 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-04-04 12:05
Igor Stravinsky died exactly 50 years ago. I reckon few -or perhaps no-major composers wrote as much and felicitously for our instrument. And this, his whole life long. Does he speak about the clarinet in any of his writings or conversations with Robert Craft? What were his thoughts on the instrument and how did he view it? Did any of you out there meet him or play under his direction?
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-05 02:29
Well, Stravinksy wrote well for many instruments!
Taruskin's Stravinsky book has been burning a hole on my shelf. At some point, I'll get around to reading all 2000 pages of it. Perhaps there's some good clarinet info lurking in it.
I've heard a story--not sure whether or not it's true--that the clarinetist Kalmen Bloch (Michele Zukovsky's father) played the Three Pieces for Stravinsky. According to the story, the composer had forgotten he had written the pieces. And then, after hearing them, remembered only that he had wanted the last note played loudly, like a "stinger" in a big band tune.
At any rate, what I find so fascinating about Stravinsky is his relationship to other pieces of music, especially in comparison to Schoenberg (and then, of course, you get into the whole issue of intertextuality in modernist art as a whole--T.S. Eliot, Pound, et al.) Although I'm not sure about any supporting sources, it seems possible to me that Stravinsky was drawn to particular aspects of music by way of his association with Nadia Boulanger. Or, rather, something already present in Stravinsky's approach was also present in Boulanger's teaching and therefore resonated with him.
Boulanger's teaching was one of the last remaining threads of a very prestigious tradition that dated back to the earliest music conservatories in Naples. In the Neapolitan conservatory tradition, music was taught as a collection of discrete gestures: cadential patterns, rules of the octave, and other various schemata (see Robert Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style for a thorough study). By stringing these schemata onto one another, young musicians arrived at an idiomatic composition.
These teaching methods were exported to the Paris conservatory (primarily by way of Luigi Cherubini) and survived throughout the middle of the 20th century through Boulanger and her circle of students and associates. And in Stravinsky's music, of course, we find a rather similar approach: discrete gestures, whether they come from Pergolesi, Lithuanian folk tunes, or Russian opera, placed aside or on top of one another and seemingly without further development (which drove Adorno crazy).
In the first of the Three Pieces, for instance, we have a paraphrase of the "Song of the Volga Boatmen" placed beside a reworking of the composer's own short duet for two bassoons "Lied ohne name." This knowledge, then, gives us several big clues about a possible way of approaching the first piece: 1.) it's a song and 2.) it's a duet (but played on a single instrument).
From what I've read of Stravinsky's own writings, he seemed rather opposed to any sort of interpretation of his music, an unfortunate position for such a brilliant composer. Not sure if you can find anything related to the Three Pieces or the other clarinet music in there. But good luck!
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-05 04:56
In her book More Clarinet Virtuosi of the Past, Pamela Weston recounts a performance Louis Cahuzac gave of Stravinsky's Three Pieces for Clarinet soon after its publication. The composer, in attendance, informed Cahuzac that he played the composition much too Romantically and invited him home where they could discuss an approach more in keeping with the modernism of the 20th century. Cahuzac took him up on the offer and reportedly learned to play the solo shorn of any taint of last century Romanticism. Too bad that Cahuzac does not seem to have recorded the Three Pieces; also it is our loss that nobody wrote down the instructions Stravinsky gave Cahuzac regarding in detail what the composer wanted.
A quote from Taruskin's Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions appears in a dissertation on Cahuzac. Taruskin refers to the Three Pieces as "a charming appendage to Historie du Soldat (vol.2, p. 1483). Was that Stravinsky's view as well, and is playing the piece in the style of Historie therefore the key to getting it right?
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-05 05:22
Quote:
Cahuzac took him up on the offer and reportedly learned to play the solo shorn of any taint of last century Romanticism. Too bad that Cahuzac does not seem to have recorded the Three Pieces; also it is our loss that nobody wrote down the instructions Stravinsky gave Cahuzac regarding in detail what the composer wanted.
I think it's pretty safe to surmise Stravinsky wanted the pieces to be played rhythmically exact and without rubato. He's fastidious with tempo markings and very reserved with tempo modifications, such as ritardandi.
But in another respect, who cares? Once a composer writes a work, he or she is cut off from it and has no say in how it gets performed. Moreover, composers, including Stravinsky, are often rather bad interpreters of their own music. If Cahuzac's first version brought out the salient aspects of the piece, I hope he would weigh Stravinsky's input, use what he thought works, and ignore the rest.
Why search so hard for an authority on how to play music ("getting it right") outside of the music itself? (Yes, it's a simplification, but you get the point!)
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Author: Andrez444
Date: 2021-04-05 08:38
There are some very insightful discussions around the three piece on this bulletin board.
Two that come to mind are Reginald Kell playing the three pieces with Stravinsky in the audience and also Rosario Mazzeo’s is discussions with Stravinsky himself.
I am sure you can find them using the search function here.
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2021-04-05 20:05
Kell recorded the Three Pieces
Peter Cigleris
Post Edited (2021-04-05 20:05)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-04-05 20:38
>> Kell recorded the Three Pieces >>
Yes – disgracefully.
Tony
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-05 21:21
Tony,
Are there any recorded performances of the Three Pieces that you especially like?
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2021-04-05 21:24
Charles Russo told me that he once played the Three Pieces for Stravinsky.
Stravinsky claimed that he did not specify that the first two movements be played on the A clarinet and the final movement on B-flat, but rather it was the publisher.
However, Stravinsky was well known for waffling on textural issues, for example the D flat-D natural controversy in the Firebird Berceuse.
I once performed the Firebird ballet with Robert Craft (he actually mentions this performance in his memoirs), who provided very little insight - his head was buried in the score the entire time (!).
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-04-05 22:04
>> Are there any recorded performances of the Three Pieces that you especially like? >>
No. There’s one of me on the Chailly Sinfonietta disc of the Fairy’s Kiss that someone has put up on YouTube. We did it in half-an-hour between sessions on a day’s notice, and I now rather wish I’d prepared better so that – for example – the last movement could be less rushed and more obsessive.
Still, the disc was used (without payment) as incidental music for ‘The Legend of the Holy Drinker’, a Palme d’Or film winner…
I’m not unduly displeased. But I’ve played it better.
I’m sure there’s a wonderful recording out there, but I don’t know what it is:-)
Not Kell’s, at any rate.
