Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Key signatures for clarinets
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:24:36 -0400
Dan's posting about key signatures reminds me of a couple of pieces I
sequenced recently. The 3rd Adagio movement in the Lachner nonet is
written in 5 flats for C instruments, so the F Horn part would
normally be written with a signature of 4 flats, but as is still the
custom for some composers, F Horn parts are often written without key
signature. All well and good if the copyist (or the composer!)
remembers to put in the appropriate accidentals. Most unfortunately,
the published version which I used as my source was a mess, with
accidentals having been inserted from time to time but most of the
time they were missing. As there were no written corrections on the
published version, my feeling was that the copy I was using had never
been played. Another lovely piece gathering dust in some obscure library.
The other one is the Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale, duo for viola
and clarinet, by Rebecca Clarke. The second and third movements were
written without a key signature for both the viola and the Bb
clarinet (clearly stated) so there were a couple of possibilities,
one that it ought to be played as written and the other that the
score had been done for both instruments in C. So I sequenced it
both ways (it is a fairly short piece) and then played back the
synthesized versions for my violist friend who has gone ga-ga over
Clarke's genius. She couldn't tell which version sounded better (so
much for Clarke's genius), but there were two measures for which both
parts in C were clearly wrong, so we settled on playing it as
written. It still sounds pretty horrible, in my opinion. It isn't
clear to me that mistakes weren't made here and there with
accidentals, but it sounds so bad in any case that I can't be
sure. Until convinced otherwise, I'd name Clarke as the Florence
Foster Jenkins of viola composition. 8-)
Oliver
At 09:23 AM 3/12/2008, you wrote:
>The discussion about the choice of clarinet pitch for works written before
>approximately 1850 presumes that what the printed part says is derived from
>the composer's directions.
>
>Not so. The printed parts often contradicted the composer's specific
>direction.
>
>Part of the training of a composer for works from the classic and even up to
>the early romantic period (which certainly includes Mendelssohn) involved
>the question of what clarinet pitch should be requested by the composer.
>And that decision was exclusively related to the concert key of the
>composition.
>
>Consequently, when Bill Foss documented the clarinet pitches for the
>Mendelssohn Italian symphony as, "I have played this in several professional
>orchestras. Sometimes the clarinet parts were in
>A and sometimes in B-flat," serves only to show what the particular edition
>called for, not necessarily what the composer called for.
>
>Publishing houses, like Breitkopf, for example, issued orchestral parts that
>reflected editorial decisions that often contradicted the composer's
>explicit instructions. If their editions were to be used by amateur or even
>semi-professional orchestral players, they almost always provided a
>transposed clarinet part under the assumption that less skilled players did
>not necessarily own such an instrument and were not really fully competent
>in transposition at sight.
>
>The rule was this: clarinets should not be written in sharp keys. Mozart, in
>a lesson book used by one of this theory and composition students wrote (in
>English, too) that "the clarinet should only be written in the keys of C and
>F. What that meant was that the clarinet pitch selected by the composer was
>for the sole purpose of restricting the clarinet part to those keys. And
>that rule was in effect when Mendelssohn wrote his Italian symphony.
>
>Since the concert key of the Italian symphony is A major, clarinets in both
>C and B-flat were not to be used; i.e., the C would have to play in 3
>sharps, and the B-flat would have to play in 5 sharps. Instead clarinets in
>A were appropriate because in the concert pitch of A major, the A clarinet
>plays in written C major; i.e., NO SHARPS IN THE KEY SIGNATURE FOR CLARINET
>PLAYERS.
>
>Mozart himself chose to get around this constraint by writing clarinet parts
>in the WRONG KEY so that the instrument would not, in theory at least, be
>playing in a written key with sharps. Most of the overture to Don Giovanni
>has the clarinet deliberately written in the wrong key particularly at the
>point where the key of the overture goes from d minor to d major.
>
>Bottom line: one cannot use published orchestral parts in support of what
>the composer requested in his manuscript score.
>
>There were a few exceptions to this rule, to be sure, but that it existed as
>I have described is certain. About 6 months ago, someone on this list asked
>me for a copy of the technical paper that Bob Levin and I did for the Mozart
>Jahrbuch on this subject. I sent it but he never responded.
>
>Dan Leeson
>dnleeson@-----.net
>SKYPE: dnleeson
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>The Woodwind.Org 2008 Donation Drive has started. Visit
>https://secure.donax-us.com/donation/ for more information.
>------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
The Woodwind.Org 2008 Donation Drive has started. Visit
https://secure.donax-us.com/donation/ for more information.
------------------------------------------------------------------
