 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-12-11 09:35
Someone recorded the concert a few days ago on their iPhone and put it up on Youtube. Morales plays the Debussy Premier Rhapsody and the Rossini Intro...with the Philadelphia.
Search on Youtube for 11/29/14 Ricardo Morales Rossini Introduction, Theme, and Variations
11/29/14 Ricardo Morales Debussy Premiere Rhapsody for Clarinet Philadelphia Orchestra
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-12-11 19:42
Gosh, thanks for posting the "heads-up."
Firstly I question the legality of this recording, but......
Mostly I question Ricardo Morales' realization of the Debussy. Ok, I understand that we as soloists should have the freedom to make a piece our own and there are many ways to do that. HOWEVER, it is clear that composers of this particlular era and genre where adament about the accuracy of what they wrote in order to achieve the 'sonic setting' they were after.
I'm sure there is more than one dead clarinetist spinning in his grave over this one.
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: Bob Barnhart ★2017
Date: 2014-12-11 22:18
Paul, I was curious as to what you might be referring and was rather amazed at the alterations that Mr. Morales has made to Debussy's solo part.
While I (for one) would welcome a bit more freedom for the "classical" artist in "interpreting" or "enhancing" (some) solo works (beyond just the addition of cadenzas), I find it a bit astounding to actually hear this being done to one of the "core" works in our repertoire.
While I think the piece would still be great had Debussy actually written it the way it is performed here, and even think some of these revisions are perhaps even improvements, I would be very interested to hear the inspiration/motivation for the, at times significant, deviations from Debussy's original solo part.
Bob Barnhart
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-12-11 22:26
Too bad Tony Pay is not on board to weigh in on this one. Personally, I always love to hear Morales play because he so obviously enjoys what he is doing, has spectacular clarinet skills, and plenty of musical grace and style. The Rossini is absolutely delightful. I think he is probably playing here on a closer facing--as D. Blumberg said, gone down from about 1.15 mm to somewhere between 0.98 mm and 1.03 mm. His tone is more compact and light as a feather when it needs to be. There are indeed at least two ways to listen to his Debussy. One is simply as a piece of music that you never heard before. Then you won't care about a few novel embellishments that he introduces. In his hands, the piece hangs together beautifully with a graceful line from start to finish. Was it the performance by Augustine Duques that elicited the response from Debussy's daughter Sasha something to the effect that her Dad always said that a certain passage should sound as if it were a sunray obscured by a cloud, and Duques achieved that effect so well that she came up after the performance and kissed him on the cheek?
On the other hand, someone might wish to play stern score master and point out that a few meanderings of the stream that Morales chose to follow do not seem to appear on the sacred map of the score, if indeed there is only one such map. Therefore, he has taken us to places unknown-terra incognito ("there be dragons there")-- and we must hasten to scramble back to the familiar before the dragon's fire consumes us.
Me, I love the way Morales played it. Fat chance that we need to be worried that anyone else may succeed in playing it exactly the same way.
Post Edited (2014-12-12 19:55)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-12-12 02:54
I for one am not questioning Mr. Morales' musical/technical abilities at all, only his sensibilities.
For those too young to remember, Leopold Stokowski was quite regularly castigated for his editorialized renditions of pieces of music. If anything that was probably the only legitimate criticism of his interpretive prowess. And for that, MANY amongst musicians, critics and audience alike never quite took him as seriously as me have deserved.
I'm just sayin'
...............Paul Aviles
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2014-12-12 05:36
I heard this performance live, it was beautiful. The liberties he took didn't bother me though I can understand how they could bother the puritian. I must admit that's not the way I told him to do it when he studied it with me as a teenager. :-)
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2014-12-12 05:58)
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2014-12-12 06:05
And he did learn this version while he was studying.
Couldn't find his Music for it, and knew that I had it, so I supplied him with the part to practice with.
Incidentally, the part had a measure error that he remembered, and after I found the original manuscript online, his memory was confirmed to be correct.
and I lost $10 
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-12-12 06:16
David, is the original manuscript commercially available? Is it now public property?