Tony
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-05 23:13
Tony,
You brought out the contrasts in dynamics and respected the variety of light and shade well. Too many performances maintain a monotonous mezzo-forte, mezzo grayish tint throughout. And you managed to make it sound like one connected composition rather than three randomly joined but disparate jottings.
Kell riffs on the score rather than playing it. Fans of Kell like to hear his big, wide Boosey and Hawkes (or Martel Freres) sound and distinctive vibrato, and that's what he gets to present in his stop and go version of the first piece. In the second piece, his intensions are hard to figure. He takes the liberty of playing it as an unmetrical cadenza but one not even in the style of Stravinsky--maybe more like an ad libitum reading of Debussy's Syrinx. All the forward drive and flow of the rhythmic figurations are lost. The last movement he lumbers through at a slow, slow, very slow pace, quite far removed from jazz, ragtime, cakewalk, or medieval isorhythm. A similar approach to the Nielsen Concerto might take an hour to complete. Much Kell, little or no Stravinsky in Kell's performance.
I find Sabine Meyer's performance fun to listen to. She's got the notes and articulations down well. I don't know about her degree of fidelity to the composer's intensions but her reading is surely closer to those that Kell's. Her interpretation of the rhythms in the third piece sound to me more like the isorhythms in a medieval piece like the Play of Daniel for instance than the syncopation of jazz or ragtime. But then, Stravinsky had studied medieval composers like Machaut and the effect is striking.
https://youtube.com/results?search_query=sabine+meyer+stravinsky+three+pieces+2.
Post Edited (2021-05-31 03:05)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-04-08 16:27
Brycon: it's always a great joy to read your erudite and lively unpedantic responses to my posts. I always hope that you will respond as I always learn something important from your responses.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-04-08 16:29
Kell made quite a few recordings when he was well past his prime. Unfortunately, he was past his prime at a very early age.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-08 23:35
Quote:
Brycon: it's always a great joy to read your erudite and lively unpedantic responses to my posts. I always hope that you will respond as I always learn something important from your responses.
Thank you for the stimulating topics!
The Stravinsky-Boulanger thing has been on my mind because my harmony teacher was a student of Boulanger. And then over the pandemic lockdown, I discovered a new (to me, at least) area of research called schema theory, which immediately brought to mind my harmony lessons.
Schema-theory scholars, such as Robert Gjerdingen, deal with these stock musical phrases that were taught, basically by rote, to every musician coming up through the early Italian conservatories in Naples. Among the musicians who learned this method were Domenico Scarlatti, Handel, Haydn, Pergolesi, Rossini, Bellini, Wagner, and Verdi; Bach, Beethoven, and Leopold Mozart consulted Italian teaching manuals; and Cherubini brought everything to the Paris conservatory. So I've been diving into these older methods, going back to the roots of Boulanger's curriculum so to speak, and teaching myself as though I were an 18th-century music student.
With regard to Kell's unusual performance, Lydia Goehr's brilliant book The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works might be fascinating reading for anyone interested. Kell's tempo in the second movement recalls Goehr's discussion of the sorites paradox, that is, at what point does an artistic choice or an error make a piece no longer the piece. If, for instance, I miss a note in Stravinsky, is it still Stravinsky? How about 2 notes? and so on.
Goehr's central premise, though, is that much of what we take for granted about music, namely fidelity to the written score, emerged at the beginning of the 19th century. Before 1800, Goehr argues, performance was prioritized over inscription. (And, to tie everything together, as the early Italian conservatories show, musical "works" from the previous era were often half improvised, with everything from florid melodic diminutions, the number of voices, and points of imitation left to the performer.) In the Romantic era, by contrast, musical performances attested to a work that exists above and over all performances. It was an era of declining interest in improvisation and performer-composers and of growing interest in speculative theories on music, complete editions, and to extend into the 20th century, urtexts, definitive recordings, and so forth.
So while I don't particularly care for Kell's recording and certainly wouldn't play the Stravinsky that way myself, I also don't really care enough to get upset by it: it's simply an approach that doesn't attempt to be definitive.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-09 02:14
Clarinetists might want to look into the Partimento practices that schema theory is examining and trying to reconstruct for our time. Gjerdingen's book Child Composers in the Old Conservatories made a lot of readers aware that valuable skills of music analysis, invention, and performance were not transmitted into the 20th and 21st centuries and the numerical functional chord analysis commonly taught is not the only way to conceive of and hear harmony. The Partimento approaches to music have been laid out in textbooks by Job Ijzerran (Harmony, Counterpoint, Portimento) and Giorgio Sanguinetti (The Art of Portimento).
Composers since Mahler, Berg, Stravinsky, etc. have generally expected performers to adhere to "what is on the page" and not stray into personal reveries
of improvisation. Stravinsky seems to have wanted Cahuzac to avoid all non-notated rubato and ornamentation, and certainly not substitute his own rhythms for the written ones or indulge in added improvised passages. Two Russian pianists a few years ago gave an extended concert performance of improvisations on themes of Stravinsky anyway. Here's a sample of an improvisation on the opening bassoon theme of the Rite of Spring: https://visualmusic.ning.com/video/the-art-of-improvisation-stravinsky.
Post Edited (2021-04-09 02:27)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-09 02:57
Quote:
Gjerdingen's book Child Composers in the Old Conservatories made a lot of readers aware that valuable skills of music analysis, invention, and performance were not transmitted into the 20th and 21st centuries and the numerical functional chord analysis commonly taught is not the only way to conceive of and hear harmony. The Partimento approaches to music have been laid out in textbooks by Job Ijzerran (Harmony, Counterpoint, Portimento) and Giorgio Sanguinetti (The Art of Portimento).
Yes! Very good recommendations for general readers and people who want to enhance their musicianship skills.
Job Ijzerman's book is meant to replace the common "harmony" textbooks (Aldwell and Schachter's very fine book or Kostka and Payne's waste of paper). It advances from simple two-part examples and exercises to four-part chromaticism. Giorgio Sanguinetti's book is a bit more specialized and presumes a good foundation in figured bass and keyboard skills.
Quote:
Composers since Mahler, Berg, Stravinsky, etc. have generally expected performers to adhere to "what is on the page" and not stray into personal reveries
of improvisation. Stravinsky seems to have wanted Cahuzac to avoid all non-notated rubato and ornamentation, and certainly not substitute his own rhythms for the written ones or indulge in added improvised passages.
Certainly true. But there is a great deal of gray between following exactly what's on the score and improvising, an unwritten rhythmic stretch of a note, for instance, in the first Stravinsky piece. Music notation cannot possibly capture every facet of a performance. Moreover, a good musician should know what to do with few markings (in a "thinly" notated Bach or Mozart score, for example) and a bad one still wouldn't know what to do with many (such as in Carter's music).
