 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: noseed574
Date: 2008-10-22 20:54
How do the difficulty levels of Messager's Solo de Concours and Mozart's Concerto (1st movement) compare? I'm thinking about choosing one for my high school music evaluation.
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2008-10-22 22:38
Well on the technical side then Messenger is a bit hard. But If you have mastered your scales faithfully then you are quick to learn it. Musically the Mozart is much more difficult. But If you would compare these two pieces to Hymnos by Peter Maxwell Davis then these pieces are piece of cake!!!!!!!!!!
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-10-23 01:12
If you can play one you can play both but the Mozart is much more mature musically and more difficult to make sound traditional. I would definitely say the Mozart is the more difficult piece to play well. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457
Listen to a little Mozart
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2008-10-23 08:11
I'm inclined to agree with most of these comments - were you thinking of doing the whole of the Mozart or just one movement? If so, which?
My comment on the Messager is don't just be a speed merchant and a "flash harry" - treat it as music and, especially in the final section, it's better to take it a little more slowly and play it neatly but with energy than take it too fast and end up coming a cropper. It's the little run in 6s near the very end that I find most tricky so perhaps the speed should be determined by how fast you can play this.
However, I hope you don't mind me suggesting this , but I can't help wondering whether, if you are so unfamiliar with the demands of these pieces that you need to ask about them here, perhaps you should be considering other options for your evaluation. In any kind of assessment it is best to do something that you know well and you know is well within your capabilities and do it well, under conditions where you will be nervous after all, than to set the bar too high.
Of course a lot also depends on how long you have to prepare, how much rehearsal you can get with your pianist, whether perhaps you could do a "dry run" performance before the evaluation and so on.
Good luck whatever you decide. Hope it goes well.
Vanessa.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 10:04
Technical difficulty is, to some extent, an objective measure. Musical difficulty is utterly subjective and ill-defined.
A lot of people on this BBoard think the Mozart Concerto, and even more so the Brahms Sonatas, are so musically difficult (whatever that means) that they should not be attempted until you are a very advanced player.
The people who set the syllabuses of the UK examining boards (ABRSM and others) don't agree with this view; movements of the Mozart and Brahms pieces regularly appear on the syllabuses along with other pieces of comparable technical difficulty. In particular, the Mozart Concerto (either the first or the last movement) is a fixture on the grade 8 syllabus. Grade 8 is the level that needs to be achieved to gain entry to a conservatoire at undergraduate level.
The Messager was briefly on the grade 8 syllabus but has now been removed. Even when it was there, you were told to omit the cadenza. (I don't think the cadenza is the hardest part, but that's just my opinion.)
I would conclude from that the ABRSM thinks that the Messager is technically harder than the Mozart.
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2008-10-23 11:06
As far as Norbert's comment goes, the fact that the Messager is no longer set for grade 8 ABRSM does not necessarily mean it is "harder" than the Mozart. The ABRSM has, in its time, set both these pieces for its diploma exams too - the implication being that it expects them to be played at a higher level. Many pieces come and go from the syllabus. Besides which, those in the know tend to avoid playing the Mozart for Grade 8.
In any kind of assessment the main thing is to choose something which plays to your own particular strengths and plays down any weaknesses - Do you have great fingers? Enormous breath capacity? Ability to phrase beautifully? Ideally, of course, one aims for all of these but the original post was about a High School evaluation where, one imagines, the player may have developed more in some ways than others so far. He/she will want to show him/herself in his/her best light.
Vanessa.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-10-23 11:45
Nessie1 wrote: As far as Norbert's comment goes, the fact that the Messager is no longer set for grade 8 ABRSM does not necessarily mean it is "harder" than the Mozart.
No, but the fact that the Messager was required to be played without its cadenza for grade 8 does strongly suggest that the ABRSM regards the piece as a whole to be too difficult for grade 8. Normally, pieces are set in their entirety, and it is up to the examiner to request cuts if the piece is too long for the time available.
The original poster is presumably weighing up the relative difficulty level of Messager-including-cadenza against Mozart-first-movement. I was merely trying to provide some objective evidence that the Messager is technically harder. "Objective" in the sense that it is based on the opinion of the ABRSM, who presumably know a thing or two about the abilities of young clarinet players, having examined a good number of them over many decades.
