 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2023-06-28 23:17
What a fantastic article! Thanks for sharing it here. I wish I had read it before I recorded KV 581 in December! :-/
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Author: hoobdeebla
Date: 2023-07-01 22:08
Thanks to Craig Hill for the in-depth reconstruction of this masterwork. Looking forward to performing this soon, although possibly just on "normal" A clarinet. That being said, if you own a basset clarinet and are willing to rent it to me short-term for a performance on July 12th, please reach out! adamschay@gmail.com
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2023-07-03 02:08
This makes interesting reading. However, for most of us a different exercise is needed. I don't ever expect to be able to get my hands on a basset clarinet, so what is of greater interest is to know if there are more effective ways of rendering the quintet on the normal instrument in order to get closer to the spirit of the original. For the concerto there are some fairly clear steps of this sort that one can take, and many modern performances do so - to my ears, achieving a clear improvement on the work of the original arranger. But I've never heard any recording of the quintet that takes similar steps. It would be good to have suggestions for ways of making improved adaptations - and no-one would be better placed to do this than the author of this detailed basset edition.
BTW, although I could read the article online, it seems impossible to download it, sadly.
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2023-07-03 11:54
> this link is to the page on my website where you can download a copy:
That worked; many thanks, and congratulations on a fine piece of scholarship.
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Author: Cdh
Date: 2024-04-21 14:04
A further realisation about bar 61 in the Rondo of KV 622 has prompted a small revision of my edition:
https://mozartbassetclarinet.wordpress.com/a-new-edition-of-kv-622/
Simply play the passage slowly at the piano with the bass part and you will be convinced that this produces the best counterpoint. Try the NMA reconstruction the same way - it is not correct. Even the solution I offered previously is not as good, although it is perhaps the best option for those without a low B.
Now look at the other wide ranging arpeggios in this passage - in bars 62 & 69 - and observe that they also contain turning points. They do not run in a straight line to their resolutions.
With this reconstruction there are now a total of 5 low B's which were likely to have been composed by Mozart in KV 581 and KV 622. That is now simply too many to ignore.
I have come to the conclusion that all of these low B's were changed by Stadler. However, that is not a good enough reason to dismiss them.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2024-04-22 23:52
Quote:
Simply play the passage slowly at the piano with the bass part and you will be convinced that this produces the best counterpoint. Try the NMA reconstruction the same way - it is not correct. Even the solution I offered previously is not as good, although it is perhaps the best option for those without a low B.
You're talking about the dominant arpeggio above the 4/2 chord in the orchestra?
If so, I do like your reproduction! The way I would harmonize a 4/2 resolution would be a step up in the soprano line (from scale-degree 7 to 1 if it were a V to I motion) or a leap of a 4th (from scale-degree 5 to 1). Your turn around in the basset part gets this scale-degree 7 to 1 line that sounds very idiomatic to my ears.
The NMA, for me, isn't technically incorrect but much less idiomatic. I think it's because the basset line hits a concert C# (written low E) on the last eighth-note of the bar. This pitch gives away the resolution of the 4/2 in the bass and creates an un-Mozart-like 7-6 accented passing tone (a bit more Chopin-esque, no?). Much worse than this realization, though, is the common A-clarinet version where players descend a scale down to low E and then complete the bar with an upper-neighbor E-F-E, which produces parallel octaves with the bass. But I guess it might be too much to ask for clarinetists to look at the bass line to a piece of music they're playing...
Thanks for sharing your hard work! And bravo on an excellent edition!
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Author: Cdh
Date: 2024-04-23 07:09
Thanks Liquorice & brycon for your generous words.
It was bold to suggest that the NMA is incorrect in bar 61 of the Rondo, but there are three ways in which that reconstruction does not conform to Mozart's style:
1. Over a single harmony Mozart never changes from an arpeggio to a scale without also changing direction.
2. The counterpoint with the bass is not good. Among other defects the scale produces parallel 7ths with the bass. Brycon has instinctively identified the problem with the 2nd last note, written e, which leads to the third problem:
3. Mozart's use of the 4/2/6 chord. It is easy to discover all the melodic types it can accompany:
The 2nd and 4th can be directly preceded with an appoggiatura (rising or falling) or any other chord tone. Decorating the 6th of the chord (usually the the 2nd degree of the scale) with an approach from the note above is not found. But it can be preceded by any other chord tone. The resolutions also follow specific patterns, and generally ascend to create contrary motion with the bass. Brycon mentioned the upward resolution of the 4th (usually scale degrees 7-1), which is by far the most common form.
Fortunately, from the voice leading of the string parts it is clear that the last note of bar 61 was a low D. As the 6 in a 2/4/6 chord, it can only be preceded by another chord tone, the closest of which are F and B. These two "2nd last notes" give rise to my two reconstructions. The new one, using low B, is the more convincing one because it is simpler, and offers an easy explanation as to why Stadler had to change it. He was one of those players brycon mentions who didn’t look at the bass
So, it seems there are no examples of Mozart writing a rapid scale to or from low C. KV 581, Allegro, bar 41, anyone?
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Author: brycon
Date: 2024-04-23 23:23
What did you have in that spot in your previous version?
