 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-17 11:13
Two questions regarding the fast 16th notes passages (variation IV) in the last movement. A, the basset reconstructed version starts with low note C. Do you think this makes sense? B, do you tongue all notes?
Post Edited (2017-10-19 11:14)
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Author: donald
Date: 2017-10-17 13:00
In the 3rd movement? Don't know any 16th note passages in the 3rd movement.
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-17 13:15
Sorry, it's the fourth movement.
donald wrote:
> In the 3rd movement? Don't know any 16th note passages in the
> 3rd movement.
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-10-17 18:57
The same sort of thing happens in the Concerto and people accept the reconstructions, so yes, I think it makes sense if you've gone to the expense of getting a basset clarinet. The scholarship seems fairly thorough on at least the Baerenreiter editions.
I almost never tongue all the sixteenths in Mozart or other works from that period unless there are articulation marks indicating you should, although there are places where I'll tongue most of them. Especially in the octets, it would sound pretty funny if everyone did that, and I don't know of a good recording where they do. It seems pretty clear that the articulation in those places was left to the performers, and in groups like the Imperial Harmonie in Vienna, they probably worked out conventions so that everyone was on the same page with articulation.
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-17 22:35
dorjepismo, yes, I am using a basset to play this piece but please note that the Bärenreiter edition of this quintet does not contain a basset version. As far as I know, the only published one is from Breitkopf & Härtel.
Ok, to make my question clear, it is the variation IV of the last movement.
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2017-10-18 08:27
Well it's up to you as the player. Mozart did not put any notations in regarding articulation. With that said David Shifrin's recording is very well done. There are others of course with very wonderful recordings. David I think was the first to do it on an extended A clarinet. It was a Selmer, designed by Lenny Gullotta. (spelling?) His recording was probably pretty true to what Mozart wanted. Very musical and tastefully done. Try to get a recording of it. Contact David if you can't find it. Maybe he sells them on a website or something.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
Post Edited (2017-10-18 13:03)
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-18 09:54
Bob, do you mean the recording with Emerson String Quartet? It is indeed a very nice recording. But what I don't understand is that how you know Mozart did not put any notations regarding articulation here given the autograph is lost?
Ok, let's assume he didn't put anything. What's your personal idea of articulation here?
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2017-10-18 13:16
Klose - It's just something I remembered from my high school and college college years and studying the piece. I don't have actual facts to prove it. Same goes with his concerto. It's up to the musician to play it the way he or she feels like it should be played. I'm sorry I can't offer more information such as the actual written score of Mozart. I don't know where to look for it. But this will surely show you how he wrote these pieces. It must be on the internet somewhere. Perhaps someone can find it. I remember seeing it many years ago and it was really messy and hard to read. Sorry I can't be of more help. Hopefully someone here has it.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-18 13:30
Bob, I appreciate your help here. However, it's well known that the autograph manuscript is unfortunately lost…
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-18 19:35
Quote:
Same goes with his concerto. It's up to the musician to play it the way he or she feels like it should be played.
Well, for the concerto, there is a manuscript of an earlier version of the exposition for basset horn (the basset horn part, moreover, is exactly the same as what we now play as the clarinet concerto). So aside from the development section, we do know what articulations Mozart liked for the first movement of the concerto.
I think the general convention is that where there are no slurs, you can add them. Where Mozart puts slurs, however, you have to observe them (because the slurs denote a particular type of phrasing, whereby the performer decrescendos slightly).
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-18 19:42
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If I were playing this piece I would use the score from the Neue Mozart Ausgabe available online
Great advice, Mark.
And it's important to note the difference between a scholarly edition, such as the NMA, which details its source materials and how editing choices were decided, and an urtext edition, the designation of which doesn't mean anything and is used largely as a marketing device to get rubes to purchase their scores.
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-10-18 21:14
Brycon, I'd certainly agree as to the difference between NMA and "urtext" editions because the former gives you much more detail on how and why the editorial decisions were made, but would think it overly harsh to say that the Henle editions, e.g., represent false advertising for "rubes," given the stuff out there that goes to nothing like the same trouble to reflect the original.