Nessie1 also wrote: Besides which, those in the know tend to avoid playing the Mozart for Grade 8.
Why? And if so, do they also avoid Brahms, or is the reason nothing to do with "musical difficulty"?
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2008-10-23 13:02
Norbert,
I don't know all the reasoning behind the ABRSM's decision to tell people to omit the cadenza in the Messager. I agree that it may mean that it was felt that the cadenza was beyond Grade 8 standard. From my experience of it it is a crucial part of the piece and places big demands on one from the point of view of breath control, fingers and phrasing/pace (i.e musicality). In fact, had I been taking grade 8 at this time, the instruction to cut would probably have been enough to decide me against doing the Messager, although I love the piece. However, I have heard no less a clarinettist than Michael Collins who, as you probably know, makes a bit of a signature piece of the Messager, perform it with an abbreviated version of the cadenza, possibly because it was an encore at the end of a recital and he felt it might be a bit long with the cadenza. The ABRSM have to set pieces to fit a range of restrictions such as time taken besides the standard of the piece and also provide a range of options within each list so that candidates and teachers can choose something they like and, as I said earlier, something which will show the candidate at his/her best. If you look at the ABRSM syllabus (all instruments, not necessarily clarinet) there is at any one time a sprinkling of cases where they state things like "ossias acceptable" in the case of a piece which they think is mainly of a suitable standard for a particular grade but may have one or two passages which take it beyond that standard. This partly answers, in a way, another part of your query - they don't want young or developing players to be denied the experience of playing major works for the sake of a certain notes.
As far as the Mozart being avoided for grade 8 is concerned, my teacher pointed out that there is only one Mozart clarinet concerto - not 4 as for horn or 6 as for violin etc. Even with the Brahms sonatas there are two. I agree that the distinction between musical difficulty and technical difficulty is important but, whatever kind of assessment you are taking, the assessor/examiner will be (?should be) looking for attainment in both.
However, in terms of the original poster's question, whilst we can offer advice, we know little about his/her strong and weak points which would enable us to provide a more considered opinion. We may be talking about someone who has an instinctive feel for the classical era and could do the Mozart beautifully but lacks some of the finger work or the breath stamina pull off the Messager, for example.
Finally, whilst the original poster here is a high school student, not all ABRSM candidates are youngsters. I took a range of their exams in my 30s and expect to do more in the second half of my 40s. Then again, we all develop in different ways at different rates. I'm sure we've all met teenagers who seem more mature than their parents (lol).
Vanessa.
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Author: malanr
Date: 2008-10-28 18:58
NorbertTheParrot: Can you tell me where the Concerto for Clarinet by Aaron Copland would "rank" on the Grading chart? Or is there somewhere I could look this up? I'm just too big a Benny Goodman fan not to play it.
Just another muscian
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-10-28 19:24
malanr wrote:
> NorbertTheParrot: Can you tell me where the Concerto for
> Clarinet by Aaron Copland would "rank" on the Grading chart?
> Or is there somewhere I could look this up? I'm just too big a
> Benny Goodman fan not to play it.
>
I can answer this question. It's higher than "Grade 8." For that reason, you'll find it in the ABRSM Diploma Syllabus (for receiving teaching/performance credentials), rather than in the Exam Syllabus.
Copland shows up on the LRSM and FRSM lists (the two higher-level diplomas), but not on the DipABRSM list (the lowest of the three levels), whereas the Messager Solo de Concours shows up on the DipABRSM, but not the other two. It's hard to say how much of this is based on difficulty and how much is based on importance to the standard repertoire, though, since there are some pieces that seem to appear on multiple lists mainly because of their importance as standard works. (Like the Brahms Sonatas, which show up on all three lists.)
The Exam Syllabus is here:
http://www.abrsm.org/?page=exams/gradedMusicExams/latestSyllabuses.html
And the Diploma Syllabus is here:
http://www.abrsm.org/?page=exams/diplomas/dips2005Performance.html
You can apparently take these exams and receive diplomas from ABRSM in the U.S., but I don't know anybody who's done it and I'm not quite sure how it works.
Post Edited (2008-10-28 20:05)
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