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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The Clarinet BBoard
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