Also not so sure that Mozart's slurs must all be observed with a sort of piety, though I think performers should know about and consider them. At least until well into the 20th century, there's always been a tradition of soloists taking liberties. That's extensively documented and taught in the literature on "ornamentation," and it seems clear from the original versions of the Weber concerti that Weber knew and intended that the performer would do a lot of things he hadn't written. The slow movement of the Brahms quintet, to give another example, was written with nothing like the number of dynamic changes performers play it with. Given that Mozart would hang out drinking with Stadler and knew from experience that the fellow was anything but pious, it's hard to imagine he'd expect Stadler meticulously to observe his slurs if the latter felt like doing something different in any given performance.
I think there are legitimately two schools. One says that we are not Stadler and didn't know Mozart, so we should rigorously adhere to what we do have on paper and can objectively confirm. The same school would probably follow the Bärmann versions of Weber exactly, as they mostly seem to do in Germany. The other school suggests that we try to put ourselves as much as possible into the frame of mind Stadler, Bärmann, Mühlfeld and so on might have had when they played these works, which means learning about the conditions, performance practices and aesthetics of the period in question and approaching the works in that context, so that if performers would take liberties, then we try to take them in the same way, in the same spirit, and to the same extent. The two approaches can produce very different results, but neither is simply playing the pieces however one feels like playing them.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-18 23:54
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'd certainly agree as to the difference between NMA and "urtext" editions because the former gives you much more detail on how and why the editorial decisions were made, but would think it overly harsh to say that the Henle editions, e.g., represent false advertising for "rubes," given the stuff out there that goes to nothing like the same trouble to reflect the original.
Henle editions are usually scholarly editions--that is, they explain source material and give editorial decisions. Some Peters editions do the same. But I've seen many editions with urtext on the cover that don't do these things. Moreover, the term urtext itself is largely meaningless: unless a performer is using the manuscript, some form of editing has taken place, and therefore, it isn't an "original text" at all. Performers should know the difference between scholarly editions and urtext--especially if they're going to fret over every marking.
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Also not so sure that Mozart's slurs must all be observed with a sort of piety, though I think performers should know about and consider them. At least until well into the 20th century, there's always been a tradition of soloists taking liberties. That's extensively documented and taught in the literature on "ornamentation," and it seems clear from the original versions of the Weber concerti that Weber knew and intended that the performer would do a lot of things he hadn't written. The slow movement of the Brahms quintet, to give another example, was written with nothing like the number of dynamic changes performers play it with. Given that Mozart would hang out drinking with Stadler and knew from experience that the fellow was anything but pious, it's hard to imagine he'd expect Stadler meticulously to observe his slurs if the latter felt like doing something different in any given performance.
Well, it's dangerous to lump periods of music, composers, or even pieces of music by a single composer together for the purposes of an overarching textual approach--circumstances vary greatly. But the point with the slurs is that, in the classical era, they were a structural component of the music. Slurs didn't only denote legato vs staccato but also the phrasing of the passage. (Improvised ornamentation, of course, wasn't structural, it changed from performance to performance or could even be removed if the inspiration wasn't there; so comparing the two is apples to oranges).
Toward the end of the first theme group, for instance, when the clarinet part goes into (the clarinet key) Eb major, the first rising Eb major chord is staccato, the second Mozart writes slurs, and the following Bb major chord he also writes slurs. Many players gloss over the change and play all three chords staccato. But underneath the melodic line, there's also a change of character in the harmony (from the concert key of C major to E minor), which, of course, takes place in the change from staccato to slurs. The music as a whole, then, darkens.
So yeah, if you gloss and play all of them staccato because it sounds better to you, the Mozart police isn't going to arrest you. It just doesn't sound as good as what Mozart wrote because you miss an important shift in the expressive character of the music. It reminds me of a student who asked Stravinsky about a 12-tone piece: "I know I need this particular pitch here because of the row, but it sounds wrong to my ears," to which Stravinsky responded: "Then you need to train your ears until it sounds correct."