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Author: crnichols
Date: 2014-12-12 06:33
It's available here:
http://harrimaki.com/manuscripts/
Christopher Nichols, D.M.A.
Assistant Professor of Clarinet
University of Delaware
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Author: brycon
Date: 2014-12-12 06:45
An original manuscript doesn't necessarily represent the composer's true intentions. Why would Debussy--who was incredibly meticulous--make changes to the orchestral version--most of which we all play--if they didn't express his final thoughts on the piece?
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2014-12-12 07:12
I'll just mention that the sin against tradition that Stokowski was most known for was his transcribing. There have always been people who felt that was wrong, but also many who have patronized performances and recordings of those (and many other) transcriptions. Ravel - who shared period and genre with Debussy - was himself a transcriber of note. (Stokowski also commited other sins, of course - tinkering with instrumentation, part doubling, and so forth. He was a bit more obvious in doing so than many other conductors who have done similar things.)
As for the differences between the Morales performance and the published score, I don't hear any that sound out of character or in lesser taste. The composer's "true" intentions? Impossible to decide - later is not necessarily better or more authentic. According to David, the music played was written entirely by the composer. Sounded great to me - but I'll asterisk it as "original version".
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-12-12 09:02
So versions that were billed as close to Debussy's original score as possible played by Marcellus, Neidich, and Dennis Nigren were only poorly researched efforts?!!?
Was this version and it's pedigree addressed in the accompanying program notes? If so, could you post them here?
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2014-12-12 09:22
Here are the program notes:
https://www.philorch.org/sites/default/files/concert/pdfs/Morales%20Plays%20Rossini_0.pdf
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-12-12 13:38
Sorry 'bout the spelling of Nygren!
Thank you for the program notes. Some very detailed description of how it came to be, but we don't address this particular version of it. It is hard for me to accept that something which diverges from the 'norm' would not have been accompanied with some explanation of why there are deviations. Can we read anything into the mention of the first performance of the orchestrated version being under.......Stokowski (who l mentioned well before I knew of this history or citation)?
Ok, and I am wiling to shoot myself in the foot here. I am coming from a position that ALSO finds the basset clarinet renditions of the Mozart Concerto mostly difficult to accept. Yes, I know that this must be closer to the the sound intended by Mozart. Yes, I realize that musically (though we have NO original to argue over) there are awkward compromises in the 'standard clarinet version.' But there are also different ways to approach the "corrections" for extended range of the basset clarinet and not all solutions are as appealing, in my opinion.
Perhaps I get "used" to a certain way a piece sounds (this is basis for what drove me away from jazz as a performance art form for myself......couldn't stand the inconsistency of it all).
Of course there are some examples where that is not the case for me. I recall how I felt when I first heard Mussorgsky's actual rendition of "Night on Bald Mountain" as opposed to the typical Rimsky-Korsakov rendition. It was as if a light was turned on in a dark room, the piece suddenly made much more sense to me. Alas, this happens all too infrequently.
...............Paul Aviles
Post Edited (2014-12-12 13:55)
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2014-12-12 19:29
We need Tony back on line.
Can someone go over to his house and ask him to come out and play?
I would be interested to hear what he has to say both about the performance and the edition.
By the way, I also agree with a previous post. I do not think that someone should record and post without the permission of everyone involved (soloist, conductor, and orchestra).
But in this day and age of cell phones and gadgets, I suppose this is new the norm.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2014-12-12 20:38
Dileep Gangolli wrote:
>
> I would be interested to hear what he [Tony] has to say both about the
> performance and the edition.
He might have some knowledge to share about the edition (or non-edition, as it may be - this is apparently a manuscript source). I'd be surprised if he'd comment on the performance other than maybe the appropriateness of the textual choices.
>
> By the way, I also agree with a previous post. I do not think
> that someone should record and post without the permission of
> everyone involved (soloist, conductor, and orchestra).
>
This is strictly prohibited in every public performance venue I've ever been in, either as a performer or an audience member. If an usher had known the person was recording the performance an ejection would have resulted. I actually wonder where the Iphone was in the hall - many of the balances, not to mention the sound quality itself, are different from what I heard sitting in Verizon Hall listening to the same performance.
