 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2017-04-22 22:40
Am I better off getting the original 1923 version, or the revised 1954 version?
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Author: elmo lewis
Date: 2017-04-23 23:36
I didn't know there was a revised version. ¿Can someone comment on the differences between the 2 versions? ¿Was the new version made for musical reasons or copyright renewal?
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-04-23 23:41
So am I. Personally, I'd go with 1923, but I don't really know what the differences are. Bruckner and Furtwängler got worse in the revisions. In '23, he was still the guy who told Strauss, "You write your music, Herr Doktor, and I shall write mine."
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2017-04-25 00:52
Not really the main subject of the thread, but I disagree almost 100% about Bruckner. The 8th symphony was transformed by revision from something of variable inspiration into a consistent masterpiece on a new level. Perhaps the best movement in the 4th is the "new" scherzo. And the first version of the 3rd is just too sprawling, and begging for the tightening-up that it later received. The only symphony where the revisions were a backwards step was the first, where the late-style additions don't fit with the original material. So maybe that symphony is a warning about Hindemith, where it's also youth vs maturity - but the other Bruckner revisions are a different matter entirely.
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-04-25 02:03
Got a recording of Furtwängler doing the original version of the 8th that I much prefer to anything else I've heard, and the pirate recording of his own Sinfonie Konzert by Mehta and Barerboim without the forced return of the first theme in the first movement is the only recording of that piece I can listen to. But on the main subject, Ralph has gotten me curious enough to order the scores of both versions, instead of saying a bunch of stuff that might be totally wrong. What did he change and why? With Brukner, people kept whining at him to change things, but it isn't likely anyone could get away with doing that with Hindemith. Unless it was to extend the copyright, like some of the Stravinsky pieces.
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2017-04-25 06:24
Copyright: yes, good point.
Maybe this is premature, but I ordered the original version. Will wait to see what further comments may come out.
I really want to learn the Eb movement. Maybe I will have to learn it twice.
Thanks
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Author: James Langdell
Date: 2017-05-05 08:25
I know Hindemith reworked some of his earlier compositions years later to match the practices he described in his musical textbooks. I'm not familiar with the two states of his Clarinet Quintet, but I've heard a preference by singers for the earlier version of his Das Marienleben song cycle.
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-05-14 05:19
Received both scores, spent a few hours studying them, and played through the clarinet parts to the first and second movements. These are vague impressions, nothing formal, and don't claim to really know the piece.
The differences are substantial. He changed a lot of the melodic lines, changed the textures, and took some snippets out. By and large, he removed some repetitions of the same figure (near the end of the first movement, there's a six note triplet figure for clarinet playing alone that happens nine times in the original and six in the revision), changed some of the lines to be less repetitive and more varied, changed some lines to take the melody out of the same range as the accompaniment, and sometimes lightened the texture, possibly to make the melody clearer. There's an introductory section in the slow movement that he took out entirely. The third movement with Eb seemed to have the fewest changes (except for the fourth, in which the clarinet just has three low notes in both versions), but there were some. My overall impression is that the original has more raw, youthful energy and the revision is more elegant and polished. But he didn't seem to be trying to get it to sound more Hindemithy, which in any event, it doesn't.
According to the preface, which you only get with the original version, he was inspired to write it while rehearsing the Brahms quintet with the clarinetist Philipp Dreisbach. After the rehearsal, he told Dreisbach he was going to write a quintet for him, and also, "The Brahms quintet is not really music." Both came as a surprise to Dreisbach. Dreisbach wasn't enthusiastic about the movement on Eb, as he had never played Eb. The piece was apparently written in four days. Dreisbach received the music on July 31st, and the first performance at the Salzburg Festival was on August 7th. Hindemith must have been a pretty intense guy back then.
The versions are different enough that, if you had a captive string quartet and 50 extra bucks, it would be fun to do both of them. But I'll probably order the original version. The revision doesn't seem to fix anything that was obviously broken, I sort of like raw, youthful energy, and there's more solo stuff to play. A decent quartet will adjust the dynamics when the texture's dense.
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2017-05-16 03:23
The original edition was just delivered in the last hour.
So, I agree - the differences are substantial. Alterations go from the subtle to complete recasting of material to altogether different material.
Listening to recordings online, it seems the original is more difficult. In the revised version, lines are not carried out anywhere near as long, giving a lot more places to take breaths. Some sections were originally written without much thought about breathing, and the revision takes this into account to a much greater extent.
It sure would be interesting to play both editions together on a concert. Only the nerdiest of the nerds might come, though.
Thanks!
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2019-02-01 00:58
Corrections to the Erstfassung edition
In the last movement;
bar 23, add an 8th note rest at the beginning of the bar.
bar 25, delete the 8th note rest at the beginning of the bar. The next three notes are a triplet.
This is verified by the retrograde versions of the same passage in the first movement, bars 51 and 49.
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