Post Edited (2017-10-19 06:48)
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 05:29
Mark,
For composers like Mozart, usually it is not a good idea to strictly follow the scholarly editions (e.g., NMA). This is mostly because during Mozart's time, composers gave too much freedom to the players in terms of dynamic, articulation etc. This is particularly true for Mozart's clarinet pieces given that the autograph scores of the quintet and concerto are lost and the arranged versions for standard clarinet are of poor quality...
brycon,
Your reply is really informative here but I feel difficult to follow. Could you include bar numbers in your analysis?
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 06:19
Brycon, sorry I misunderstood you about Henle. There have been times, for example with the Kegelstatt, when I've wished they were more forthcoming in the commentary. With the Eb section, I take your point. There are other phrasing things one could do to reflect the shift, but there is one and the slurs he wrote point that out. As I said, whatever we decide to do, we should know and try to understand his markings first. One reason I haven't followed the markings in that section is that they're all staccato the second time it happens, although Bärenreiter points that out and tries to get you to slur them like the first time. Well, the basset horn part in the earlier version didn't get that far, so . . . Anyway, thanks!
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2017-10-19 06:21
Hi Mark, I was actually referring to the Concerto, I think that still exists? Is the concerto still around? Thank you by the way. Now I'm going out on a wild assumption here. I think one on the pieces was written in Austria.
As far as the Concerto and the Quintet I slurred 2 and tongued 2, on most of the passages. But sadly I never played these with the original versions. My favorite movements of both pieces are the second movements. I think they are the hardest. I use the quintet solo as the cadenza for the concerto. It just fits. Yes there are 50,000 versions of the cadenza.
Back to the end of the 16th note run. When the notes start on the low G I often slur this passage, because it can sound too busy with the articulation. Same with the 1st movement of the concerto. The notes are going up and up so I like to start softly and as get head to MF on the quintet and a shade bigger sound with the concerto. It's actually OK to slur this whole passage if you can't play it with a light tongue. Control your volume to make it exciting.
He travelled all over Europe. Actually played for the pope. His sister played the violin and piano. His parents had 6 children that did not survive. I better stop here. But when I play the second movements I think of him dancing with beautiful ladies. I often press the keys down firmly then lift them ever so slowly to feel the grace of him dancing. This helps get into the head of him dancing on a weekend with pretty ladies whom chased him. He was kind of famous.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
Post Edited (2017-10-19 09:41)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-19 07:06
Quote:
Your reply is really informative here but I feel difficult to follow. Could you include bar numbers in your analysis?
Apologies--didn't have a score with me. It's the pickup into m. 86.
Quote:
For composers like Mozart, usually it is not a good idea to strictly follow the scholarly editions (e.g., NMA). This is mostly because during Mozart's time, composers gave too much freedom to the players in terms of dynamic, articulation etc. This is particularly true for Mozart's clarinet pieces given that the autograph scores of the quintet and concerto are lost and the arranged versions for standard clarinet are of poor quality...
I don't follow the logic. For music from eras that used less markings (or with more things left to performance convention), I think most modern performers would want to know exactly which markings are the composer's and which are the editor's. Scholarly editions of Mozart, then, are more important than those of someone like Elliot Carter, for instance.
To take a more drastic example: if I were playing continuo for a Monteverdi opera, I'd certainly want to know if my pitches were written or the editor's realization of Monteverdi's figured basses, in which case, I'd supply the realization.
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One reason I haven't followed the markings in that section is that they're all staccato the second time it happens
Well, we know that Mozart didn't often change material in the recapitulation section (as opposed to Haydn and Beethoven). And when we look at that spot in the recap, we see that the music again shifts from major to the minor (D major, here, to the mediant, F# minor)--exactly as it does in the exposition.
Although Mozart's manuscript stops at the end of the exposition, then, it makes complete sense to use the same articulations/phrasing here. So I don't really follow your argument.
Post Edited (2017-10-19 07:10)
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 07:42
brycon,
My point was not clear, sorry. You are right, it is certainly very important to know exactly which markings are the composer's and which are the editor's. However, the so called "scholarly editions" or "Urtext editions" usually do not contain any editorial suggestions. To interpret these music, the player must use their own understanding to decide things like dynamic, articulation etc. By contrast, if you just play as written, adding no dynamic change, accents, slurs etc. The music will be boring and actually it is not what Mozart intended.