> But in this day and age of cell phones and gadgets, I suppose
> this is new the norm.
I hope not. It really doesn't present a completely honest rendition of the performance. I don't know if the orchestra recorded it professionally - very possibly for local rebroadcast.
Perhaps interestingly, there's a Youtube video of a rehearsal several months ago of Morales playing the last part of the Rhapsody with the Philadelphia Orchestra - I think their assistant conductor may be directing it. The unconventional bits are absent - it sounds like the standard version (for as much as the video includes). He does play the standard chromatic scale leading into the last section, not the trill he played last weekend.
Karl
Post Edited (2014-12-12 21:35)
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Author: donald
Date: 2014-12-13 03:52
"He doesn't mean any harm at all." - well, that misses the point entirely and is irrelevant. But true. Being quite obviously illegal there's a good chance this recording will disappear from Youtube sometime soon.
re the Debussy- I find it interesting to hear these versions based on autographs that have been amended later. Another example would be the opening of the Brahms F minor sonata, it's interesting to hear it played at the original lower octave but clear that Brahms final decision was to have it up the octave.
I played the Brahms several times with a pianist in NZ/Germany in 2002, and we actually played the opening in its lower version for the audience so they could hear it, then played the complete sonata as published.
With the Debussy, I really enjoy hearing these ideas from the autograph but don't confuse that with the final product that Debussy wanted (ie, the published/edited versions that are well known).
There is the story told to me by Ron deKant that Daniel Bonade actually played the Premiere Rhapsody with Debussy on the piano (I may be remembering the details incorrectly, getting old). Bonades teacher looked out the window, saw Debussy walking across the street, and called out for him to come and listen. Upon entering the studio to hear Bonade play, Debussy decided to play the piano part with him. It would have been very interesting to ask/interview Bonade about this, and find out what version he played (I imagine the published version, as this is what he taught to his students).
*Bonade/deKant students may feel free to correct me- I might have some details wrong, but that's pretty much how I recall it from 1998*
Regardless, very nice playing from Mr Morales.
dn
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2014-12-13 04:45
I for one am happy that Tony is not adding his opinion to this. No matter what you think of him, it would only be his opinion. To many people are experts in our business. I heard the performance live, i enjoyed it. What more needs to be said. Get over it everyone, Morales formed it the way he wanted to. Bottom line.You don't agree, don't listen to it.
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2014-12-13 07:18
This seems like a very worthy topic of discussion and interest to me.
I've learned a few things from this thread and hope to learn more.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2014-12-13 09:27
I don't want to get into manuscripts--they aren't particularly relevant to what I want to say. Nevertheless, I should say that with any text, there are a variety of primary source materials, which may or may not match one another; a competent editor must evaluate these materials and come to some sort of decision on any incongruities.
There is a certain sexiness about original manuscripts, which has perhaps given rise to numerous publishing companies branding their scores as Urtext and charging rubes a high price. And I can understand why people want these scores: many performers grant a high degree of authority to the original manuscript--any changes to it must be the work of bumbling copyists, engravers, editors, etc. Sometimes that's the case, and sometimes it isn't (or in the interesting case of Schumann, it's the composer himself going back over the music and making several questionable editing choices in an attempt to normalize his earlier piano works).
I haven't examined all the rhapsody's primary source material. Nonetheless, I do know that Debussy was incredibly meticulous, often reworking minute details (a single chord's voicing, for example) until he was satisfied.
I'm open minded, however, so I looked over one of the moments where the piano version manuscript differs from what most of us play, and I have a few preliminary thoughts.
With regard to the scherzando section, which was linked-to above, I prefer the published score (as I strongly suspect Debussy did). Three measures after the scherzando marking at reh. 5, there's an E dominant chord with an added sixth. On beat three of the measure, the clarinet picks up the added sixth and resolves it down to the chordal fifth. Debussy treats this downward whole-step, however, as a lower neighbor-tone by having the clarinet jump back in on the D# (written pitch) and by having the performer crescendo through the gesture. When the measure repeats, the D# to C# is treated as the resolution of the 6-5 suspension, which fits nicely with the decrescendo marking.