I'm primarily a clarinetist but studied a bit of piano (was a very mediocre student) and composition. For fun, now, I do some historical composition--partimenti, dance suites, preludes and fugues, etc.--and also use these things as teaching approaches when I'm asked to do a theory course. At any rate, one of my colleagues sent me a PDF of a book by Scott Burnham from Princeton University, if I remember correctly, called Mozart's Grace. It's a look at the more surface level elements, such as diminutions, textures, and so forth, that make Mozart sound like Mozart. I've been waiting for summer to hit to read it, so I can't say if it's good or not. But something that might interest you, nonetheless!
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Author: Cdh
Date: 2024-04-24 02:34
brycon wrote:
> What did you have in that spot in your previous version?
Rondo bar 61: f'',d'',b', g', f', d', b, g, f, e, f, d
It is to be found in the Commentary, page III: x, and is the version recommended if you don't have or don't want to play low B.
I refrained from the use of ossias, because the intent is to reconstruct Mozart's text using a scholarly approach.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2024-04-24 02:48
Quote:
Rondo bar 61: f'',d'',b', g', f', d', b, g, f, e, f, d
I like that version too! If you're going to put an in E in there, it works much better as a lower neighbor, as you have it, than as an accented passing tone, as the NMA has it.
Great work!
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Author: Cdh
Date: 2024-04-26 03:52
>>With this reconstruction there are now a total of 5 low B's which were likely to have been composed by Mozart in KV 581 and KV 622. That is now simply too many to ignore.<<
What's really striking is that all the B's are preceded by low d's, and not by low c. It's only 4 distinct cases, because two of them are the same music, but it's just enough to be a pattern.
Most likely Stadler showed Mozart, or Mozart simply noticed, that the knee hole could be closed in advance without changing the pitch of the other notes. That is obviously not possible if the preceding note is low c.
So, Mozart chose what he thought to be the more idiomatic way to employ the low B. But if Stadler changed *all* of them, why? Either:
1. He found it was too risky in performance.
or
2. Something changed which made it less idiomatic, almost impossible
What could that have been? Perhaps he switched the direction of the bell...
Now you could argue that it's a bit circular, because I have chosen/devised the reconstructions, but the thing is, they compose themselves once you have precisely put your finger on what the problem is. And I'm not on a hunt for low B's - if I were I would like to think that it wouldn't have taken me 25 years!
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2024-04-26 10:14
Craig- what makes you think Stadler changed the low Bs?
On my instrument I can still play low Bs, even if I change the direction of the bell. I just have to use the other knee :-) But with bell facing backwards, which is actually far more comfortable for instrument stability, the sound in all registers projects noticeably less well.
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Author: Cdh
Date: 2024-04-26 14:48
Liquorice wrote:
> Craig- what makes you think Stadler changed the low Bs?
It's complicated - but I hope this explanation will be clear enough.
Most literature on the subject of KV 622 talks about "the adaption" or the "arranger", but it is possible to discern *two* hands at work. The second one for the most part just places passages which were notated in the bass clef an octave higher. The first one uses other means - inversions and turning points.
This is well illustrated by bar 147 in the Rondo. All three early prints give three d's (above middle c') in a row, which is plainly nonsensical. This was clearly the result of putting a passage up an octave from which a low B had already been replaced with a low d. In other words a two stage process: either two different people, or the same person at different times with a different aim on each occasion.
If two hands are at work, it makes most sense if the first one was Stadler. We can see a similar approach to the process of adaption in the Clarinet Quintet. Stadler performed that work in Vienna for Salieri's birthday *after* his instruments were stolen/lost/pawned on tour. On that occasion he most likely played on a regular A clarinet, since Lotz died in 1792 and most likely no-one else was making basset clarinets at that point. Stadler would have had to adapt the part for a normal A clarinet himself. (I think maybe Kurst Birsak is the only scholar who has dared to speculate that Stadler made the adaption for regular clarinet.) Interestingly, we can see the same approach to adaption of bar 295 of the first movement of KV 622 as in bar the adaption or bar 147 in the first movement of KV 581: namely the introduction of an extra turning point which creates oscillating thirds. It seems like the same hand at work.
In the case of bar 61 in the Rondo, the normal reconstruction, made by placing the scale an octave lower, is still incorrect for the reasons outlined in a previous post in this thread. There must have been a previous version, which hopefully looked like my reconstruction! So the transformation to the version in the early editions was also a two stage process.
> On my instrument I can still play low Bs, even if I change the
> direction of the bell. I just have to use the other knee :-)
We don't know how much time Stadler had to get used to playing with the other knee, or if that was really practicable on his instrument. His first performances on the instrument, of the Quintet, were undoubtedly sitting, since string quartets usually played seated. So as well as using the other knee he may have been getting used to standing with the instrument when he played the concerto. I have always played the concerto with a conductor, and prefer to sit because of the freedom it gives my thumb for the basset keys. Stadler probably needed to stand because he was also directing.
> But with bell facing backwards, which is actually far more
> comfortable for instrument stability, the sound in all
> registers projects noticeably less well.
So there we have it: Stadler was faced with difficult choices. The instrument works best bell forward (for me too) - which is easiest in the sitting position. But if you want to stand, then balancing the instrument is easier with the bell backwards, but this comes with poorer projection and requires a different technique to close the knee-hole. A the same time he was learning a new work which we have all had a lifetime to try and master.
Hats off to all those who have a go at standing, bell forwards AND low B's!
Post Edited (2024-04-27 08:07)
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