 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-04-25 19:38
(I posted this in the thread about "4 rags", and then realized it's a different subject, so it needs a new topic.)
I am curious whether performers feel free to take more liberties with the printed notes (in a big time public performance with critics) with pieces like "4 rags for 4 johns" than they would with say, something by Mozart? I hear a lot of runs and flourishes in the version I sampled on YouTube... were they all precisely scripted?
And if so, why? Would it be more acceptable? Does the music somehow "need" it more? Or let me go the other way- if not... doesn't the jazz/pop style of this properly call for a more flexible (though equally masterful) approach?
Joshua Rifkin recorded the Scott Joplin rags on a big Steinway back in the 1970's. And I noted that, while he followed the printed notes absolutely most of the time- he did some improvising during some repeats. 40 yr later I still don't know how I feel about that, which makes me also a bit of a hypocrite, since the lack of freedom is one of my complaints about classical.
Or am I wrong in believing that Mozart notes are treated as sacred? Never had that kind of training, avoided it actually.
LET ME ADD that I recognize that in ensemble play, the performer properly has far less flexibility other than perhaps in issues of articulation and dynamics. And even those have to be driven by how everybody else is playing and what the director wants. I am an independent spirit, but not an anarchist, LOL.
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2014-04-25 19:55)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-04-25 19:46
I see another thread about "Mozart articulations". My question is whether a high level (think symphony not high school) performer would have the freedom (or nerve) to make a substantive change to a recognized classical clarinet solo, just because he or she thought it sounded better. (Or in some cases, to have 2 or 3 variants and choose based on how you feel at the moment.)
Of course, it's fair game for a listener who recognizes the change to not like it- to prefer the original- or to prefer the "standard" interpretation even if that is not the same as written. And the performer better be ready for rotten tomatoes. (How do you spell that, Dan?)
What I think is stinky is the idea that performer would be railed for having the nerve to change it, without respect to whether maybe it's better. Would that happen, or not?
The kind of changes I'm talking about are common in other styles of play. Move something up or down an octave. Add or delete chromatic notes in between melody notes. Grace notes from other octaves before starting a phrase. Add or delete an echo of a melody fragment in a higher octave. Extend an arpeggio higher up than written. Decide that an entire opening measure adds nothing so should be deleted. etc etc
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2014-04-25 19:58)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: ThatPerfectReed
Date: 2014-04-25 20:08
Hey Stan:
I'd like to hear others opinion on this, but I think that for most classical pieces there is a window of acceptablity in which artists can veer off, if ever so slightly, into their own interpretations of works, and that this window is larger for some pieces and musicians that others.
Perhaps what might be most effective here is if I discussed some of the more common attributes under which variety is found:
* If I were auditioning--better, If I were giving advice to some auditioning for a spot in the NY Philharmonic, and Drucker was brought in from retirement to sit on the panel (an entirely plausible scenario), I'd tell them to memorize Drucker's approach, get his edition if available, and do it that way. Or speaking more generically, play to the panel's path of least resistance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is5_ODzXkbs
..and play the section at the end of the 3rd movement of the Mozart one octave up into the throat tones, despite the difficulty of left thumb movements...
http://youtu.be/QMYCFg-8vTU?t=8m6s
* Many pieces are available from different publishers as a particular artist's interpretation, as written into the music in tonguing versus sluring, taken some passage an octave up or down, cadenza choices, sound intensity and direction, etc.
* If I were a recognized artist that people were paying to see, I might deliberately put my own spin on some work, again, however so subtle a difference from some "standard."
* Sometimes change is necessary. The Mozart Clarinet Concerto was written for the Basset Clarinet, pitched in A, and capable of hitting lower notes than an "ordinary" A clarinet.
* Some pieces, depending on the composer and time period, had little in them suggesting proper interpretation, which instead came from expression of the pieces by artists of the day, and has evolved, much like case law in legal settings.
* If I were Martin Frost, I'd add degrees of difficulty to highlight technique.
* If I were Mate Bekavac, I'd (tongue in cheek, or should I say tongue on reed) play the whole piece an octave up, and break into a 15 minute Klezmeressque cadenza, that the audience wished went on for 20 minutes.