In contrast to this level of harmonic and motivic interest, the corresponding clarinet part in the original manuscript is weaker. The whole step motif is placed between beats two and three, which leaves beat three feeling empty--slowing the rhythm from quintuplets to sixteenth-notes also contributes to the static feeling of these bars. Just listen to the two versions: these measures flow forward (which better captures the scherzando affect, I think) in the published part and come to a halt in the manuscript.
I think that the reasoning behind Debussy's changes were something along the lines of:
1. He wanted the music to continue moving forward.
-He therefore changed the sixteenth notes of the piano version manuscript to sixteenth-note triplets in the published score.
-He used several possible harmonic interpretations of the D# to C# motif to create interest on an otherwise static beat three.
2. He wanted to strengthen the stepwise motif.
-The whole-step, for example, is an appogiatura from G# to F# in the first measure of the scherzando and then a neighbor-tone between A# and G#. Whole-step and half-step motives appear in a myriad of ways throughout the work (think of the opening Bb to C and the slightly longer range G to Ab--the whole-step/half-step dichotomy is also important: the piece begins with the whole-step and ends with the half-step, etc.).
-Just to give another example: in the scherzando section at reh. 5, the stepwise motif reaches a high-point with the series of trills leading up to the long-held C# (this trill passage is also the opening theme transposed).
3. He also wanted to strengthen the scale motif.
-In addition to the stepwise motif, scales and scale fragments are important during this section of music. The two motifs--scale and neighbor-tone/step--become combined twelve measures after reh. 5 (this moment isn't as effective in the original manuscript, where the stepwise ascent is instead leaps of fifths). The outlining of chords in the original manuscript is therefore motivically weak in this respect as well.
4. And perhaps most importantly of all: he didn't want to give away the great moment when the clarinet reaches up into its high register and comes out of the piano texture at the un peu retenu by having it play in the high register several measures earlier.
I'd like to say that although I prefer the published score (with a D# instead of a D natural in the final phrase of the piece), I loved listening to Morales's performance; his playing was incredibly elegant (if it wasn't so elegant, none of us would have cared what version he played).
Post Edited (2015-01-23 10:03)
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Author: donald
Date: 2014-12-14 00:32
Ummmm
I just read the PO program notes- well written, interesting stuff. No mention is made re changes in the Debussy but no matter.
It DOES appear that the program note writer has made a mistake re the Rossini. The work he "probably wrote in 1809" while a student in Bologna is the Cmajor variations (for C clarinet and orchestra) NOT the Intro/theme/variations about which we know very little of its origin.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
dn
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2014-12-14 01:28
It may or may not have been Rossini, but the arias on which the work is based on were written by Rossini - Moses in Egypt, and also the Lady of the Lake. (La Donna del Lago)
It is a very Operatic work.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
Post Edited (2014-12-14 01:31)
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2014-12-16 05:57
Every good composer that I have worked with have always allowed the performers a great deal of leeway in interpretation AND welcomed changes and comments from the performers.
All the great concerti for clarinet were influenced by clarinetists and were in fact a collaboration between composer and performer.
So while Urtext is a great place to start the journey, it is a road map and one can travel and arrive at the destination in a variety of paths.
I actually enjoyed both renditions by Ricardo and was impressed by his ability to switch gears and convincingly move into to two very different musical eras with seemingly little effort. His operatic show piece shows his years of playing in the MET and the Debussy shows his knowledge of Impressionism and all its subtleties.
I know few musicians (of any instrument) that can do pull this off so effectively and it is a credit to our instrument that one of the few that can do this plays the clarinet.
And that is why he gets offers from orchestras around the world.
The Michael Jordan of the clarinet.