In the first Stravinsky piece, I think some rhythmic stretching, especially on wide intervals, while maintaining a more or less consistent pulse helps draw out the singing aspect of the piece as well as the single-line counterpoint. And if Stravinsky told me "No! Play exactly what's there: no stretching," I'd (politely!) ignore his dictum and play it how I want to play it.
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Author: Andrez444
Date: 2021-04-09 16:05
The link to an article taken from Klarinet archives may be helpful in the discussion of the three pieces based upon conversions between Rosario Mazzeo and Stravinsky.
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/lookup.php/Klarinet/1996/03/000527.txt
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Author: JTJC
Date: 2021-04-09 16:34
Surely the big story in that article is Mazzeo being shown and holding the manuscript score of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto!
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-10 22:04
Here's a performance by Guy Deplus (a well-informed player mentioned in the Mazzeo article):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H9L0eO5MZc
Stravinsky pretty clearly wanted a continuous thrust of forward motion and sprightly rhythm. The breath marks are optional punctuation, not licenses to break the meter or lapse into rubato.
Did Mazzeo ever record the Three Pieces?
In this retelling of the encounter between Stravinsky and Cahuzac, it sounds like the composer learned something from the clarinet virtuoso about how the piece should be performed. Probably both learned from the other?
Post Edited (2021-04-10 23:51)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2021-04-11 22:34
Thanks so much for posting the Deplus recording. He gives a very strict, straight forward almost non-interpretive performance.
That reminds me of a Klar-Fest (or Clarinet Congress) concerto competition many many years ago that used the Paul Hindemith Sonata and then the judges had an almost impossible task of picking one performance over another. I guess sometimes you just need music that allows (forces) the musician to make personal choices). But the Three Pieces may not be one of those.
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-12 01:17
Quote:
Here's a performance by Guy Deplus (a well-informed player mentioned in the Mazzeo article)
The recording, to my ears, sounds nearly a half-step high in pitch. Guy Deplus was a great artist. Not sure, though, if I'd use this recording as a definitive account of what Stravinsky wanted (which, as I said earlier, isn't something we as interpreters should view as the ultimate goal at any rate).
Post Edited (2021-04-12 01:19)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-04-12 16:47
I have been told that Stravinski himself expressed great admiration for Guy Deplus' playing of these pieces.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-12 16:51
But is the recording even an accurate representation of Deplus's playing? Sounds as though it could have been sped up, which raised the pitch rather high.
Post Edited (2021-04-12 18:46)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-04-12 18:18
No, it's what the PIECE wants that is important. In judging that, of course, it's impossible to avoid yourself.
I don't think this recording represents Deplus at all fairly. The pitch change causes a 6% increase in speed, too.
Tony
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-12 23:02
Quote:
Pitch change isn't always a bad thing... :-)
Amazing lines--wow! Sounds a bit like the changes to "All of Me" and reminds me of Lee Konitz's incredible performance of that tune on the album Motion (though I think Lee recorded it at normal speed!).
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2021-04-13 00:06
It is the "All of Me" changes (although with Tristano's displaced motives I find it sometimes hard to keep my place in the song). I thought you'd like it brycon :-) I think Lee Konitz was indeed after a similar concept on Motion at normal speed. But sorry- I've taken this quite far off topic now!
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-13 01:02
Quote:
But sorry- I've taken this quite far off topic now!
No problem for me! I'd never heard the recording and, of course, don't mind when a good conversation veers into new territory. But the local pedants, who prefer to police topics, might have an issue!
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Author: prigault
Date: 2021-04-13 05:01
The link above points to a bogus transfer which is too fast and absolutely does not reflect the correct recording tempo.
Here are the proper recordings of Guy Deplus in 1962 (from the Domaine Musical recordings):
No.1 (1'48) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAz3b0KI4BI
No.2 (1'03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dte-LetXgIk
No.3 (1'14) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zolxEAwR4w
Importantly, he only had a single take to record the whole thing, so his two minor slip-ups (a B-flat grace note instead of B-natural in No.2, a wrong rhythm in No.3) haunted him for quite some time.
To say that Guy Deplus respected written contemporary music to the letter is a bit of an understatement. I was fortunate to study with him 25 years ago at Ecole Normale in Paris and still have his handwriting on my copy of these pieces that I played at my exam. Each time I pick up my score, this reminds me of this very fine person.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-13 17:25
Philippe,
In the book L'Ascese Et La Flame, does DePlus (or Bruno Martinez) say anything about Stravinsky and the clarinet or the Three Pieces in particular?
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Author: donald
Date: 2021-04-13 23:40
Buffet put out a book celebrating Guy Deplus that discusses his relationship with Stravinsky (I'll need to check, but I recall it as being "he helped me by saying lots of nice things that impressed everyone, but we didn't actually have much contact"- I'll look for it tonight when I get home). I believe it has a "run down" of his recommendations for the Three Pieces.
I quite like Mr Pay's comments above.
I'm confused by another post...
"That reminds me of a Klar-Fest (or Clarinet Congress) concerto competition many many years ago that used the Paul Hindemith Sonata and then the judges had an almost impossible task of picking one performance over another. I guess sometimes you just need music that allows (forces) the musician to make personal choices). But the Three Pieces may not be one of those."
Is he seriously suggesting that you don't make "personal choices" when playing Hindemith?????
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-14 00:04
Quote:
Is he seriously suggesting that you don't make "personal choices" when playing Hindemith?????
Paul says a bunch of nonsense here. Seems to be his thing.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2021-04-14 00:36
brycon wrote that he doesn't "mind when a good conversation veers into new territory".
Actually my mind has been circulating around these themes and seeing some links after all. I don't know very much about Lennie Tristano's teaching, although apparently he was a very conscientious pedagogue. (Which is why a young Bill Evans replaced Tristano at Lee Konitz's "Live at the Half Note" session- Tristano didn't play the gig because he was teaching that night!) I heard that Tristano got all of his students to learn Bach pieces. They may not have learned Fontes and Montes alla Gjerdingen, but they were certainly learning good voice leading and implied harmonic progressions.
Did you know that Charlie Parker also planned to study with Boulanger? Another tragic outcome of his early death... imagine what may have come out of THAT musical partnership!
