Klarinet Archive - Posting 000221.txt from 2011/03

From: corvo di bassetto <rab@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] Basset Horn Question
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:34:46 -0400

Martin,

Clearly, you assume I am NOT familiar with said works, otherwise you wouldn't deem me ill-informed? Why so snotty? I am not offending you, I just disagree. I pay my respect to your opinion by spending all the time it takes to think about your statements and reply to them.
Now in fact I do know at least some of these peoples works.
I randomly pulled out Poulencs Sonata for 2 clarinets as an example.
It is scored for 1st: Bb and 2nd: A clarinet. The first is constantly playing in all the sharps you can get while the second plays in flats. Both parts seem to be conceived for flute, first almost piccoloish. Technically that is not much of a challenge, compared to Chute d'Icare by Ferneyhough, some Xenakis or Barrett for example. Yet I wonder what this music is for. It seems so completely superficial, so uninspired and laboured, nerve wrecking. You probably find it light, fresh or elegant.
Finzi seems to be a major figure in the UK, I admit I hardly ever heard of him before. His music appears pasty and overstated, stale conservatism, at the same time raving in barbaric, bleak counterpoint. To think he was but 11 years older than Cage, by 18 years Webern's junior! If you like it, great, go for it. You can stay with all those gentlemen's output for the rest of your life if it pleases you. It would not satisfy me. That's all. I am craving for something else, something I haven't found in any music since Brahms' late clarinet pieces.

Best regards
danyel
PS: It just came to my mind that I was always rather fond of Lachenmann's D'al Niente, even though L. doesn't know too much about the clarinet either. But he seems to have dug deeper into the character of the instrument than most others.

Am 24.03.2011 um 14:08 schrieb Martin Baxter:

>
> On 22 Mar 2011, at 13:54, corvo di bassetto wrote:
>
> With the exception of people like Mozart, Weber, Mendelssohn, Brahms who knew the clarinet intimately as played by their good friends, the greatest clarinetists of the respective period, mostly anything written for clarinet is useless or unsatisfying at the least.
> Martin Baxter writes
> This would seem to me not only to be opinionated, but an expression of an ill-informed opinion. I assume you are aware of the works of Saint-Saens, Poulenc, Finzi, Sir Arthur Bliss, John McCabe and Horowitz, to give a few random examples.
> Martin
>
>
>
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