Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2013-07-08 17:13
I sometimes play a recital in which I interleave the movements of the Schumann Fantasiestucke and the Stravinsky Three pieces. I don't know whether the idea behind it might spark anything in you, but here is the programme note for the recital, which also includes music by Debussy (Rhapsodie), John Cage (Sonata for solo clarinet and 4'33"), Saint-Saens (Sonata), Delgado (Langara') and Bernstein (Sonata).
If it doesn't spark anything in you, ignore it:-)
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This recital, as well as containing at least four deservedly famous works for both clarinet and piano duo and solo clarinet, is also intended to be a demonstration of the degree to which context affects our musical perception.
The work of the American composer John Cage was particularly concerned with the relationship of context to content; and we include here two of his pieces, of which one is almost entirely content and the other entirely context. The construction of the rest of the programme is also concerned with the context/content relationship.
That relationship was appreciated by composers and performers long before Cage represented its extremes. But to make the relationship more vivid, we have indulged in some unusual programming.
The first example is an attempt to underline what I have always felt to be a striking parallel between two masterpieces of the clarinet repertoire: namely the Stravinsky Three Pieces for solo clarinet and the Schumann Fantasiestücke op 73 for clarinet and piano. Of course, these works are quite different in style and technique; but they use different expressive registers in a really quite similar way.
To see this, recall that a single player can be required at any given moment to respond to their part within (at least) three different sorts of context. Another way of putting it is to say that they can be required to adopt any one of (at least) three different expressive registers -- or more conveniently, just, 'registers'.
Two of those registers have the characteristic of what might be called the 'single-person stance', because in them we approach the music with the emotions and behaviours of a single person. They invite the player to inhabit and represent a character. The first such register is inward, and speaks of the inner life of a person; whilst the second register is outward, and speaks of the actions of a person.
The remaining register of the three, the 'narrative' register, may not include any persons at all -- an example would be a piece entitiled 'Dawn', when 'descriptive' might be a better name for it -- or it may include several persons, as does the piece by Delgado in this programme, which attempts to portray an argument between three separate characters, as well as something of the nature of the Portuguese language.
Another thing this register can do is to tell a story.
The Schumann and the Stravinsky match each other movement by movement in the registers they demand of the performer. So, the quirk in our programme is to interleave the movements of the Schumann and the Stravinsky, with slight modifications in order to ensure musical continuity.
The first movement of each is introspective, and follows the emotional rules of the inner life: namely, that because emotion is typically mediated by chemical changes in the body that persist independently of thought, no deep feeling can disappear suddenly. (This is why 'sostenuto' is a common feature of emotional music.)
The second movement of each is narrative. Different characters are described and (perhaps) briefly inhabited, and fast changes of mood are called for.
The last movements are both personal action. In the Schumann, there is a brief moment of reflection prior to the final climax. It's rather like being at a party, and looking round for a few moments at what everyone else is doing before being dragged back into the dance. In the Stravinsky, there is no such moment -- like the chosen maiden in Le Sacre, we cannot escape.
Of the Cage pieces, the first, coming after the Bernstein Sonata, is the famous 4'33". This piece is all context. The second, the Sonata for solo clarinet, is almost all content, in that there are no expression marks, dynamics or phrasing -- just notes. The context we have provided consists of the movements of the Saint-Saens Sonata.
The whole concert is framed by the Brahms and Debussy masterpieces.
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Tony
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The Clarinet BBoard
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