Author: mrn
Date: 2009-09-01 23:38
Lelia Loban wrote:
> No discourtesy to Mozart intended. I agree with you in
> principle, but as a practical matter, you can afford to presume
> because your presumptions are not presumptuous. You're
> qualified to edit these scores yourself. You're better
> qualified, in fact, than a lot of the people who do edit
> Mozart's scores. I'm not. Ergo, the best score for you may
> not be the best score for me.
If I'm reading Tony correctly, there's no good way to introduce what Tony is describing into a score through editing, no matter how good or qualified the editor is.
It occurred to me that thin notation is really alive and well in the 21st century, but it's in a place that at first blush seems quite far removed from Mozart---the jazz chart.
There's no amount of notation that can fully contain the "feel" of jazz rhythm and phrasing. A passage might be notated as nothing more than a string of straight eighth notes, but each note may have a different level of accent and duration that creates the "bounce" that one hears in bebop, for example. The "feel" of the music is never really notated, but skilled jazz musicians know the conventions--the performance practice, if you will--and know how to phrase the music properly in the appropriate jazz context (I say "appropriate" because jazz encompasses a lot of different styles with different conventions).
Just as I grew up in a house where jazz was frequently on the turntable (I learned how to scat sing that way), musicians of Mozart's day were no doubt immersed in the musical styles of their day from an early age (especially Mozart!) and were able to absorb the characteristic "bounce" of the classical style into their musical vocabulary with little effort. For them, thin notation was sufficient because the expressive vocabulary of the style came naturally to them (indeed, it was no doubt preferable--it's like scat singing--if you know the style you can sing that way, but to try to write down all those nonsense syllables [which are the articulations--the tongues and slurs, if you will--of scat singing] would be ridiculous). In fact, to them our thick notation might be a bit like trying to write out swing eighths as dotted or triplet rhythms--it might approximate jazz rhythm, but it's still not the same thing--in fact, if followed to the letter, it could even throw you off and make the music sound too mechanical and lifeless--too square. You simply can't notate all of it--much of what makes the music sound alive defies notation (and really, I think you can say this is true of all music--thinly notated music is just more honest about it).
I think Tony's point (if I'm reading him correctly--if not, at least he now knows where I've gone wrong ) is that although it is impossible to express everything in notation and editing, it IS possible to learn the "feel" of classical-era music in such a way that one can pick up a Mozart score and perform the music in an idiomatic way, just as the players in Mozart's day did and just as today's jazz players do with jazz music. You don't have to have everything explicitly spelled out to play in the correct style, because if you understand the style, you can come up with a whole assortment of "correct" ways to play the music. In fact, you may even decide to throw in a little improvisation, too.
In short, editing Mozart is for squares...you gotta DIG Mozart. 
Post Edited (2009-09-02 00:21)
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
