 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2009-05-25 23:29
An important new recording of the Mozart Concerto has recently appeared on Harmonia Mundi HMC 901980 http://www.amazon.com/Last-Concertos-Wolfgang-Amadeus-Mozart/dp/B000XQHQWQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1243293026&sr=8-1, also downloadable for 99¢ per movement.
It's by Lorenzo Coppola playing a 9-key basset clarinet with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. There have been several recordings on similar clarinets, but this is several steps beyond what's gone before.
First, the orchestra plays "solo and ripieno," with all the strings playing in the passages without the clarinet, but cutting back to a string quartet (plus wind parts) whenever Coppola plays. This allows him to play without having to push the instrument.
Second, Coppola is the first player I've heard who sounds as though he began on the old instrument rather than adapting a modern sound and blowing style.
Third, he handles the cross-fingerings with complete confidence and smoothness, even at a really brisk tempo in the finale.
Fourth, his musicality is very fine.
I don't like everything -- he sometimes blasts on the basset notes, for example -- but its one revelation after another.
The CD also has Mozart's last piano concerto (#27 in Bb, K. 595) with Andreas Staier, which is similarly amazing.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2009-05-26 01:50
Yeah....that sounds really intriguing! Thanks for the info!
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Author: Ryder
Date: 2009-05-26 03:14
Also on iTunes...I just bought the album.
Very, very good work here.
____________________
Ryder Naymik
San Antonio, Texas
"We pracice the way we want to perform, that way when we perform it's just like we practiced"
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Author: Sarah Elbaz
Date: 2009-05-26 04:52
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9390xDUuPuU
Here is another important recrding of the Mozart concero!! :-)
Sarah
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2009-05-26 06:54
This is a wonderful recording though for me not new, I knew about this in late 2007. I would certainly recommend it.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-26 07:57
I saw the thread title and thought: I bet it's not as good as Coppola's. And then I saw it is Coppola's.
(An Agnès Guéroult instrument, I remind you, Peter. Just like Jean-Claude Veilhan's clarinet for the Molters. Except a heck of a lot bigger. She really is a fantastic maker. I think she told me that this was one of her first efforts to be based on the Riga drawing but maybe I've remembered that wrong - the booklet gives 1998 as the date for the instrument, anyway.)
For me the slow movement is more Largo than Adagio, I have to say. Thousands will disagree with me. (Er, judging from his recording Tony will be one of them so excuse me if I just go and crawl into a hole somewhere.)
Is it really, truly a 9-key basset clarinet? 5 for the main instrument and 4 for the thumb, as the booklet says? Just because (period clarinet nerd alert here) bars 118 and 122 in the first movement with the alternating Bs and A#s sound almost too good to be true if Coppola really is half-holing the Bs... I wouldn't put it past him, though.
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-26 08:24
...ah, another thing now that I've put it on again - I'm pretty sure that it's only in the other piece on the disc (the piano concerto no. 27) that the strings play one to a part during the solo passages. The booklet certainly gives me that impression, as do, er, my ears.
(Booklets are good. iTunes has quite a bit of work to do to catch up there.)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2009-05-26 08:33
I saw Lorenzo play this last year live. He is really a GREAT player! The orchestra didn't do the solo and ripieno sections, choosing to play everything tutti in the live performance. This was a shame, because sometimes the orchestra was too loud for the soloist. An example being the very spot where Oliver is so impressed with Lorenzo's playing. In the same programme they also played a piano concerto with Andreas Staier. Here they DID do the solo sections with single string players. It really worked very well, and made the contrast between tutti and solo sections more exciting, creating a real dialog between the different groups.
I met Lorenzo after the concert and he showed me his instrument. It really is a 9-keyed basset clarinet (5 keys plus 4 basset keys). He proves that it really is possible to play the concerto like that.
An interesting point here though is something that Andreas Schöni pointed out to me- if you look carefully at the famous Riga drawing it actually looks like there is some kind of key around where a RH Bb-F key would be (or B natural correction key). Maybe this famous section in bars 118 and 122 doesn't have to be as hard as we make it for ourselves!
For more recordings with Lorenzo look for recordings of Ensemble Zefiro. It's a wonderful ensemble and they've recorded quite a bit of chamber music by Mozart. In my opinion their playing is so fresh that it makes most other wind ensemble recordings seem bland in comparison (including my own!)
Bravo Lorenzo!!
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-26 08:52
I hasten to add that I'm impressed with Coppola's playing not just in those bars everywhere. It's just that in those particular bars I found myself thinking: you WHAT?
Some might not know, by the way: it seems more than just likely that Mozart wrote not just to low C but to low B, which is a note possible on period reproductions nowadays. Agnès doesn't have a website but here's a picture:
http://www.petervanderpoel.nl/klarinetten/bassetklarinetE.html
The hole is on the 'knee' of the bell and you have to press it against some convenient bit of your anatomy before playing the low C. Oddly enough you can also do something similar with Buffet basset horns nowadays. Coincidence? Must be.
