Klarinet Archive - Posting 000129.txt from 2009/10

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Lorenzo Coppola plays K. 622
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:03:57 -0400

Dan Leeson wrote:
> As for the existence of a real live basset clarinet in B-flat, I know of
> no such thing before contemporary times. According to the Groves
> Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Stadler had three basset clarinets,
> one in C, one in B-lat, and one in A.

Besides Lawson, this particular detail is also mentioned in Pamela
Poulin's 1995 article in The Clarinet (I think Poulin is actually one of
Lawson's sources).

Poulin refers to Backofen's clarinet method of 1803 referring to basset
clarinets, and notes,

'Sometime soon thereafter, a clarinet in Bb with four basset keys was
ordered and made by Johann Gottlieb Bischoff for the Darmstadt Court.
Happily, this clarinet survives today in Darmstadt at the Hessisches
Landemuseum. In addition to the four basset keys of Eb, D, Db and C, it
has 11 keys, which are domed and made of brass. The clarinet itself is
made of boxwood with ivory ferrules and was restored to perfect playing
condition in 1981 by Rainer Weber at Baierbach.'

She later writes,

'One may wonder, aside from the keen interest of Court Clarinettist
Backofen in these unusual clarinets, why one in Bb in particular was
ordered, why not A? It turns out that prior to World War II, the
Theatre Bibliothek owned the score and parts to a Bb version of the
Mozart Clarinet Concerto, as well as a piano rehearsal reduction.
Furthermore, the opening of the Hoftheater on 26 October 1810 was marked
by the first performance in Darmstadt of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito,
for which a basset clarinet in Bb would be needed (the Theatre
Bibliothek owned the 1809 Breitkopf and Härtel edition of Titus, which
included basset notes). Perhaps it was for these pieces that the Bb
basset clarinet was made.'

> As an interesting vignette about the 18th century interest (really lack
> of interest) in autograph scores, when a portion of the manuscript of
> the Mozart Requiem was found in a gardener's cottage in a small town in
> Austria, the finder took the score to Vienna and offered it to the
> Austrian National Library for a fee. At first, they turned him down
> flat with the argument that the manuscript was not needed since there
> already existed two printings of the Requiem music, one for the
> orchestral parts, the other for the singers. They begrudgingly agreed
> to pay for the manuscript as a service to Mozart's memory, but they had
> no intentions of ever using it for anything. The idea of going back to
> the source document to see what was originally written is a late 19th
> and early 20th century notion.

On that note of 'going back to the source document' -- a fascinating
little documentary about Roger Norrington and Beethoven's Eroica symphony:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okWQQL3wu6c

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