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 07:55
brycon, are you talking about the concerto? Could you tell me your idea regarding the passage I asked in this post?
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-19 07:59
Quote:
My point was not clear, sorry. You are right, it is certainly very important to know exactly which markings are the composer's and which are the editor's. However, the so called "scholarly editions" or "Urtext editions" usually do not contain any editorial suggestions.
Ah--I gotcha.
Quote:
To interpret these music, the player must use their own understanding to decide things like dynamic, articulation etc. By contrast, if you just play as written, adding no dynamic change, accents, slurs etc. The music will be boring and actually it is not what Mozart intended.
Yeah, but it's true of all music (though maybe it's more exaggerated with earlier stuff). Even in contemporary music, like Elliot Carter's, where notation is incredibly precise, the markings require a great deal of interpretation. Moreover, perhaps because of the notational precision, performers often do less with Carter's music than with Mozart's (and Carter suffers accordingly).
One of my teachers, when talking about expressive markings, used to say: "Whereas a bad musician couldn't make music with everything notated, a great musician could do it with very little given to him or her."
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-19 08:16
Quote:
brycon, are you talking about the concerto? Could you tell me your idea regarding the passage I asked in this post?
Yes, the concerto. We have a manuscript of its first movement's exposition.
For the phrase that begins with the pickup into m. 86, many players do staccato on beat 1 of 87, again in 89, and once more in 90. But whereas Mozart himself has staccato in 87, in 89 and 90, he has slurs.
I argue that playing them all staccato completely misses the character of the passage. 87 is in C major; then in 89, where Mozart switches to slurs, the music moves to E minor. Moreover, the orchestration changes as well: (if I remember correctly) violin 2 and violas enter with the switch to slurs.
So if clarinetists do what they want and play all those beats staccato because it sounds nice to them, it's fine. But they're missing a rather beautiful character change in the music. For me, the staccato version isn't bad because it isn't what Mozart wrote; it's bad because it doesn't work with the other parts.
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 08:52
brycon, please note my two questions are for the quintet not the concerto... So can you give me your sights of the passages (variation IV of the last movement) I asked?
What do you think about the basset version for these passages?
What's your idea for the articulation?
Post Edited (2017-10-19 09:00)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2017-10-19 10:53
The Winterthur fragment actually contains the first 199 bars of the Concerto, which includes a large part of the development section.
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Author: Mark Charette ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 17:33
Klose wrote:
> Mark,
>
> For composers like Mozart, usually it is not a good idea to
> strictly follow the scholarly editions (e.g., NMA). This is
> mostly because during Mozart's time, composers gave too much
> freedom to the players in terms of dynamic, articulation etc.
I’m sorry, this doesn’t make much sense to me. Too much freedom? In other words, you want to change Mozart’s intent of the player?
I disagree wholeheartedly. Just because today’s player may not know what what was intended does not make it impossible to study and find out. We’ll never know precisely, but we can educate ourselves and make a knowledgeable stab at it.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-19 19:24
Liquorice,
Do you have a PDF of the Winterhur fragment by chance? Just the other day, I was going to show it to one of my students. But I just moved and can't locate which box the movers put it into.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-19 19:38
Quote:
What do you think about the basset version for these passages?
I don't own a basset clarinet. So I don't think much about the basset version--haha. Check out the link Tony posted--seems very well researched and reasoned. To me, it makes sense to start on the low C.
Quote:
What's your idea for the articulation?
Well, we don't have any manuscript for the quintet; the articulation, then, isn't as much of a debate as the first movement of the concerto. Moreover, the passage you're asking about isn't a melodic line--it's an obbligato bass/harmonic line beneath the variation theme in the strings. At a somewhat similar moment in the concerto--the E pedal during the closing area of the exposition--I remember the manuscript having no written articulations (though I'd need to double check to be sure); the performer, then, could add slurs where he/she likes.
At any rate, the moment you ask about in the quintet is rather straightforward, musically speaking. You could play it all tongued or add slurs where you see fit.
