Author: brycon
Date: 2017-10-18 23:54
Quote:
'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.
Quote:
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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The Clarinet BBoard
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