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Author: Gene Chieffo
Date: 2015-01-19 19:13
I attended this performance. I have to admit, I didn't notice the edits at all as an audience member. And its not like I am unfamiliar with the piece, I had the chance to perform it with a pianist at a chamber music camp in 2009. I was just caught up in the overall impression and it was my first time in Verizon Hall so I was taking in all sorts of new information and processing it. Lots of opinions on this above, I have to say, I am in the Ed Palanker camp on this one.
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Author: Wisco99
Date: 2015-01-20 03:28
Regarding the liberties Stokowski took. Pictures At An Exhibition is a piano piece. Then Ravel made it an orchestral piece. My favorite recording is of Stokowski writing his own arrangement of it, and conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra. In college my professor just stated that Ravel orchestrated it. I mentioned the Stokowski version, and the poor professor was shaken, and tried to dismiss it. I remarked that it was better than Ravel's version. Fourty years later I still feel the same way. In the jazz world, it is considered almost mandatory that artists come up with their own interpretation of a piece. It is called being creative in that realm.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-01-20 05:02
Some considered him a charlatan then. I don't think he cared much.
Karl
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Author: Wisco99
Date: 2015-01-20 06:38
For a charlatan, he produced some amazing music, and had no time for people who did not value time. I wonder what Stokowski thought of your university professor who played under him. Stokowski has my respect, back then and today. All I have to do is listen to the recordings.
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2015-01-20 17:31
I mentioned the Stokowski version, and the poor professor was shaken, and tried to dismiss it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
There are actually about a dozen different arrangements. Leonard Slatkin has a recording where each movement is by a different arranger.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2015-01-20 19:31
Seems to me I've heard Stokowski's version of Pictures, but apparently it didn't make a lasting impression on me pro or con . . . . hmm, doesn't seem to be in my cd racks, probably in my boxes of old of lp's. Ravel's version is good, taken infrequently. The original piano version is the one I like the best. However, that's not from its being the "most genuine". I tend to enjoy transcriptions.
Just to point out, many less charlatanized conductors have also take liberties with scores. I'd be hard pressed to cite sources - probably record jackets - but I remember noteworthys like Bernstein and Karajan being so identified, among others. It's common, no? So, why not for soloists?
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-01-20 20:06
Philip Caron wrote:
> Just to point out, many less charlatanized conductors have also
> take liberties with scores. I'd be hard pressed to cite
> sources - probably record jackets - but I remember noteworthys
> like Bernstein and Karajan being so identified, among others.
> It's common, no? So, why not for soloists?
I've read that Toscanini, scion of authentic readings, also added doublings at times. But that isn't the same kind of edit as changing notes or entire passages in a solo part. Those conductor-edited readings were meant to clarify without being noticeable to the audience. Whether or not you like the differences between Morales's performances and the way the solo part is printed in the Durand edition (which, I imagine, is what we've all learned it from), they were out there for anyone to hear (when we could hear the clarinet at all - that was another whole issue from our seats in the center of the second tier).
Transcriptions like Stokie's and Ravel's of Pictures or Rimsky's of Night On Bald (Bare) Mountain are yet another, separate topic. Those are in many ways completely different compositions.
Karl
Post Edited (2015-01-20 22:42)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2015-01-21 03:11
Stokowski story as told by Robert Marcellus:
Stokowski was leading a rehearsal of Rimsky Korsakov's Scheherezade with Cleveland and they get to the 'free form' clarinet solos in the 2nd movement. Marcellus finishes the third iteration and Stokowski pauses the group, and looks at Marcellus and asks, "why did you stop?"
............Paul Aviles
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Author: Wisco99
Date: 2015-01-21 23:21
Just to clarify which recording by Stokowski I was referring to, this is the link. It is a 1966 recording by the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and I still have the record I bought as a freshman in college.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBjpzkaD8JI
I spent a large portion of my life in the jazz world, so I guess I am used to arrangements of a standard being interpreted by each artist. This applies to Ricardo, Stokowski, or Artie Shaw.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2015-01-21 23:44
Quote:
I spent a large portion of my life in the jazz world, so I guess I am used to arrangements of a standard being interpreted by each artist. This applies to Ricardo, Stokowski, or Artie Shaw.