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 20:12
Brycon,
"Although Mozart's manuscript stops at the end of the exposition, then, it makes complete sense to use the same articulations/phrasing here. So I don't really follow your argument."
Probably because it wasn't one; I don't see a good reason for doing them staccato the second time if one has slurred them the first. Taking something nuanced and making it more simple in the recap doesn't sound like a good thing to do. To admit a hideous transgression against all that's holy, though, the last time I worked on the piece I decided to slur to the first eighth in the bar with all of them, and use dynamics and phrasing to emphasize the "shift," with the shift starting out as an echo. To me, the shift is really about going somewhere the second time he didn't go the first--extending the phrase. And in the recap, he does the same thing at a larger level with the whole structure, also extending the half and two quarters motiv (which always reminds me of one of Leporello's lines from the second act of DG).
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 22:18
Quote:
I’m sorry, this doesn’t make much sense to me. Too much freedom? In other words, you want to change Mozart’s intent of the player?
I disagree wholeheartedly. Just because today’s player may not know what what was intended does not make it impossible to study and find out. We’ll never know precisely, but we can educate ourselves and make a knowledgeable stab at it.
Mark, my point was not clear, sorry. I have already explained to Brycon.
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-19 22:26
brycon,
You can find the fragment here:
http://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/nma/nmapub_srch.php?l=1
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-19 22:46
Thank you! I was getting frustrated digging around for it. Someone had it up online in a more printer-friendly copy, but it's been taken down.
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2017-10-20 00:42
I have a limited edition of a recording from Mitchell Lurie doing this quintet. It is kind of perfect in the sense that it took a week to record it. So there were many takes to get this recording right.
He slurred this passage. Mitchell of course was very capable of slurring 2 and tonguing 2. The recording was done with a regular A clarinet. The whole recording was not fancy at all. Nothing was done to give you that WOW factor. It was just a really great recording, probably something that Mozart would have wanted.
This conversation kind of reminds me of the Copland Concerto. We hear so many versions of the Copland. Some players double and even triple tongue the piece. I was lucky enough to talk with Aaron about the piece when he was around 75 years old. He wrote it for Benny Goodman. They both lived in NYC in the 1940's and they both loved Big Band music. Aaron wanted this to be played as a jazz feel. If we look at the cadenza there are no markings. So players seem to want to tongue the heck out of it and play it as fast as possible. But one of my favorite recordings is with Eddie Daniels who really had fun with this piece. Available on youtube.
My point of course is understanding what the composer wants. I really like what Shrifin did and what Mitchell Lurie did. Nice and clean. They stayed true to the composer.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-20 01:12
In fact, I am experimenting to double tongue this passage... Anyone tried? The tempo I use here is around 144.
Post Edited (2017-10-20 01:16)
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2017-10-20 01:26
What about today's world, and the people playing and listening today and their musical sensibilities? In discussions of performance practice, I hear little or no mention of those things, just reaching for the often vague wishes of composers who are long dead and times that are long gone. Sometimes one hears of a need to educate today's listeners in how the music sounded in the past, but what about what they want right now? Is that of no import?
These questions aren't intended to discount composer's intentions when they can be determined or reasonably guessed, nor, similarly, period practices. But there's one significant way musicians today know a lot more than Mozart did, and that's that they're living now in this fast-paced cosmopolitan, every-distracting world, and have some awareness of the intervening history. Doesn't that impart them some degree of license, plus, of course, responsibility?
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2017-10-20 01:52
I think 144 is wicked fast, but this is what I am referring to as the artist's interpretation. You can triple tongue it if you wish and play it at 172 plus or something. The question is do you want to play it the way Mozart wanted it played or something new and different? Personally I think Mozart wanted it around between 112 to 118 when the piece was written. Give or take a few metronome beats. The first movement of the concerto was pretty much set at 112. I don't feel Mozart wanted the 4th movement any faster than the 1st movement of the concerto, because there are so many similarities between the 2 pieces. But we are looking at almost what, 250 years later? He's dead, do as you wish. Lot's of classical pieces have been made into rock and jazz music.
