Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-12-15 16:35
Liquorice wrote:
>> Harnoncourt certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea. But he made a huge impression on the members of my orchestra and his productions with us are still considered to be amongst the best we ever did.>>
Of course, I’m very sorry that I never got a chance to work with him myself.
>> One of the things I admire about him was his constant questioning of "why did the composer write THAT"? So in an aria like No. 10 in Die Entführung, Mozart precedes and follows Constanzes line "Selbst der Luft darf ich nicht sagen", with the special sounds of low register flutes and throat register basset horns (the only aria in this opera to use these instruments). This is a place where Harnoncourt would encourage us to allow "airy" quality of the instruments in those registers to come out (noise!), to better support the text. I could give many other examples of where we weren't required to play with our most "beautiful sound" because of what the music was describing.>>
For a conductor to discuss the music on that sort of level is very inspiring to enquiring performers.
I suppose I’d characterise this particular case slightly differently though; when I said that I tried to avoid ‘noise in the sound’ I really meant the sort of thing that we associate with a reed that isn’t responding properly. On the other hand ‘timbral variation’ is one of my primary concerns, and I’m one of the people here who wants to say that the word ‘beautiful’ in the phrase ‘a beautiful sound’ is context dependent: see the recent thread:
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=447253&t=447253
But of course I also remember that in the early days of period performance, it was common for players to claim that ‘the instruments sound like that’, and it took some time for the believers to accept that perhaps the players just weren’t playing the instruments that well. It’s a difficult line to tread between a ‘chosen’ sound world and a ‘forced’ sound world; we don’t want to sound merely incompetent.
Or indeed, anecdotal. Does even a well-informed and discerning member of the audience really think, Oh, Constanze is singing about ‘luft’ – THAT’S why they sound like that?
And even if they do, is it artistically viable in the context of the opera? It can be a danger, in my view. Of course, it’s a question of degree, and what you produced and what he accepted might have been something I would have endorsed.
>> I have a slightly different take on the first 2 bars of the allegro in K361. Maybe you know that Mozart borrowed this theme note-for-note from Philidor's opera comique Maréchal Ferrant. The opening text in the aria goes like this:
"Je suis douce,
je suis bonne">>
No, I knew none of that. And I suppose my reaction is that it’s rather far-fetched to rely on such a tenuous connection with a text in order to decide such a fundamental question in a score like K361.
>> I agree that I wouldn't make a crescendo through the word "suis", but there is an impetus towards the main words: douce and bonne. So to me, bars 1+2 form a single unit, as do 3+4. There is a movement of energy towards bar two and four (douce and bonne) even if the word "suis" is stressed less than "je". What I understand you describing would be making a diminuendo over two notes in bar one followed by another sort of music in bar two, which is a little different. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this very well - I could demonstrate easier. But maybe you understand what I mean?>>
We had this conversation before, even mentioning K361, in the context of the slow movement of K622: it’s in:
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=435607&t=435540&v=t
Perhaps my attitude to all this stuff is more radically different from yours than is obvious at first sight. We had Ferenc Rados do a workshop with the OAE on the Jupiter Symphony a few years ago, and one of the things he said was, “There’s NO SUCH THING as ‘the first violin PART’ in the finale!” That encapsulates the stance in a beautifully counterintuitive way.
I’d say that Mozart’s music is often best thought of as a MOSAIC, in which phrases are placed in juxtaposition without connection.
So Rados had the orchestra play a chunk of the last movement with only one of the elements represented: – e.g., the bit that goes, ‘pom pom pom prrrrrrr ta da” on the various instruments that have it, everyone leaving out all other music apart from a bit of bass line. If you can think of the music in this way, without making a ‘horizontal’ connection between the motif and the rest of the music in any one part, the effect is subtly different, even though you’re not really DOING anything.
My own attitude to K361 grew out of my exposure to the development section in the original version, where the dislocation between pairs of bars like bars 1 and 2 alternates with pairs of bars that ARE similar – the detached crotchets in the second bar become a ‘loving’ appoggiatura. (That ‘discrepancy’ got edited out in the bowdlerised version we were used to in earlier days.)
You’re then free at the beginning of the Allegro to wait (slightly) before bar 2, which can profitably be more abrupt – even, well, FASTER:-)
>> I'm quite fascinated by your ideas on effective and unobtrusive use of rhythmic nuance. I hope you'll explain more of that some time?>>
Yes, I will; though I’m not entirely sure that this is the right place to do it.
Tony
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
