Author: brycon
Date: 2016-12-05 22:16
Quote:
Of course you'd get pretty much the German approach (if a general German approach even existed). There was a lot of music composed during the period of Bach and Handel in Italian and French centers. There having been no recordings and limited communication among all the different centers, it isn't hard to imagine that performance practice varied from one musical center to another.
Moreover, the most important performance traditions are often the ones taken for granted (and therefore passed over by treatises). The worst sort of historical performers, for me, consume Quantz, Couperin, et al., abstract from them a set of interpretive "rules," and then apply those rules to music they don't really understand--it's much easier, after all, to commit the intentional fallacy than to come up with any sort of interpretation.
Quote:
But when playing these sort of pieces on clarinet, do u take a more legato approach, or do u attempt to apply the principles of baroque articulation (flute, oboe, recorder) to your playing?
I realise that the limited we know is that playing in those days was much more articulated, even on the chalumeax, but that is as much clarity on the issue I can find. (read Lawson's books and rices one.. As they kindly wrote in English for me)
And I realise I am not playing a baroque instrument, or an instrument with much similarity in tone to its baroque counterpart at all, therefore how do I approach playing that sort of repertoire?
Tony Pay has a great article titled "Phrasing in Contention" (if I remember correctly) that addresses phrasing norms in Classical era music. Much of what he writes can also be applied to Baroque music, insofar as both music's generally benefit from a clarity of contrapuntal texture.
I find that the Quantz articulations don't work particularly well on modern clarinet, which, for me, smooths out a lot of differences between "te" and "de" or even "te" and "ke" (I notice more of a difference on historical clarinets, though I still rarely use the various articulations). One articulation thing I do use is starting notes with the air when I want the impression of an up-bow; the tongue, on clarinet, almost always sounds like a down-bow to me. (Also, to my ears, the slur-two/tongue-two articulation sounds much more idiomatic of Classical music than Baroque, so I generally avoid it in Bach, for example.)
Most the interpretative decisions I make, however, have more to do with the music itself than performance treatises. Bach, for instance, usually makes use of several contrapuntal voices, which give the impression of distinct bass, tenor, alto, and soprano lines even when a single melodic instrument (violin, cello, flute, etc.) is playing. Instead of blurring these parts into a single legato melody, I often make a distinction between them. Furthermore, Bach's pieces usually revolve around 2 or 3 contrapuntal motifs (not the same thing as a motif, which involves rhythms, harmonies, register, etc.), which I attempt to keep in mind when interpreting his music.
At any rate, apologies for that overly brief description--I could write a lot about Bach's music but should avoid boring the bboard.
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