The rock group Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, bought the rights to use Copland's Lucky Man as a rock version. Copland jokingly laughed saying he made a lot of money on selling the rights to this group. So it was a huge hit as a classical piece and a rock piece. So I don't know what to tell you.
Play the quintet at 172. It will surely get a lot of attention if that's what you want.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
Post Edited (2017-10-20 01:56)
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-10-20 02:07
Philip,
"What about today's world, and the people playing and listening today and their musical sensibilities? In discussions of performance practice, I hear little or no mention of those things, just reaching for the often vague wishes of composers who are long dead and times that are long gone. Sometimes one hears of a need to educate today's listeners in how the music sounded in the past, but what about what they want right now? Is that of no import?"
I think most of the people listening today want, above all, something meaningful. I think most performers who go to a lot of effort to discover how Mozart probably wanted and expected his stuff to be played do that because the music means a lot to them, and that usually comes through when they play it. Hogwood's recordings come to mind. There are plenty of cookie cutter performances that are polished but don't have a lot of depth, but those are probably not the people who become passionate about a couple of slurs.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2017-10-20 04:05
The emotional content projected is what I was thinking of above. What Mozart or other composers may have expected in that regard may be inaccessible or even unimportant to listeners down the road. Yet, the music still can be capable of moving them.
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Author: Klose ★2017
Date: 2017-10-20 08:29
Quote:
I think 144 is wicked fast, but this is what I am referring to as the artist's interpretation. You can triple tongue it if you wish and play it at 172 plus or something. The question is do you want to play it the way Mozart wanted it played or something new and different? Personally I think Mozart wanted it around between 112 to 118 when the piece was written. Give or take a few metronome beats. The first movement of the concerto was pretty much set at 112.
Bob, listen the recording (David Shifrin & Emerson string quartet) you recommend. The tempo there is also around 140.
Post Edited (2017-10-20 08:32)
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2017-10-20 09:05
Hmmmm I stand corrected. Thank you. You are correct. I also listened to Mitchell Lurie. He too was about 136. It is not at 112 to 118. He also slurred 2 and tongued 2 part of the time. Then slurred from the low G as stated above. I think this is the classic way to play the piece.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
Post Edited (2017-10-20 17:42)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-20 10:39
Lot to respond to here.
Philip,
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What about today's world, and the people playing and listening today and their musical sensibilities? In discussions of performance practice, I hear little or no mention of those things, just reaching for the often vague wishes of composers who are long dead and times that are long gone. Sometimes one hears of a need to educate today's listeners in how the music sounded in the past, but what about what they want right now? Is that of no import?
These questions aren't intended to discount composer's intentions when they can be determined or reasonably guessed, nor, similarly, period practices. But there's one significant way musicians today know a lot more than Mozart did, and that's that they're living now in this fast-paced cosmopolitan, every-distracting world, and have some awareness of the intervening history. Doesn't that impart them some degree of license, plus, of course, responsibility?
I understand the intentional fallacy. So I'm not one to nag people about a composer's intentions--once a piece of art's created, it's submitted to the world for us to make of it what we will. Composers, then, don't hold absolute authority over their pieces. But I think we should seriously consider what they wrote.
I also think "in discussions of performance practice, I hear little or no mention of those things, just reaching for the often vague wishes of composers who are long dead and times that are long gone" is a bit of a strawman. I play in some historical-instrument groups, and I've never heard a serious player dismiss audiences. And just practically speaking, it's impossible for someone to bracket off his or her experience and completely embody a former performance practice--i.e. you can't erase from your memory everything you've heard, played, etc.--so even the most partisan of historical performers is still going to be engaged with contemporary audiences and their tastes. Moreover, historically-informed performances are now rather mainstream. Compare, for example, a Beethoven symphony recording with Bruggen, Haitink (or most any contemporary conductor for that matter), and Furtwangler and see how close the former two are compared to the latter (Taruskin does a similar exercise in his essay on Beethoven 9 in Text and Act).
