Klarinet Archive - Posting 000526.txt from 2010/09

From: corvo di bassetto <rab@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] Improvising in Mozart's clarinet music
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 21:08:07 -0400

Hi Keith,

would you be so kind as to forward me the link to your paper? Sounds like a very reasonable thing you did there. I agree about keyboard etc. manuals and their ornaments.

Best regards,
danyel

Am 17.09.2010 um 15:34 schrieb Keith Bowen:

> I have listened to Dan's advice on improvising and embellishments for years
> - in fact he introduced me, and my Kammermusik Workshop, to the concept when
> he gave us a masterclass on the Gran Partitta.
>
> A couple of years ago, when I was doing a project for my MA Music, it
> occurred to me that a good way to find out more about improvising was to
> find out what performers were taught about it in the eighteenth and early
> nineteenth centuries. So I ploughed through all the clarinet instruction
> manuals I could find, in the British Library, about 20 of them, in English,
> French and German.
>
> Indeed there are some very informative things. Many of them devote many
> pages to the trill (cf. Dan's remark on ending a trill). They show how the
> common ornaments were played (for example, an appoggiatura followed by an
> eight note should be played, as it normally is, as two sixteenth notes, BUT
> the first should be emphasized - it was the way of doing an accent). And
> there is the overriding instruction to learn from singers and they way they
> ornament. NOT (and I think this is a common mistake) from keyboard manuals
> such as CPE Bach and Turk, nor, for the classical period, from the JJ Quantz
> flute manual. There's evidence that the guy was way out of date and hadn't
> noticed that he was stuck in the Baroque whereas everyone else had gone
> classical (:-)). So I dug out a well known singers' manual, by Martini,
> around 1780, and found amazing examples of embellishments in singers'
> practice. But this gives a clue - if you can sing it it is probably OK.
>
> Interesting aside - I first found a facsimile of the Martini, and went to
> the music librarian saying 'I suppose you're going to tell me I can't copy
> it as it's a recent facsimile edition with editorial text'. He said 'Indeed
> I am. But why don't you just use the original, we have it downstairs!'.
>
> I will happily give anyone who is interested a link to download this project
> report (and also my more extensive dissertation on the bass clarinet in A,
> which is in the same location. Email me off list.
>
> I would also recommend the book by Clive Brown, Classical and Romantic
> Performing Practice 1750 - 1900 (Oxford, 1999).
>
> Dan's other bit of advice was, 'Just do it 1000 times. You'll know when you
> get one right. The next 1000 you'll get two right ....'
>
> Keith
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Wakeling [mailto:joseph.wakeling@-----.net]
> Sent: 17 September 2010 13:01
> To: klarinet@-----.com
> Subject: Re: [kl] Improvising in Mozart's clarinet music
>
> On 09/17/2010 09:39 AM, Diego Casadei wrote:
>> Few years ago I heard Carbonare playing Mozart's concerto with a a
>> basset clarinet under the direction of Abbado. The conductor insisted
>> quite a lot on adding (moderate) variations whenever a phrase was
>> repeated, and Carbonare did it. The biggest impact was indeed in the
>> slow movement, in which repetitions are several (but the orchestra never
>> added variations) and improvisations can take more time to develop.
>
> I meant to write a note on that, because someone made a comment a few
> threads back (tongue-in-cheek, I think) to the extent that one shouldn't
> even be allowed to approach the Adagio until after one's first mid-life
> crisis.
>
> ... whereas I think that for me, now, the Adagio is in many ways the
> most playful and child-like parts of the concerto.
>
> There's a big temptation, because it's called an Adagio, to try and take
> it as slow as possible -- I thought of it like that, for a long, long
> time, and was very resistant to attempts to persuade me to play it
> faster, and I didn't like recordings where it _was_ played fast. And
> when you do play it very, very slowly it becomes quite serious and
> profound, and that in turn makes it quite difficult to add
> improvisations because improvisation by its nature brings a chaotic
> element that doesn't really go with that kind of serious profundity.
>
> Anyway, a few years ago I was at a performance in London by Tony Pay,
> conducted by Charles MacKerras, where the Adagio was taken far, far
> faster than I'd anticipated -- in my memory at least, fast to the point
> where it was possible to have some ambiguity between the bar having 3
> beats or 1 beat. And _that_ suddenly changed things -- suddenly the
> movement became very playful and full of little flashing sparks of life,
> and in that context improvisation -- little joyful flowerings of
> creativity -- makes perfect sense and adds to the result.
>
> I don't really know what I thought of the movement as being "about"
> before. I guess I would have said that -- taken very slow -- it has
> something of a character of deep longing and also a kind of nobility and
> grandeur, the wise old king thinking back on his life or something like
> that. (These days I don't think wise old kings really exist. Any king
> with any real measure of power, however kind they appear in person,
> usually has some nasty little bastard with a torture chamber somewhere
> underneath them busy tormenting and terrifying people in order to _keep_
> that power.)
>
> _Now_ an image I have in mind is of a parent playing with a little
> child, taking joy and wonder in their every little gesture, full of
> amazement as they watch the baby discovering new experiences and
> learning -- as babies do -- things which as adults we forget that we
> ever even _needed_ to learn, and amazed by their own capacity to spark
> amazement and fascination and activity in this little creature with even
> the simplest gesture ... and maybe the ending is the end of a "perfect"
> such day, watching the baby go off to sleep peacefully with all the
> day's new discoveries still swimming around inside his head.
>
> It's still profound, but in a very different way, that's full of play
> and creativity.
> _______________________________________________
> Klarinet mailing list
> Klarinet@-----.com
> To do darn near anything to your subscription, go to:
> http://klarinet-list.serve-music.com
>
>
> __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature
> database 5456 (20100916) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>
>
>
> __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature
> database 5456 (20100916) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Klarinet mailing list
> Klarinet@-----.com
> To do darn near anything to your subscription, go to:
> http://klarinet-list.serve-music.com

_______________________________________________
Klarinet mailing list
Klarinet@-----.com
To do darn near anything to your subscription, go to:
http://klarinet-list.serve-music.com

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org