And finally, Parker was a huge fan of Stravinsky, frequently quoting bits of Stravinsky in his live gigs. Here's an interesting account of the night that Stravinsky heard Parker live at Birdland:
https://www.openculture.com/2016/10/the-night-when-charlie-parker-played-for-igor-stravinsky-1951.html
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-14 01:29
Love the story about Bird playing for Stravinsky!
I knew that Bird was planning on studying in Paris--I think he mentions it in the recorded interview with Paul Desmond. Yes, his immense genius working with Marcel Mule and Boulanger: a huge what if!
If you're interested in the links between jazz and classical composition, the great bebop pedagogue Barry Harris might be someone to check out (if you haven't already!). When I was studying jazz saxophone as a kid, I had a teacher who was very into his methods. Now with the wonders of Youtube, there are a couple of channels devoted to sharing Barry's brilliance.
For me, Barry's teaching is so similar to what I received from Boulanger disciples. That is, you learn music and not about music, not unlike learning a first language versus learning a second one in a college course.
In a traditional theory class, for example, we're taught about categories of chords, the notes they contain, the order in which they go to construct a syntactic phrase, and so on. But the way my harmony teacher taught was something like: when the bass goes (played at the keyboard, not written) scale-degree 1-2-3, the top voice goes 3-2-1, the alto goes 1-7-1, the tenor goes 5-5-5; the upper three voices can be inverted; now go practice singing and playing these lines in all 24 keys.
And that's exactly how Barry teaches bebop: no modes, complex nomenclature (#11s and so forth), or convoluted systems (Garzone's chromatic triads). It seems to be a way of teaching that's very close to that of Baroque and Classical composers and improvisors (and I think Gjerdingen makes a similar point in his book). I'm not sure about Tristano's teaching, but I'd love to hear about it!
And finally, speaking of Bach chorales, one of my close friends is a brilliant jazz pianist who has studied some with Fred Hersch. For lessons with Fred, my friend always had to bring his Riemenschneider Bach chorale book and prepare a Brahms intermezzo!
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2021-04-14 01:34
"Is he seriously suggesting that you don't make "personal choices" when playing Hindemith?????"
Maybe the point is to some music listeners, it doesn't matter what choices the performer makes in that sonata.
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Author: prigault
Date: 2021-04-14 04:36
seabreeze wrote:
> Philippe,
>
> In the book L'Ascese Et La Flame, does DePlus (or Bruno Martinez) say
> anything about Stravinsky and the clarinet or the Three Pieces in particular?
The book in question:
https://www.editions-mf.com/produit/48/9782915794663/l-ascese-et-la-flamme-entretiens-avec-guy-deplus
Yes, in the chapter on interpretation, a whole 8 pages are dedicated to the Stravinsky pieces (followed by 13 pages on the Debussy Rhapsodie). I shall try to sum it up:
The main point regarding interpretation (or lack thereof, rather) is that these pieces must be played by respecting what is written. As it turns out, the first thing that is written on the score is the following header:
The breath marks, accents and metronome
marks indicated in the 3 Pieces
should be strictly adhered to.
It could not be more clear then.
Deplus gives a few additonal hints:
These pieces could be played all on B-flat clarinet (the A clarinet for pieces 1 and 2 is simply a preference because the A is naturally more dark sounding), the important thing is that the sound is dark in the first one, a little less so in the second one, and brighter in the last one.
First piece: respect the tempo, no nuance exaggeration, rather dark sound but not hollow. If clarinettists feel bored by playing under these guidelines, they should consider that music can express boredom, after all. Calm and serenity is a better image though. One must pay attention to the sound homogeneity between registers, for example in the penultimate bar, in the decrescendo from low F to throat G#, the tone must not jump to a brighter one.
Second piece: for all the rapid passages, regularity and homogeneity. Technically, Deplus uses what he calls "points d'appui" (support points), to decompose the structure into smaller bits and think of some notes (typically the ones requiring the use of the most fingers) as anchoring the phrase. Of course, this is only a help for the player, none of this should be apparent to the listener.
Third piece: actually a bit slower than the second one (people tend to play it too fast), care should be taken not to speed up or become tired with articulation, as there is a lot of it. Respecting breath marks can create small delays, which is intended by the composer.
There are a few more specifics, but that is basically it.
On the day of Stavinsky's death (April 6, 1971), Guy Deplus was in Royan for the International Contempory Art Festival. He was asked on the spot by the festival director (Claude Samuel) to play the three pieces. He couldn't find a score, so he played them all from memory. He says that he played recalling every score detail and had never played more calmly and concentrated in his life.
I will add a fingering hint that is not in the book and that he advised me to use in the second piece, for the altissimo G under the fermata on the fourth line (just before the pp part). There is neither a crescendo or rallentando there, and after a standard altissimo F:
RT -23(C#) | ---(G#)
the way to get a G that is neither bright nor sharp is with:
RT -23(C#) | 12-(G#)
I like this fingering very much personally.
Post Edited (2021-04-14 04:55)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-16 03:08
Stravinsky indicated in the book Dialogues and a Diary (with Robert Craft, Faber and Faber 1968) that he began listening to jazz soon after Ernest Ansermet introduced him in 1918 to "a bundle of ragtime music" from America. Stravinsky says that he tried not to compose jazz but rather a "concert portrait or snapshot of the genre--in the sense that Chopins Valses are not dance pieces, but portraits of walzes." Stravinsky stressed: "In 1919 [he] had heard live bands and discovered that jazz performance is more important that jazz composition." Finally, he insists that his Piano -Rag Music "and clarinet solo . . . are not real improvisation but written-out portraits of improvisation."
So the challenge of doing justice to the 3 Pieces is not to make them sound like jazz, and still less to suppose that they are to improvised upon, but rather to play what you see on the page AS IF it were improvisation. A sort of cubist abstraction of improvisation.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2021-04-16 10:10
I like that: "a cubist abstraction of improvisation". Thanks for the information seabreeze.
I've often wondered about Stravinsky and jazz. In the context of the 3 pieces and l'Histoire du Soldat, the jazz that Stravinsky had been exposed to by then (1918) was early jazz and ragtime. Listening to early recordings from this time shows a very different aesthetic from later jazz styles.
Does anyone know which ragtime music specifically Ansermet introduced Stravinsky to back in 1918 and which live bands he heard in 1919?
