Klarinet Archive - Posting 000123.txt from 2009/10

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Lorenzo Coppola plays K. 622
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:02:42 -0400

Dan Leeson wrote:
> 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!

I don't assume that at all, and I don't think that anything I wrote
relies on such an assumption.

> 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%.

50% of _what_, though? 50% of phrasing and articulation? 50% of
dynamics? 50% of rhythms? Of pitches?

> 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.

The conclusion I draw from these statistics is that the _pitches_ of the
Gran Partitta were transcribed with a high level of accuracy -- after
all, there are frequently more than 60 notes per bar, and hundreds of
bars in the piece. Rhythms are clearly transcribed with even greater
accuracy. The errors are overwhelmingly located in notation of dynamics
and phrasing.

Now, that's one piece, but it seems likely that this pattern will be
reproduced in the case of other works. So what it tells you is that
when it comes to anticipated rates of error, they differ strongly
depending on what aspect of the music is being considered. I could
anticipate a virtually 100% rate of error with respect to phrasing in
some pieces, but I'd find it unlikely that a piece of reasonable scale
would have as much as a 5% rate of error in the pitches, let alone 50%!

> 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.

Well, my original question was simply what basis you had for your
assertion that the high G in the finale was a '20th-century insertion'.
And it clearly isn't -- as far as I know, it dates back to the earliest
scores of the piece. So if it _is_ an editorial insertion, it's an 1803
one (or maybe even earlier).

I don't have any problem with the idea that the high G _might_ be an
insertion. It's just that there is no documentary evidence to back up
that hypothesis. The stylistic evidence you've presented (that Mozart
never wrote such a high note for clarinet anywhere else) is interesting,
but it's not proof.

So, I would be happy to hear a performance without the high G -- it's a
reasonable interpretational decision. But I think it's very
_unreasonable_ to criticise someone for performing the work with that
note in place.

Best wishes,

-- Joe

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