Klarinet Archive - Posting 000113.txt from 2009/10

From: "Dan Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Lorenzo Coppola plays K. 622
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:29:44 -0400

Joe,

I don't think you really understand the process by which the first edition
of K. 622 was created. You envision some formal process done by experts.
Yeah!

After Mozart finished the manuscript he probably gave it to Stadler (with
the intention of getting it back after parts had been made, but that appears
not to have happened). I suspect that Stadler simply lost it or threw it
away. At that time, a manuscript's only purpose was for the production of a
set of performance parts. After that, it had no further use.

So Stadler took the manuscript and produced a set of performance parts.
There were no Xerox machines at that time so if he needed 4 first violin
parts he wrote out the part 4 times. And that means that all 4 first violin
parts deviated from what Mozart wrote to different degrees. Dynamics were
not necessarily the same across all 4 parts, pitch mistakes existed.
Phrasings, slurs, staccatos were all somewhat haphazard.

Then Stadler took the parts and started to play the work. He carried a set
of orchestral parts with him when he went to play the work.

During the 1 or at most 2 rehearsals, the musicians wrote their comments in
the parts, just as we all do today. So the parts that Stadler got back
after the performance were not the parts that he took into the performance.

This went on from 1791 until around 1802 when it decided to make a first
edition of the work.

The first thing that happened is that there was a decision made to revise
the solo part so as to enable it to be played on a clarinet of ordinary
compass. The current suspicion is that Johann Anton Andre did that work

Meanwhile, an editor for the publisher took the performance parts and
created a score that he did his best to present in a uniform fashion. For
example, if violin 1, part 1 begins with "mf" in some unknown person's
hand,, and violin 1, part 2 says "p," and another part says, "mp crescendo"
the editor has to create some semblance of order, and it was often invented.

Once all of that was done, and the revised solo clarinet part incorporated
into the score, the final stage began, and it can be the most error prone of
all. The manuscript score is delivered to an engraver who, using hammer and
chisel, created a metal place with the image engraved backwards so as to
allow for correct orientation when the printing took place. It was probable
that the engraver did not engrave a full score (though he could), but only
performance parts.

Now having gone through that effort, how much of the original music do you
think is presented accurately to a bunch of performers?? Probably not more
than 50%.

I can tell you what happened to the gran Partitta when the same set of
events took place. When the first edition was published in 1803, the same
year as the clarinet concerto, there were some 800-900 differences in the
placement and intensity of dynamics, perhaps 30 changes of rhythm, some 60
wrong notes, and an uncountable number of alterations in the slur and
staccato patterns.

That is the event as you have to think of it, not as some careful,
well-watched process. Now think about that in relation to your questions.

Dan Leeson

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