 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Katie
Date: 2001-03-13 06:35
Hi all,
I am currently doing a research project on performance practices in the Copland Clarinet Concerto, and I'm have a difficult time finding information. If any one has any information at all concerning it, I would really, really appreciate the help!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Gene Wie
Date: 2001-03-13 09:01
I had the opportunity to perform the Copland two years ago with orchestra, prior to which I listened to a variety of recordings of the piece, all different, to get a grasp on what different performers did with the music. Be sure to check out the recordings of the piece with Benny Goodman (of course), Richard Stoltzman, Stanley Drucker, Charles Niedich, and Gary Gray. The big question for me was: do I play what's printed on the page, or does it swing? What was the composer's intention? Benny plays it straight, why does Stoltzman swing it? Is the piece supposed *be* jazz or is it just supposed to "hint" at the various styles?
In any case, here's a portion of the liner notes that I put together from various sources for the program:
Aaron Copland's "Clarinet Concerto" (1947-1948) was commissioned by renowned clarinetist Benny Goodman. The fusion of Copland's diatonic lyricism and the jazz idioms he incorporated into his writing brought about a piece that stands firmly in its American roots. It incorporates the simple yet evocative style that is characteristic of his "sentimental" pastoral writing with the brash and colorful textures of jazz inspired by Goodman's albums and improvisational ideas."
So the legend goes, when Benny recieved the score of the piece for the first time, he approved of the "jazziness" of the piece, but felt that the solo writing in the cadenza and other technical details in the piece was a tad excessive. He hesitated to play it for so long that Copland arranged for a Philadelphia Orchestra performance soon after Benny's two-year exclusive "playing contract" on the piece expired....so he went a head and did the world premiere in a radio broadcast with the NBC Symphony of the Air under Fritz Reiner (this paragraph is copied from the CD liner notes of the Sony Classical "Copland Collection").
And information from a varietyy of other sources:
-----
http://www.proarte.org/notes/copland2.htm
"Copland, an inveterate traveler, began the score in Rio de Janeiro late in 1947, but he finished it during his sixth season of teaching at Tanglewood during the summer of 1948. Goodman found it a challenge, especially in the lively syncopated parts, which move in ways rather different from the jazz he was accustomed to. But his loving performance (and the superb recording he made) quickly established the concerto as a popular modern favorite. Structurally, the work is simplicity itself: two movements (slow, then fast) linked by a solo cadenza. The first movement is graceful and songful, cast in broad but gentle musical arches. The cadenza introduces some jazzy elements that are then fully exploited in the faster second movement."
-----
http://www.unitel.classicalmusic.com/uhilites/011100.htm
"Jazz clarinetist and "King of Swing" Benny Goodman always felt a strong affinity to classical music and pursued a career as a classical musician parallel to his activity as a jazz and swing-band performer. Regretting the lack of good contemporary ensemble works for clarinet, Goodman commissioned pieces from Bartók, Hindemith and Copland. Aaron Copland began working on his "Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra" while in Brazil on a goodwill tour of South America, and the finished piece contains elements related to both North and South American popular music. "The work gave me a chance to make use of some of the jazz idioms that I had grown up with as a boy and that I had already used in some other works," commented the composer."
-----
http://www.newyorkphilharmonic.org/copland/article_1.htm
"However, it took Benny Goodman, steeped in both jazz improvisation and classical practices, to lure Copland back to jazz-related composing in 1947. Copland's Clarinet Concerto has two movements played without pause, with a freely interpreted solo clarinet cadenza connecting the parts. "The cadenza. . . provides the soloist with considerable opportunity to demonstrate his prowess," the composer wrote for Goodman's recording of the work on Columbia in 1962, which he conducted. "At the same time [the clarinet introduces] fragments of the melodic material to be heard in the second movement." Copland called that second movement "a free rondo, with several side issues developed at some length."
By '47, composers including Ellington had advanced concert jazz considerably, but Copland introduced in the Clarinet Concerto an approach many jazz-based soloists continue to adopt for classical-jazz fusions. The principal instrumentalist's abilities are demonstrated and set up themes for orchestral integration and extrapolation.
"Links between jazz music and concert-hall music really exist," clarinetist Goodman avowed in The Kingdom of Swing. "In jazz it's the feeling of freedom . . . In other kinds of music, it's the idea of measuring yourself against what a great composer was thinking . . . When everything blends. . .that's the thing jazz musicians mean when they say that something swings."
One may not think of Aaron Copland swinging, but Goodman never suffered squares gladly. In truth, Copland never spurned jazz. He clearly alludes to jazz in his Symphonic Ode; restless, jazz-like rhythms remain in his ballets including Rodeo (Four Dance Episodes), and he may even have borrowed Ellington's brassy voicings for the opening blast of Inscape (1967). Aaron Copland assimilated some jazz essences, and used them for his own purposes. But that's a process jazz musicians, too, employ in pursuit of originality."
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