* I'd sooner play the simplier way correctly, than mess up the harder way.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-04-25 20:35
Russ- thanks for the detailed reply- and it all makes sense. Musicians have to be musicians, but a lot is done in a restrictive environment. Some of the restrictions are more reasonable than others, but only a fool ignores things like the personal preferences of those in power. (Not that I haven't done that.)
40 yr ago when I first realized Joshua Rifkin (who I know nothing else about other than those Joplin rags) had CHANGED them, what bothered me was the idea that he would be more inclined to do that to Joplin than say, Chopin. And that would indicate less respect for Joplin than Chopin (right?). Which would imply Chopin's music was more deserving of respect (more important? higher quality?) than Joplin's. And I vehemently disagree!!! Gladiolus Rag is every bit the equal of Polonaise in Ab Major. (I fear I have now parted company with 99% of my readers. Sorry. And I have disqualified myself from that Ivy League Dean of School of Music position I'd been counting on, darn.) All this of course could be completely the opposite of Mr. Rifkin's actual thinking, but if not him- 1000 other classically trained pianists or other instrumentalists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJaIw5JLOGg
What's with the out of tune notes on this piano? The section beginning at 3:27 is one of my personal top 10 musical moments of all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrod5-jRZN0
The last couple of minutes, also top 10. Maybe my list is longer than 10, LOL.
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2014-04-25 21:22)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2014-04-25 22:17
I've posted this link before:
http://www.darylrunswick.net/1pdf/ImproCont.pdf
It's called 'The Improvisation Continuum'. In it, Daryl Runswick, musician extraordinaire, makes the case that ALL real musical performance involves elements of improvisation to varying degrees.
I agree with him.
Here are three opinions from Mozart:
Mannheim, 13 November 1777 to his father:
"I should advise my sister...to play [Myslivecek's keyboard sonatas] with plenty of expression, taste, and fire, and to learn them by heart. For they are sonatas which are bound to please everyone, which are easy to memorise and very effective when played with the proper precision."
And 14 November:
"The Andante [of the Piano Sonata in C, K.309 (284b)] will give us the most trouble, for it is full of expression and must be played accurately and with exact shades of forte and piano, precisely as they are marked."
Leopold Mozart to Wolfgang, Salzburg 7 December 1780:
"It was Herr Esser [visiting in Salzburg] whom we met in Mainz eighteen years ago [August 1763] and whose playin you criticised by telling him that he played well, but that he added too many notes and that he ought to play music as it was written."
Robert Marshall (from whose fascinating book "Mozart Speaks' I have drawn these quotes) writes:
Quote:
For Mozart an indispensable hallmark of a fine performance was that it conveyed "plenty of expression." But a properly expressive performance was not to be achieved at the expense of "proper precision." Mozart's close linguistic linkage of the two attributes – he rarely mentions one without the other – suggests that he may have regarded proper expression as the logical, almost inevitable, consequence of a "precise," "accurate," rendering – at all events, assuming a properly marked score (and a player of taste).
...This remark...is the only statement [made] by Mozart regarding improvised ornamentation There can be little doubt, however, that Mozart expected and tolerated some degree of improvised embellishment in both his instrumental and vocal music...[he] surely would have expected tasteful embellishments to be added to to literal repetitions of themes, especially in slow movements.
The rub for us, of course, is the necessity to learn how to be 'a player of taste'.
Tony
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Katrina
Date: 2014-04-25 22:36
In my opinion, any musician should make an informed choice to play something a certain way. If I've listened to the piece as performed by others AS WELL AS other music from the same composer/time/place, AND studied the score AND learned my music history (a la Tony's quotes from Mozart's time above) THEN I'm making an informed choice.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-04-26 00:33
Tony- that link is fascinating reading, much in there is new/news to me. All sounds right to me also. And toward the end I found this jewel. I can't speak for it's accuracy or universality, but it rings true to me. I think this may be a quote of a quote in the text, not directly from Daryl.