As Karl tried to point out earlier, you're conflating three separate issues.
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Author: Wisco99
Date: 2015-01-22 02:55
Perhaps I am missing the 3 issues you are referring to, but to me I only see one issue, and that is interpretation of a piece of music.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2015-01-23 02:59
Quote:
Perhaps I am missing the 3 issues you are referring to, but to me I only see one issue, and that is interpretation of a piece of music.
You're lazily using the word interpretation.
Jazz is an oral (and aural) tradition, and therefore, the way that jazz musicians approach a tune is going to be markedly different from how classical musicians--who come from a notated tradition--approach a composed piece.
We all tell jokes of the sort: "Did you ever hear the one about...". The joke usually has the same setup and punchline, but depending on our audience (and how much we've had to drink), we might elaborate certain parts of it. If we were playing the role of Hamlet, however, we wouldn't extemporaneously elaborate parts of Shakespeare's writing. And we definitely wouldn't ask the director, "Why can't I add dialog to Shakespeare? I do it when I tell jokes."
Storytelling and English literature are two very different traditions: one is oral and the other is written. We confer authorship onto the storyteller, and we expect that they make the story their own. Similarly, we don't particularly care that Jerome Kern wrote "All the Things You Are", but we do care that it's Charlie Parker who's performing it.
But when Hamlet is performed, Shakespeare's authorship is not usurped (pun intended) by the actor playing Hamlet, and therefore, actors (and classical musicians) have a very different relationship with the text than storytellers (and jazz musicians) do with their source material, which basically serves as a point of departure. So comparing Artie Shaw to Ricardo Morales is a false analogy.
The Ravel/Stokowski analogy is also a false one, but I don't think it really requires my explanation--Karl basically covered it.
What you've done is use the word interpretation in three different senses (as a storyteller might interpret a story, as an actor might interpret Shakespeare, and as a film director might reinterpret Hamlet as a movie) and lumped them together. But if we unpack these different senses of interpretation, we see that what Artie or Stokowski (in the role of orchestrator) did when they "interpreted" a piece has no bearing on our discussion of what Ricardo did when he performed Debussy.
Post Edited (2015-01-23 10:10)
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-01-23 05:23
DavidBlumberg wrote:
> Try again guys - he was playing from the original Manuscript.
>
>
> I know this for fact, as he was using my Music.
>
Not to put too fine a point on the discussion, but what Morales played (the departures from the Durand edition) wasn't even interpretation so much as selection of one of the texts that are apparently available.
Which is not to take anything away from his performance, but only to re-focus the discussion a little. The real question hasn't to do with interpretation but with which (if either) of Debussy's own versions is more authoritative.
Karl
Post Edited (2015-01-23 05:55)
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Author: donald
Date: 2015-01-23 09:24
Debussy edited the published editions, so that's what HE wanted. Full stop, no question. It's quite interesting to hear the other versions, but they're not what Debussy wanted people to play. It's very simple.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2015-01-23 19:52
I don't see "a composer's final wishes" as a valid argument for anything. People want things to be simple, but things are not.
A publication merely indicates - it doesn't define - what a person was thinking at some time in their life. They might have wanted something different earlier, or something different later (assuming they didn't die first, except they probably did), or something different even during the very time of publication, except compromises were forced on them by availability of performers or pecuniary needs or whims of lovers. None of those factors matter in a performance today, in our different world.
It's fine to love these museum piece replicas as we do, music by long-dead people from another world, but to apply some exclusionary definitiveness to them is a fantasy. Be happy to hear and compare an interesting, different version from another time in the composer's life. If someone feels such a thing constitutes the taking of undue liberties, well, just look at the world.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-01-23 20:15
Philip Caron wrote:
> Be happy to
> hear and compare an interesting, different version from another
> time in the composer's life.
No problem. I only wish, for myself, that there had been some quick mention of the version source in the program note. Play what one likes, but maybe do something to satisfy the curious.
Karl
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Author: brycon
Date: 2015-01-23 20:28
Quote:
I don't see "a composer's final wishes" as a valid argument for anything. People want things to be simple, but things are not.