When done well, historically-informed performance contributes to "modern" performance. In other words, historically-informed and modern performance practices aren't really two discrete things, quarantined off from one another. Rather, historical performers inevitably approach what they do with something of a modern mindset; modern performers, conversely, have absorbed a great deal of the historical approach. There's a degree of interpenetration that your argument overlooks.
Aside from my example above, I'll give another from the concerto of how the interplay between performance practices occurs (at least for me).
In the phrase that begins with pickups into m. 136, many clarinetists try to portray two characters: soft and melancholy for the upper line; loud and gregarious for the lower line. But anyone who has played an old clarinet knows that the lower line, which alternates B-A#-B-A#, couldn't have been played particularly loud because it can't be played clearly and in tune without adding another key to the instrument. So you might argue: "well, the modern clarinet allows us to play it loudly, modern audiences are used to it and like it, so let's do it." But when you look at the orchestra part for that phrase, you see that Mozart masked the unseemly B-A# with a striking dissonance in the first violins--they play a G# against the clarinet's written A#/sounding F double sharp or G. So it doesn't make sense to blast on that lower line because the sounding minor second is so harsh; it works much better to play it in a mysterioso character.
Did Mozart intend for us to play that phrase mysterioso? Who knows: it doesn't even matter. But I bring it up to show an instance where something modern players are "used to" simply sounds bad and could be improved upon with some knowledge of historical instruments (or just looking at the score for 15 minutes--either way).
Bob,
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Personally I think Mozart wanted it around between 112 to 118 when the piece was written. Give or take a few metronome beats.
Respectfully, how on earth did you arrive at that?
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The first movement of the concerto was pretty much set at 112.
By whom? Please give evidence.
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I don't feel Mozart wanted the 4th movement any faster than the 1st movement of the concerto, because there are so many similarities between the 2 pieces.
Aside from the key center, what similarities are there between the concerto's first movement and the quintet's theme and variations?
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But we are looking at almost what, 250 years later? He's dead, do as you wish. Lot's of classical pieces have been made into rock and jazz music.
Seems unfairly dismissive of someone's interpretation after all the previous hokum.
Post Edited (2017-10-20 20:00)
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-10-20 17:35
Philip,
"The emotional content projected is what I was thinking of above. What Mozart or other composers may have expected in that regard may be inaccessible or even unimportant to listeners down the road. Yet, the music still can be capable of moving them."
Well, maybe a couple things. First, Mozart pushed some boundaries, maybe a little farther than he could get away with. The idea of him not wanting anything to happen in performances of his music that he didn't expect is an assumption, and maybe not a good one. As a remarkable performer, he understood that you have to connect with the audience, and we all need to remember that ourselves.
And second, there are many good ways to play great pieces, and many more bad ones. We need to make the music come alive for people, but it's important to do that in ways that come out of the music itself, rather than through tricks we do that aren't intrinsic to what we're playing. Things shouldn't sound arbitrary, or done to produce effects intended to convince the audience that the player is better or more important than what he/she is playing. Trying to adhere to period practices, and the kind of textual analysis Brycon is talking about, are things that can help in ensuring that performance is tied to what's in the music. They aren't the only ways of doing that. But from performances I've heard, there seems to be some pressure especially for touring soloists to come up with personal interpretations with striking effects in order to demonstrate that it was worth hiring them, and sometimes the result can be musically questionable. I think there really is an emotional and aesthetic "content" to something like the Mozart Concerto or Quintet, intangible and difficult to describe though it might be. There are different ways of expressing and sharing that content, but if one substitutes a different, inappropriate or possibly incompatible content through one's performance, I guess I have problems with that.
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2017-10-20 17:58
Brycon - I corrected my mistake just above. Please read my response. I was wrong. I was thinking of a different passage, until I put on the CD and released the section in question. I was thinking about the passage AFTER this, when the clarinet slurs from the low G to the high B. The tempo of this movement changes all over the place. Often it would be nice to actually SEE the music, instead of guessing at which passage the person is referring to. So there is some minor confusion.
With this said if the player or players can double tongue some of the phrases and slur 2 and tongue 2 other phrases it could make this piece very unique, interested and perhaps beautiful.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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The Clarinet Pages
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