"Curiously, most orchestral players in my experience actively don't want the chance to interpret: they just want to turn up to work and let someone else – the conductor – take decisions, and consequently any flak that's going. Orchestral players can be a sad bunch. As Cleo Laine's bass player/pianist and later as a member of Electric Phoenix I performed with most of the great orchestras of the world, and, more revealingly, rehearsed with them: often a dispiriting experience. (There are wonderful exceptions such as the Berlin Philharmonic.) I remember thinking to myself on many occasions, are these people, resentful, defeated, the same who as youngsters – perhaps only ten years ago – badgered and nagged their parents to let them go to music college because music was so great within them they knew they must devote their lives to it? What happened?
What happened was, they joined an orchestra and surrendered any interpretative freedom: they were forced over and over again to reproduce someone else's interpretation and suppress their own invention: until finally they lost the will to do anything else but parrot and whinge. In the end, if you let someone else risk taking the flak, they get all the artistic satisfaction too. Forbidden to improvise, the musician in us dies."
The prospect of this, plus several other factors, kept me out of music school. Oh well, I have enjoyed engineering.
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2014-04-26 02:10
What I find is that Daryl's article – whilst admittedly containing the excerpt you quote (which incidentally is his own) – nevertheless, in its basic thrust, offers a useful reassurance.
Namely: there is still an infinity of ways to continue to be faithful to the the score whilst engaging in 'real time invention applied to one or more parameters of a musical performance.' And that's true even if your universe is restricted to what is demanded of you by a conductor.
Of course, I hate much of what second and third-rate conductors ask me to do. I respond by doing my best to influence the orchestras I work for not to employ them.
Tony
Post Edited (2014-04-26 02:15)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-04-26 03:53
Indeed, Tony- restrictions are what you make of them. And the other jobs those folks would have if they weren't in orchestra (accounting?) often don't allow a lot of freedom of expression either.
This part of the discussion reminded me a bit of the difference between NFL minimum wage (still pretty good $$,$$$) linemen vs the $,$$$,$$$ stars. But they are still playing football for a living. And you never know when the ball might fall into your hands and you get to make the winning score.
Nobody wants to touch Chopin vs Joplin, I guess.
"Verb To whinge. A British/Australian/New Zealand (possibly South African and
other commonwealth) English word which describes incessant complaining."
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2014-04-26 06:32)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-04-26 07:11
Mozart himself was an improviser. However, my thought on this is that there is a certain amount of respect or reverence for the MASTERS, and rather than running the risk of distracting from, or diminishing any of the original notation, musicians would prefer to err on the side of being historians first (I fall into that camp if there is such a camp).
As the composer becomes more "contemporary," there is less "awe factor." Certainly in the jazz or "popular" styles of music one tempted to a greater degree to add their own personal touches.
The other great factor is the types of musicians who are drawn to those different styles. Speaking for myself, I see my self as an interpreter of music, NOT a creator. To that end it is my job to bring the composers intent to life, not to change it. One who is more inclined to jazz looks at the world of music differently from the start.
............Paul Aviles
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2014-04-26 16:03
The fact that a degree of improvisation is always present in 'alive' performance – the use of different nuances, different tone colours, different degrees of 'bounce' and so on, all context driven and all occurring in real time – has the further consequence that 'embellishment' loses its centre-stage position. We may then embellish, not because 'that's what we're spozed to do, coz it's what THEY did' but rather out of a real, felt need.
Mozart obviously had to contend with performers who embellished badly. The effect of THEIR embellishment was to spoil something that was better left alone – and he said so.
On the other hand, embellishment was part of Mozart's expressive armoury, not only in his improvisations but in his written compositions, where much of the passagework can be seen to consist of fundamental structures PLUS ornamentation.
A good example is provided by the clarinet concerto, where bar 20 of the opening tutti – a passage that the solo part picks up later in bar 108 – is shorn of its ornamentation and its structure exposed in the motif presented in the last half of bar 49 and the first half of bar 50. This sort of thing, present to the listener even if consciously unrecognised, is one reason why Mozart's music sounds so natural to us, I'd say.
So when embellishment occurs in performance, not superficially but as just one aspect of an emotional expression that's already present in other congruent dimensions, then it begins to have its true place. Until we embody that ideal, we're better off considering ourselves the servant of the composer.
Tony
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