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-04-16 17:43
Seabreeze: Very interesting and informative, which is what we expect and always get from you (I wish I knew who you were!) Ernest Ansermet wrote a fine article about Sidney Bechet in something like 1919. I imagine Bechet is the jazz artist Stravinsky heard around that time. I can think of nobody less "jazzy" than Ansermet.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-04-16 17:56
Dear Liquorice, As I replied to Seabreeze, Ansermet heard Sidney Bechet around this time (1918-1919) and I assume the Bechet band is what Ansermet introduced Stravinsky too. I have a couple of biographies of Ansermet plus his article on Bechet. If I can find them in the mess of my flat, I'll check this out. Someday, people will realize what an important country Switzerland was to Classical music in the 20th century...and still is. "A cubist abstraction of improvisation". I would also apply this fine description to the music of...Thelonius Monk.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-16 18:43
Quote:
"A cubist abstraction of improvisation". I would also apply this fine description to the music of...Thelonius Monk.
In its angularity, perhaps. But Monk's music is an outgrowth of his time spent playing stride piano and bebop. Even in their most angular and idiosyncratic moments, Monk's solos still show the underpinnings of bebop--so-called "pianistic arpeggios" (arpeggiated triads with a chromatic lower neighbor in front of the first pitch), chromatic passing tones, enclosures, etc. are everywhere in his improvisations.
Cubism itself, however, was the result of Picasso appropriating the flattening of perspective he found in African art. It's an important distinction, I think.
As Debussy said of Stravinksy: "It's primitive music with all the modern conveniences." The same, of course, can be said of Picasso's art but not Monk's music!
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-16 18:46
Filippo Faustini, a conservatory-trained guitarist and composer, believes the "bundle of ragtime" Ansermet brought back from his American tour most probably contained rags and cakewalks by black composers like Scott Joplin. On Faustini's page below, scroll down to the third article, "Stravinsky and Jazz: Yes, Even Classical Music is Influenced by Black American Forms."
But at the time, Stravinsky had not heard ragtime performed and was not interested in writing ragtime; he used the rags as raw stone to chisel out his own abstracto-rag.
https://flypaper.soundfly.com/author/filippofaustini/
Post Edited (2021-04-16 19:00)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2021-04-16 20:59
Faustini’s article is interesting, but (although I’m no expert) I’m not sure I agree with all his points.
He writes: “ What Stravinsky could not grasp from the scores he had seen is the way ragtime and jazz music is performed: The score does not indicate graphically the concept of swing and the way jazz musicians would play the main accents on the second and fourth beats in the bar, rather than on the first and third, as is custom in classical music.”
I don’t believe that ragtime was being swung in 1918. There’s a wonderful recording of Fats Waller demonstrating the “old fashioned” way of playing rags and then constructing it with his new jazzed-up version. But this was much later than 1918.
And regarding the main accents being on 2 and 4, I just don’t hear that in early jazz recordings from this time.
Also it seems that Stravinsky also heard some live jazz players, so his impression wasn’t only based on these ragtime scores, right?
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-04-16 21:43
I think he's probably right about the scores Stravinsky studied being the music of Joplin and other black rag and cakewalk composers. He's probably also right in his contention that Stravinsky did not aspire to write in the popular style of these composers but rather to use elements of their music as a jumping off point for his own style. Gershwin came much closer to crossing the line into jazz and pop, and William Grant Still actually crossed over in his arrangements for Artie Shaw (e.g. "Frenesi," "Danza Lucuni," "Through the Years" Chantez Les Bas"). Years later when Stravinsky wrote the Ebony Concerto for Woody Herman, clearly he was not trying to do a jazz chart either in the old style of Fletcher Henderson and Bill Strayhorn or the newer ones of Neil Hefti, Ernie Wilkins, Pete Rugolo, and Lenny Niehaus. Stravinsky was a classical modernist influenced by jazz but never a jazzer. Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan were no challenge to him, or he to them, on that score. The jazz train ran along on its track and the modernist classical on its with little danger of collision. The tracks started to cross more with the rise of "third stream" music.
Had Stravinsky heard ragtime in performance before 1919? Faustini doesn't show that he hadn't. And I agree that Faustini doesn't seem aware that rags had an old and a new "swinging" way of performance that Fat Waller demonstrated. The older way hewed very close to the classical. In any case, after hearing Bechet and later Charlie Parker, Stravinsky gave no indication that he wanted to swing in either New Orleans jazz or be-bop style. He absorbed the excitement of the rhythms and recombined them, like a good chef, to make his very own dish--each and every time.
Post Edited (2021-04-17 01:11)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-16 23:54
Quote:
Faustini’s article is interesting, but (although I’m no expert) I’m not sure I agree with all his points.
Yes, and it also falls somewhat into the essentialism fallacy: in this case, narrowing the genre of ragtime into a few key elements and tracing them through to Stravinsky. The features he lists--octave doublings, parallel thirds, chromatic passing tones, rhythmic syncopations, and repeating basses--can all be found in a Mozart piano sonata or a Handel keyboard suite as well.
And this approach leads to overlooking some interesting points about both composers. Joplin, for instance, undertook a rigorous study of counterpoint. According to Rudi Blesh, Joplin owned a counterpoint manual by the great Leipzig conservatory professor Salomon Jadassohn and, as shown by his numerous annotations, thoroughly worked through the book. And if you play a bit of piano, it's easy to feel a connection between this music and older traditions. But by reducing Joplin to proto-jazz, which is a bit unfair, you miss some of what makes his music unique, e.g. the blend of old and new as well as the skillful compositional craft.
With regard to Stravinsky's use of "blues notes" (important: the pitches Faustini points out in Joplin are chromatic passing tones, not blues notes), the influence almost certainly came from the Russian opera tradition. In Russian opera, supernatural elements are denoted by way of an equal division of the octave by minor thirds (sit down at the piano and tremolo these triads: C major, Eb major, F# major, A major, and back to C). The aggregate of pitches from these triads comprise an octatonic scale, which contains the minor third, major third, and minor seventh scale degrees or blues notes.
Incidentally, folk elements from Russian opera are usually denoted by way of a descending minor tetrachord, the so-called "Russian tetrachord." The "Augurs of Spring" superimposes these two elements: the octatonic pitch collection in the strings and the tetrachord in the bassoons. Moreover, a smart clarinetist can find the tetrachord throughout the first two pieces (in the middle section of the second piece, for example, and rather poignantly right at the very end).
Post Edited (2021-04-16 23:55)
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2021-04-17 00:32
While scouring the sheet music collections at many of the libraries (online) for unfamiliar tunes to play, I'm frequently amazed to run across standard pop/folk tunes from the 1890s-1910s which carry hints of the coming jazz/ragtime/etc.