You're correct: a composer may have wanted something different earlier or something different later. As I said earlier in this thread, every composer approaches the creative process--from sketch to edition--in his or her own way; therefore, you cannot assume that a text's chronology makes it more or less authoritative.
With the case of Debussy, however, we know quite a lot about the composer's approach to the creative process. Scholars like Denis Herlin have studied mountains of Debussy manuscripts and found that reworkings of a passage (or even a single measure) illustrate the composer's wish to sharpen and clarify his music (whether it be chord-voicing, motif, etc). Debussy was a perfectionist.
So you may not find the "composer's final wishes" argument valid when it's broadly applied to all composers, and you're quite correct in thinking that. But with Debussy, we have ample historical and analytical evidence to help us out.
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Author: Wisco99
Date: 2015-01-23 21:05
Quote: You're lazily using the word interpretation.
Jazz is an oral (and aural) tradition, and therefore, the way that jazz musicians approach a tune is going to be markedly different from how classical musicians--who come from a notated tradition--approach a composed piece.
Bryan,
Forsooth, doth ye call me lazy? You are entitled to your opinion I guess. The musicians I worked with in the jazz world were all fantastic sight readers, and most including me had a background in music of the Western European Tradition, which is often referred to as classical music. When I learned clarinet I learned it from that classical tradition. When I learn a piece of music, any music, it is neither from an aural or oral tradition, it is from the ink on a piece of paper. Having said that, the music is not the ink on the paper, that is just what we have to work with, and we try to make a piece of music out of it. I would be lost without the music, and have come from a notated tradition from day one. I just happen to be able to improvise, and read chord changes when it is called for. In order to make a living in the music business I had to be able to play with a major symphony one day, a Broadway show the next, and perhaps a big band the following day. I look at it as being well rounded. To me it is all music. Bach was famous for his ability to improvise. In the end everyone has their own interpretation, and each of us plays differently. I see that as a good thing. It's just music, it won't hurt you.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2015-01-23 23:21
I didn't call you lazy; I said you were using the word "interpretation" in a lazy manner (and you still are).
The oral/aural tradition and the notated one aren't an either/or; they're a both/and. Many players can play both classical and jazz very well, but that doesn't mean the traditions don't exist.
All music is music, as you say, insofar as it aims at the same end: expression. But every form of art seeks expression in some way. So although the visual arts, music, literature, and dance are all art in this very broad sense of the word, we recognize them as discrete disciplines, each with its own traditions. Furthermore, we can subdivide them based on geography, history, etc (French impressionist paintings, Russian novels, modernist free-verse--each with its own traditions). You wouldn't argue with me over whether or not Shakepeare and Jerome Kern are two different things, right? (But art is art!) So I'm not sure why you find it so hard to accept that classical music and jazz come from two different traditions (as does the music of Bach and Debussy, so that analogy is also false).
Being able to recognize these sorts of distinctions between art forms (and genres within those art forms), doesn't mean that we can't also recognize their inherent similarities.
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Author: Wisco99
Date: 2015-01-24 00:01
Bryan,
I think we tend to agree more than disagree, and your points are well taken and pretty accurate. I do disagree that I am using the word "interpretation" in a lazy manner as you say, but then I am entitled to my opinion just as you are. Let's call that one a draw.
Jazz musicians come with many kinds of backgrounds. You are correct in that some of them learned the music pretty music by ear, and they learned it in the clubs or on the road. That is ancient history, and I regret to say that jazz today is called jazz studies, degrees offered in it, and it is not what I grew up on. It is an imitation of jazz.
Some of the old Dixieland guys I knew years ago studied with guys like Clark Brody of the CSO, yet could not read very well. Somehow they were great players. Some guys have the classical background, yet prefer to do a gig by ear. I do not have that talent or kind of ear. I need music. A rare person like the trumpet player Wynton Marsallis can do the classical and jazz authentically and at the highest level. That is very rare.
The rest of your points I tend to agree with.
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The Clarinet Pages
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