Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2005-06-24 19:55
> > You've written extensively on the Copland Concerto, and it sounds like you've pretty much made up your mind about the "swing" factor when you perform the Concerto yourself.> >
Well, certainly in 'passage Q' I have. I wanted to know whether you agreed with what I wrote about that. Indeed, I'd still like to know.
> > I'm sure you're not serious about "jazzy style, whatever that means." I'm sure you know a lot about jazz, and you know what many of us do when we're asked to "jazz up" a passage in a jingle, or a show tune, or a contemporary classical piece. The Copland Concerto has always felt jazzy to me, and that's why I "swung" some sections of the piece for Copland when we worked together on the film project.> >
The difficulty about that is that different people have different ideas of what playing 'jazzily' consists of. I haven't heard you play the Copland, and it's very possible that I might like what *you* do, but not what other people do, in the name of 'jazzing up'.
As an illustration, I remember playing a concert with the London Sinfonietta under Simon Rattle which attempted to recreate a Paul Whiteman concert at the Carnegie Hall. (I didn't do the record, but it was much the same as the performance, as I recall.) We did rather badly compared to a similar New York recording, because we sounded like classical musicians trying to play jazzily, whereas they sounded like people who really understood the style in their bones. (That's what I meant when I contrasted 'stylistic elements' with 'surface features'.)
> > So, all I can say is that I play the Concerto with a "swing feel" in various sections of the piece. My feelings about how much I swing or where it happens depends on my mood, at the time, or the group I'm playing for or with.> >
How about 'passage Q', which is the bit that I'm most interested in? You see, I have an 'argument' to present about why it might be said to be wrong to swing that passage, whereas other things that you might do -- a slightly different sound, an inflexion -- wouldn't bother me.
And beyond that, I have another agenda, which is to promote the idea that our fundamental job as players is to try to find a way in which the score makes sense, rather than just playing what we happen to like.
> > He liked the little bit of swing I tried, and it seemed to work for the film. > >
I suppose it might be possible that what was required for the film might be different from what was required for a performance. But I defer to you on that.
> > I think Aaron Copland understood "jazzy style" better than any of us mere mortals.
Having worked with very many composers in my time -- even with Copland on one occasion, recording Appalachian Spring under his baton -- I would have to say that genius in the direction of composition doesn't always go hand in hand with genius in the direction of performance. Of course, it may have been so with Copland -- you know more than me.
I wrote:
> > I've even sometimes said that I don't particularly want to consult a composer like Berio about small things, because *he might tell me what to do*! > >
You wrote:
> > I worked closely with Luciano Berio for many years. I was his clarinetist in the first Berio Ensemble, which toured the US and Europe. We played Luciano's music along with many other talented contemporary composers. When we performed Berio's music, and played pieces like "Folk Songs" with Cathy Berberian, or many of the 'Sequenzas', we discussed them at great length, and got a lot of input from the man himself. It was invaluable to us, and made our performances more vital and musical. I miss the great and talented Luciano Berio, he was a wonderful musical spirit, and an inspiration to many of us who worked so closely with him for so long.> >
Well, I don't want to get into a competition about how well we each knew Berio, but I too worked closely with him, and with Cathy. I did many first performances: Recital, Points on the Curve to Find, etc, and recorded the Clarinet Concertino and other works on RCA with him conducting.
The Clarinet Sequenza was written around 1983, and I did the second London performance of the piece under Luciano's supervision, and several times in his presence afterwards.
What I was on about in my remarks above was as follows: composers are sometimes extremely difficult to take seriously as sources for how to play their pieces. Stravinsky, for example, famously said so many contradictory things about his works that, as someone once put it, it made you doubt whether there actually was such a person as Stravinsky.
On the occasion of this performance in London in 1983, Berio asked me to play it sitting down.
I thought this was quite a good idea: the piece is quite 'inward' in many places, reminiscent at the beginning of the first of the Stravinsky pieces.
In fact, as an aside, I have something to contribute here: Berio once heard me play these pieces in a concert directed by him in Rome in the 70's, and said afterwards, "I'd forgotten how wonderful these pieces are -- I especially like the bit in the second movement, where you get the tune, then the accompaniment; then the tune again, then the accompaniment again; and then, the accompaniment becomes the tune!
"When I write a Sequenza for clarinet, I shall dedicate it to Stravinsky."
He didn't -- perhaps he forgot -- but I think the influence is there (Berio was a clarinettist himself, of course).
Anyway, to go on with the story, I played the piece sitting down, and using a full Boehm clarinet (you can't get the chords on the standard instrument without low Eb).
Years passed, and I played the Sequenza a few times. One solution I adopted for the chords was to put, first a C clarinet bell, and then a device I made out of a shampoo bottle into the bell of my standard clarinet, so that I could play the chords as written. It was too much trouble to borrow a complete Boehm instrument every time.
Anyhow, I then played it again in Brussels in Berio's presence, I suppose around 1990. He was very pleased with my performance -- he was almost effusive -- but then said, "You can't use that...that suppository. We must find another solution.
"But, why do you play sitting down?" he went on.
"Well, because you asked me to."
"No...never!"
"But, when I played it in London, you did!"
"No!"
Subsequently, I stayed at Berio's house in Radicondoli (though not for a year, I admit:-), and we worked out a solution that could be played on a standard Boehm clarinet. It involved changing some of the notes around the chords, because Berio said -- and I agreed with him -- that different notes in the chord meant that what was originally written before and after didn't fit. He also asked me to write an introduction and explanation of the piece, to be published with the new solution to the chords.
I said that I didn't want to do that, because my ideas about the piece would just get in the way of how other people might want to play it. The piece is quite explicit as to what you do, after all.
Later I played it in London (from memory, and that's another story) and gave him what I'd written out as the solution we'd come up with.
"But, you've changed some notes!" he said.
"I didn't change them, Luciano. You did."
"No...never!"
Another similar rewriting of history was told me by Aldo Bennici, for whom Berio wrote 'Voci'. Aldo had been playing the viola sequenza, and Berio asked him how he saw the piece.
"Well, I think of it as a modern Chaconne -- you know, like the Bach," Bennici said.
"Rubbish!" replied Luciano. "How can you think that? I've never heard anything so stupid! If anything, it's like Paganini -- virtuoso string writing that stretches the instrument! Bach, indeed!"
A few days later, Aldo heard a radio broadcast of an interview with Luciano, about the Sequenzas, among other things.
"Ah yes, the viola Sequenza," said Luciano. "You know, in many ways, it is like the Bach Chaconne...."
> > PS Not only was Berio a great composer, but also a very generous human being. With no place to live, as a young contemporary clarinetist, Luciano let me live in his house in Weehawken, NJ for over a year!> >
You saw the good side of him, as indeed I mostly did. In fact, he was always generous to people he felt were a part of his family.
On the other hand, he could be gratuitously sadistic to random orchestral players who showed weakness. I saw several ugly scenes of that nature, where even if someone wasn't playing particularly badly, he would have them play badly in the end, and therefore justify his attacking them.
He was a complex man, and a wonderful musician. I'm glad to have known him, but he wasn't always easy.
Tony
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