As per Stravinksky's "jazz" influences, I can't help but think the world of music in the 1890s-1910s was heading towards a destination similar to what would later become known as "jazz" - with or without the names/methods we now associate with the creation of jazz. (I've always thought of this as an American thing - but Brycon's point about Russian opera has me re-thinking this assumption.)
In the context of that 1890s-1910 world, it is fun to wonder at what a composer like Stravinsky was hearing all around him.
Thank you all for the wonderful data above. It has been a very educational thread for me.
Fuzzy
;^)>>>
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Author: brycon
Date: 2021-04-17 01:24
Quote:
(I've always thought of this as an American thing - but Brycon's point about Russian opera has me re-thinking this assumption.)
Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting Russian opera uses blues notes! Simply pointing out that the interplay of major and minor scale-degree three doesn't make something bluesy or jazzy--it's an analytically lazy point in the Faustini article.
In Russian opera, for example, the interplay comes from an equal division of the octave; in the opening of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, it comes from the 19th century's growing indifference to the major-minor polarity (rather than C major and C minor, let's just have C); in the blues, it's an affective, often microtonal inflection on the part of the singer; and so on. These things are all different, and their treatment of the major-minor system is different. To draw analytical comparisons among them just because they use E naturals and E flats would be silly.
Moreover, there's another way of deriving octatonic collections, which I've heard from older jazz musicians. Take a fully diminished chord (C-Eb-F#-A) and lower the first pitch by a semitone while keeping everything else. This process produces a B dominant chord (B-Eb or D#-F#-A). Lower the next chord member, Eb, while keeping everything else and you get a D dominant chord; lower the F#, and you get an F dominant chord; and finally, lower the A, and you get an Ab dominant chord.
The original diminished chord can be played over any of those four dominants. Indeed, in the bebop era, it became one of the standard harmonizations of a ii-V in a minor key. (And it also appears, funny enough, throughout much of the Baroque repertoire: the beginning of Bach's D minor two-part invention, for example.) Add all those pitches together--D-Eb-F-F#-Ab-A-B-C--and you get an octatonic scale.
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2021-04-17 01:37
Quote:
sit down at the piano and tremolo these triads: C major, Eb major, F# major, A major, and back to C
I see what you mean now. I didn't go over to the piano, and had thought the point was that the "sound" heard by the ear would be implying/hinting at the "blues" scale. Sorry for the misunderstanding and thanks for the clarification.
Fuzzy
;^)>>>
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-05-30 16:58
I just want to comment on the translation of Deplus:
>> First piece: respect the tempo, no nuance exaggeration, rather dark sound but not hollow. If clarinettists feel bored by playing under these guidelines, they should consider that music can express boredom, after all. Calm and serenity is a better image though.>>
Is 'boredom' the right translation here? And, what does ‘nuance exaggeration’ mean?
I had to do with Guy Deplus in the auditions in 1976 for the clarinet positions at the beginning of the Ensemble Contemporain. As you perhaps know, this ensemble was initially based on the London Sinfonietta, of which I was the current principal clarinet.
We reduced the contestants to three, of which we finally chose two. The excluded player was demonstrably upset/annoyed at this. I can’t remember any names, but it seems clear that the two we passed would have been Alain Damiens and Michel Arrignon.
Deplus very kindly offered to entertain me in his Paris flat after the audition. Perhaps we drank a glass of wine, or had some coffee. In the middle of this he took a phone call. It turned out to be from the rejected clarinettist, who wanted to know why he had been rejected.
I have come to think that it’s worth avoiding answering this question. The truth is that there is very rarely one thing responsible for such a decision. You want to say, you played well – but we thought the others were better.
Anyway, I was able to overhear Guy trying to answer it with reference to the Stravinsky 3 pieces, which all the contestants had played at one point. He said a few things, and then, “Third piece, much too fast!” Of course I couldn’t hear the reply.
But with great respect to Guy Deplus, you can’t capture what’s necessary to play these pieces well either by criticising tempo selections or by telling people what ‘not to do’.
What I would now want to say about the first piece is that its flow needs to be governed by a particular way of understanding the phrase structure: namely that it’s built on patterns of twos and threes.
I think Stravinsky would have been better served by writing:
Dotted crotchet = 35; crotchet = 52; quaver = 104.
That would have called attention to the idea that the music consists of sequences of dotted crotchet and crotchet pulses. And that realisation helps the ‘tranquillo’ instruction, because trying to be tranquillo just on the level of crotchet and quaver leads to a tempo that’s too slow – as indeed is to some extent the case on my old Youtube recording referenced above.
Tony
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Author: prigault
Date: 2021-05-30 23:03
Tony Pay wrote:
> I just want to comment on the translation of Deplus:
>
> >> First piece: respect the tempo, no nuance exaggeration,
> rather dark sound but not hollow. If clarinettists feel bored
> by playing under these guidelines, they should consider that
> music can express boredom, after all. Calm and serenity is a
> better image though.>>
>
> Is 'boredom' the right translation here? And, what does
> ‘nuance exaggeration’ mean?
Yes it is, the exact french word he uses is "ennui".
He uses the term twice, once speaking about musicians who may feel bored ("s'ennuient", as in the paragraph below about nuance exaggeration) and once as the music itself being allowed to express boredom ("l'ennui"), although he stresses that in this instance, what the the music should express is rather calm and serenity.
Writing about "avoiding the trap of nuance exaggeration", he goes to explain that some musicians feel bored while they play it and are tempted to add some of their own effects, which goes contrary to the spirit wanted by Stravinsky. The interpreter must not bring anything from their own sensitivity in this work.
Thank you Tony for the very interesting bit that you write about the 1976 selection for the clarinet positions at the beginning of the Ensemble Contemporain. I might add that Deplus writes in the book that he was earlier initially selected for filling that position himself, but he was recovering at the time from a severe case of viral hepatitis contracted during a latin America tour, and he judged the position too physically demanding for his ability to fill it adequately at the time (which says a lot about his commitment of always giving his best). It is the only time in his career that he declined a position that interested him.
That same year 1976, I had myself my first exposure to Stravinsky's 3 pieces, but not at all at Tony's level of proficiency, in fact just about the opposite ! I was 8 years old and entering my second year of conservatory and first year of clarinet, and my parents had for the occasion offered me my first clarinet LP: it was Kalman Berkes 'Clarinet Recital', and I remembered being greatly impressed by Stravinsky's pieces. I also often stared at the picture on the LP thinking what a grown-up man that clarinet player was. I found that disc recently on YouTube (with great pleasure, it also features Debussy's rhapsodie and Strauss's wonderful duet-concertino) , and realised that Kalman Berkes was only 18 at the time, "a baby!" as I would say now.
