 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: angella
Date: 2000-02-05 05:49
for any aspiring orchestral bass players- this might interest... it's just a snipit from something someone sent me.
I'm forwarding this note from Don Freund, the chair of our composition
faculty here at Indiana (with his permission). Is this situation already
well-known?
Eric Isaacson
Sunday night in preparing for [name deleted]'s DM orals, I was listening to
Miraculous Mandarin (Neeme Jarvi, Philharmonia) with the score, and
started hearing some really strange bass clarinet notes close to the end.
I realized that after figure 102, the bass clarinet part (indicated
throughout the score as Cl. basso in La and correctly transposed up to
figure 101) is written in the score as it should be transposed for a Bb
bass clarinet. This means that unless a correction is made the bass
clarinet plays the entire ending of the piece a half-step lower than all
the parts it is doubling. Except for making for some muddy textures and
fairly obvious clams, this is no big deal until the last 5 bars of the
piece, which ends with a highly chromatic bass clarinet solo against
f-minorish shudders in the remaining orchestra. No doubling clues here,
but this sounded suspicious when played by Jarvi's bass clarinettist, and
looking at the passage convinces me (with agreement from Claude Baker)
that here, too, it's written for Bb bass clarinet, sounding a 1/2-step
higher than the score transposition indicates. Then I realized that, since
it's a ballet, there ought to be a piano four-hand version around, and I
found one in the library, published in 1925 by Universal, presumably by Bartok or under his supervision. Sure enough, the ending solo in the
reduction is a 1/2-step higher than the score would indicate, affirming
Claude's and my wonderful sympathy with Bartok's tonal proclivities. I
listened to the Dorati/Detroit CD on reserve for Horlacher,
Kielian-Gilbert, and Magee (probably because it's paired with Music for
SP&C), and here too the bass clarinettist (and conductor - assuming he's
listening) are faithful to the bogus score transposition. This makes me
wonder about a few things:
Has this critical ending passage EVER been played with the right notes?
Did Bartok ever hear this and try to correct it?
Who is the current head honcho in Bartok research, and should s/he be made
aware of this, if s/he isn't already?
And some more troubling points:
How can a bass clarinettist play a whole passage a 1/2step lower than the
lines he's doubling and not bring it to the attention of the conductor - I
suppose he assumes the conductor hears every note he plays and wants it
that way. Or maybe both of them figure, "Hey, it's modren music, it's
supposed to sound funny!"
And, how shakey is our sense of pitch definition when the critical ending
passage of a rather famous piece can be played a 1/2-step too low for 3/4
of a century? Of maybe Jarvi, Dorati, and I are the only ones who haven't
already corrected our scores.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Brad
Date: 2000-02-05 17:03
Thanks for discovering this and passing it along. I don't find this particularly surprising though. Such problems with music's presentation are common enough. I had a similar problem just a couple of weeks ago with the bass clarinet part for Delius' "Paris." At #28 in the Kalmus edition the part erroneously changes key and the only clue is a pair of low Gbs in the key of G. If I didn't check the part against the score I wouldn't have figured it out. I think that after reading about certain passages of Debussy's "Premiere Rhapsody" here at sneezy, I realize that composers sometimes make mistakes in their signature copies and that unless you see or hear something amiss, you might not notice the mistakes. I've played in musicals before where the parts have to be returned without any marks by the players left in- lest the company be charged extra for erasing. Lazy copyists have put wrong notes in and have been corrected by the musicians and then removed at the end of the run time after time. I guess you can say that it's all part of the learning process but when different recordings also contain the same errors you gots ta wonder.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