Philippe
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-05-31 17:16
The two clarinets with Boulez's ensemble at the start were Arrignon and Jean-Claude Brion. I suspect he was the one you overheard Monsieur Deplus speaking to on the phone. -a fine player with much experience playing contemporary music. He also has a VERY high opinion of you. So he also had good taste!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-06-01 00:00
I think Damiens arrived about a year later. I would have thought that Boulez would have used members of his old Domaine Musical as the initial members. I seem to recall Guy Deplus was one of them.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: prigault
Date: 2021-06-01 01:21
ruben wrote:
> I think Damiens arrived about a year later. I would have
> thought that Boulez would have used members of his old Domaine
> Musical as the initial members. I seem to recall Guy Deplus was
> one of them.
>
Yes he was. As I have written just above, Guy Deplus declined that position for health reasons.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-06-01 01:52
Quote:
> Is 'boredom' the right translation here? And, what does
> ‘nuance exaggeration’ mean?
Yes it is, the exact french word he uses is "ennui". What I’d want to say about that is that the very rich French word ‘ennui’ isn’t captured by the English word ‘boredom’. And my bilingual interpreter friend concurs.
It seems to me that it would be rather out of character for Deplus to leave an English-speaking student with the notion that ‘boredom’ – a very coarse English word – is at all an appropriate response to Stravinsky I.
(Before I go on, I want to say that, despite my respect for him, what Deplus has to say about how we should play Stravinsky affects my own performance not at all. My playing of Stravinsky I – and II and III – stands on my own reading of Stravinsky’s score and instructions.)
But of course, Deplus DIDN’T say that to an English-speaking student. I haven’t yet received tha book, but I imagine from its title that in some sense it’s ‘about’ the delicate balance between such words as ‘boredom’ and ‘ennui’.
So my post was intended to redress that imbalance by questioning the translation.
Forget the stuff about the audition. It doesn’t matter. Who cares?
Tony
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-06-01 12:00
"ennui" can also mean "trouble" as in: Il a beaucoup d'ennuis"- He has a lot of problems. "C'est ennuyeux" can mean: "that's very inconvenient." In this context, it would, however, seem to mean "boredom".
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Jarmo Hyvakko
Date: 2021-06-01 12:16
About personal choices playing Hindemith: I have understood that for Hindemith professionalism in music was very important. He tried to compose music that was of good quality, comprehensible and impressive for the audience, possible to perform with reasonable amount of rehearsing but so, that the performance mercilessly reveals the difference between a professional and an amateur musician.
Therefore it is very important to study the notation of Hindemith's music and whatever personal ideas you get should be firmly based on the notation and not to some quest to find some metatruth beyond it.
The clarinet sonata for example may seem to have very little information, but if you really concentrate to phrase according to the slurs, take the articulation markings and rather seldom dynamics seriously, the door is wide open to the soul of this marvellous piece of music.
Jarmo Hyvakko, Principal Clarinet, Tampere Philharmonic, Finland
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-06-01 15:07
>> In this context it would, however, seem to mean ‘boredom’. >>
Well, if Deplus had made the remark in English to the student “...music can represent boredom after all,” then he would have done the student a disservice.
The need is to show the student that Stravinsky I is not at all boring, and how it is not. ‘Boring’ is almost completely negative in English.
It’s not that ‘ennui’ can ‘mean’ different English words; it’s that it has a different halo of senses.
I first heard Deplus playing ‘Abîme des oiseaux’ on an LP that I’ve since lost. This is another piece that requires the player to adopt an ‘inward’ register, and I thought Deplus did it excellently.
He didn’t express ‘boredom’, though.
I look forward to receiving the whole book.
Tony
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Author: graham
Date: 2021-06-01 23:00
I have always thought of 'ennui' as meaning 'listless' (or perhaps a state of listlessness). Boredom seems different to me, as in the phrase "thumping bore"or "crashing bore" or even "screaming bore". There's often a lot of tension and anger in respect of the experience of being bored, and animus directed at the boring person. Ennui does not seem to reflect that (to me).
graham
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Author: graham
Date: 2021-06-01 23:02
Here's an un-boring take on the Stravinsky: https://open.spotify.com/track/5uzIPmi4cp4o43Z8qRSemU?si=2b09a0e0ce70401d
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-06-02 00:09
Student: “The piece played like this is boring (ennuyeux)”
Deplus: “But music can also express ennui!”
I can buy that – but not the English version with ‘boring’ and ‘boredom’.
I find the Luciano effort irredeemably boring…
Tony
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Author: prigault
Date: 2021-06-02 07:23
From Oxford Languages:
boredom (noun):
the state of feeling bored.
"the boredom of afternoon duty could be relieved by friendly conversation"
bored (adjective):
feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one's current activity.
"she got bored with staring out of the window"
One can certainly add epithets or context to add negative connotations, but that is not what the plain words say.
As of “ennui” and its various english translations, ruben correctly states two other meanings (troubles and inconvenience) in other contexts. There is yet another meaning when used as “s’ennuyer de”, which means “to miss”, “to long for”, as could be used to translate “the Norwegian blue is pining for the fjords”. But none of these alternate meanings apply here, it is indeed boredom that fits the bill. To graham, listless (lacking energy, spiritless) refers to something different from ennui. I consider myself bilingual (although I own no framed diploma qualifying me as an official translator) and am acutely aware about language nuances (whenever possible reading books in their original written language, for this very reason). I am also very much at ease saying “I don’t know” when I am not certain (which is indeed quite frequent, but not the case in this instance).
As for over-interpreting language definitions, I likewise do not feel responsible for others misreading my words. Please read correctly what I wrote (it is in English). Deplus made no remark to a student (neither in French nor in English), the book being conversations with Pascal Martinez (an established professional clarinettist). And he certainly did not express that he himself feels boredom would apply to Stravinsky. Rather, he states that some players may feel bored and be tempted to exaggerate nuances (I surmise that, knowing the fireworks coming up in piece No.2, it is a perfectly valid explanation that they may find the first piece lacking in effects), and that although Music (not that of Stravinsky, but the art in general) is allowed to express boredom (which I personally find a brilliant idea, however sacrilegious it may seem to some), Stravinsky No.1 is not that and rather calm and serenity.
With that out of the way, Tony brings this:
> I first heard Deplus playing ‘Abîme des oiseaux’ on an LP that I’ve since lost.
> This is another piece that requires the player to adopt an ‘inward’ register,
> and I thought Deplus did it excellently.
He must refer to the 1963 Erato recording of the Quatuor (and Cinq Rechants), which was done under the artistic direction of Messiaen and won a “Grand Prix du Disque”.
That wonderful disc, with my favourite ‘Abîme des oiseaux’, represents for me the single most impressive display of musical and technical command of the clarinet. But that is not the point. The point is that this very recording can enlighten us about interpretation, and the need to sometimes take written directives with a grain of salt:
1. Playing what is written, or not: although the score preface goes into a lengthy description of the quartet's "rythm language" and calls for exact values being respected, one can easily notice that Deplus plays it slower (eight note = 38 to 40) than written (44 env), and that the crescendo molto whole notes are played for more than twice their written value (some up to 30 seconds). In these instances, the composer did simply ask Deplus to play them for “as long as he could”. He did not ask for this in other instances, such as the 1956 in the recording with André Vacellier. So sometimes a composer gives different directives at different times.
2. Nuances, tone and the historical context of instruments: Towards the end, the recapitulation of the initial theme an octave lower is marked “p (désolé)”. When Deplus played piano as written, Messiaen found that this was quite a bit too soft for what he wanted, and it took some explanations to figure out why. It turns out that Henri Akoka (whom it was written for and who played it initially) played on a very different setup (Couesnon clarinet, Couesnon mouthpiece with a Périer facing), and his tone was much brighter than Deplus’s Buffet and 5RV. So Messiaen asked Deplus to change it to mezzo-forte there (he later asked Arrignon the same thing, so Buffet players, you know what to do now!). So when I read things like: “Such an such composer wanted a C clarinet in that part for timbre reasons”, I think of this instance where a mere 18-year difference in instrument manufacture resulted in that much perception difference and cannot but wonder how it could apply centuries apart.
3. The will of a composer vs accuracy: On every recording of Messiaen's quartet, one likely finds a booklet where it is stated that the quartet was all composed in captivity, that the premiere took place in front of 30000 people and that the instruments were wholly inadequate (3-strings cello, broken piano). This story respected Messiaen's "recollection". Except that none of these are true: Abîme des Oiseaux was likely entirely composed even before Messiaen's first captivity in Verdun (where he met Akoka and submitted the piece to him), the cello was perfectly functioning (although not a great instrument) with no missing pieces, the camp never housed more than 5000 people and likely had 500 in the room of the premiere. So, with all the respect for this great composer, how should one put the works in context, given such inaccuracies ?
I urge clarinettists to do themselves a double favor:
- Listen to this recording (it is not on YouTube)
- Read Rebecca Rischin's fascinating and well documented book "For the End of Time, the story of the Messiaen Quartet", where they will learn many interesting things (like the ones above), and will likely make Henri Akoka (to whom Pasquier says that he probably owes his life, and who twice escaped and jumped from a train at speed, always with his clarinet) one of their personal heroes (it certainly did it for me).
Sorry if the post is a bit long, but I thought this might be relevant.
Post Edited (2021-06-03 04:49)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2021-06-02 10:37
Fascinating post! Thank you. I knew Akoka a bit when I was very young, but couldn't get him to talk about the Messiaen piece. Speaking about it seemed to make him uncomfortable (it probably was reminiscent of a traumatic period for him). He never played it again after having premiered it.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-06-04 14:54
I write on this list usually for not so expert players. Having spent my life as a performer on the clarinet, I feel I have sufficient expertise to say true things as well as to correct misconceptions.
One of my concerns is to say helpful things to players of particular pieces. One of those is the Stravinsky Three Pieces, and I am happy to find that Guy Deplus shares my concern to do my best for them.
Deplus and I share two attributes. One is that of having played the Three Pieces hundreds of times in public concerts, and the other is having been faced hundreds of times by students presenting the piece in a class or lesson.
The unsatisfactory players we encounter pretty much split into two groups: those who are unable to leave aside their performance idiosyncrasies, and those who offer nothing beyond the sequence of noises they can make on the clarinet. We have had to deal with both these groups.
If you succeed in taking away performance quirks – easier said than done, mostly – you tend to be left with nothing.
Teachers deal with the other group in different ways. I’ve heard people suggest that Stravinsky I “is just a song, like the Volga boatman.” The hope, I think, is to lure the student into a more natural expression.
I’ve myself preferred to look directly at the music: to notice with the student how there are groups of notes that are modally related, and how notes that are ‘strangers’ in that mode gradually enter; to notice how those ‘strange’ notes can form groups of their own in which the original group members themselves sound strange; how falling intervals and grace notes are used and cycled in longer and shorter phrases; and so on. It’s important to see that this process is tailored to the individual student, so that there isn’t a catch-all prescription. You’re not looking for another expressive technique: as we agree, the music needs to live by itself.
I don’t know how Deplus went about this difficult enterprise. We seem to me to have many musical ideas in common, so that I’m likely to be ‘on his side’ in the matter. I hope I’ll find out more, and learn more, from the complete book.
But what I won’t learn from is a crass lesson in the meaning of a word in my own mother-tongue from Philippe and Ruben – notice, a word that neither Guy nor myself have used. I would never use the word myself in this context, and it only arose when you two came along.
Any expert bilingual interpreter knows very well that context is highly important in transmitting a message. There is no necessary 1-1 correspondence between a word in one language and a word in another.
You may be bilingual, or not. What you certainly are is presumptuous.
Look that one up.
Tony
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Author: JTJC
Date: 2021-06-04 15:56
Tony, for all the depth, subtlety and nuance you display in your thoughts about the relevant topics on this board I really don’t understand why you can’t apply those skills to the phrasing of your comments about other contributors. Is this an example of your approach in teaching/masterclasses etc?
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2021-06-04 17:21
Maybe if composers like Stravinsky could also tell listeners how to listen it would be even better.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2021-06-05 20:50
'>> Tony, for all the depth, subtlety and nuance you display in your thoughts about the relevant topics on this board I really don’t understand why you can’t apply those skills to the phrasing of your comments about other contributors. Is this an example of your approach in teaching/masterclasses etc? >>
I thought my post was quite nuanced.
These people are actually the enemies of Stravinsky I.
I don't hold out much hope for them, though. As the great Bruno Giuranna used to say:
"Chi sa, sa. Chi non sa, non saprà."
Tony
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The Clarinet Pages
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