Anyway, that means 'modern' basset clarinets have one note too few. Back to the drawing board...
Post Edited (2009-05-26 08:53)
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2009-05-26 11:58
I defer to Oliver's personal experience on whether the orchestra cut back during solo passages. I listened to the piano concerto first and then for the same thing in the clarinet concerto and thought I heard it. Certainly the orchestra was careful not to cover Coppola when he was playing softly.
The recording was made in 2007, but I check the record stores in NYC every month or so for new clarinet recordings and this is the first time I've seen it. I have and occasionally listen to the acoustic Haydn Draper performance, so for me 2007 counts as brand new. <grin>
Ken Shaw
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Author: larryb
Date: 2009-05-26 13:23
Ken:
"The recording was made in 2007, but I check the record stores in NYC every month or so for new clarinet recordings and this is the first time I've seen it."
There are "record stores in NYC?"
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2009-05-26 16:49
Larry -
From the receding hairline on your photos at http://www.hellgateharmonie.com (and, believe me, I have much less hair, and most of that gray), you and I are both old enough to have grown up with LPs. I grew up with 78s, though, fortunately, not cylinders. So yes, they're RECORD stores, and they always will be.
I assume a lot of the young whippersnappers on the board buy everything as MP3 downloads, so we're both obsolete. ![[tongue]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie6.gif)
Ken Shaw
Post Edited (2009-05-26 21:50)
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Author: larryb
Date: 2009-05-26 18:11
Ken,
I had no quarrel with the term "record store."
I just wonder where, aside from J & R, you find enough of them to use the plural.
Sam Goody (long ago), Tower, Virgin, Commodore (kidding) - all gone.
By the way, do you remember when Sam Goody's warehouse on 49th Street used to sell LPs for 69 cents (without the original dust jacket, just a generic white one)?
I guess I'd better get on down to the apothecary to order up a new batch of miracle scalp elixir.
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Author: clarinetwife
Date: 2009-05-26 18:45
Interesting about the LPs in plain white jackets. Perhaps this was before people started paying more attention to cover art? My dad learned to play the drums playing along with his big band 78s. Besides the fact that he literally played them until they wore out, he didn't keep the jackets. He just had them stacked on a shelf even much later when I came along.
Barb
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2009-05-26 19:04
Oliver,
He probably has a double hole for the Bs, Liquorice could you confirm? I would also check Eric Hoeprich's recording entitled the Last Concerto, he to uses the low Bs. Way back in 2000 whilst I was a student he came a gave a masterclass a brought some of his instruments including his copy of the Riga programme instrument, which I believe was the very first such instrument made. He explained about the tone hole and suggested it to be a vent for the C so the tuning would be accurate. I remember him saying one day he happened to close the hole and got a B, perhaps Stadler did the same and told Mozart about it? It seems very plausible. I have a vent on my modern basset at the front, if you get someone to close it a rich B comes out.
That was a great day for me because that night I was performing Fasch's Chalumeau Concerto (on a 2keyed soprano) with the college baroque orchestra and he went out of his way to coach the afternoon rehearsal. Wonderful chap and would have liked to have played in the masterclass but I needed to concentrate on that performance.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-26 19:20
I have three recordings with the Riga instrument (Coppola, Hoeprich and a dear friend from Australia by the name of Craig Hill) - all use the low B but none of them mention it in the booklet! Do they really think listeners aren't interested in that sort of thing?
It's bar 147 in the rondo where the low B seems essential, no?
But speaking of extremes: what do you do for that trill on top Bb in the Fasch, Peter?
I was rather disappointed when the Riga drawing was discovered. Not _that_ it was discovered - just that only then did I learn that basset clarinets and basset horns had actually survived from the period with the bulbous bell but no one took them seriously as the basis for a reconstruction...
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2009-05-26 22:02
Peter- Lorenzo didn't have a double hole for the Bs. He plays them using half holes. Apparently if you practise this enough it isn't too hard. But I guess you could say that about anything... :-)
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-26 22:30
In my attempts at getting that passage to sound decent my least dodgy results were when for the B I part-covered both R1 and R3 so I could rock both fingers back and forth rather than trying to rock one finger while the other didn't move. Seemed to give more control... Is that anything like what you folks do or am I barking up the wrong tree?
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2009-05-26 22:39
This is a great thread if you have ever played a period clarinet.
I did not realize so many of us had experience playing period instruments and with wrestling with some of the problems inherent with limited keys.
Where is Tony in this discussion?
I would enjoy hearing his insights.
Dileep
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2009-05-27 06:32
Thanks Liquorice,
I to play the B half holing the first finger hole. It's a bit risky but when you get it and it's reasonably in tune it has a nice covered sound to it.
Regarding the Fasch Oliver i'd have to find the part I used, I wrote alot of the cross fingerings on the back for the trills etc. I have a vague memory that I trilled with the speaker key but I could be wrong. I'll have a look when I get back after todays opera stizprobe.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-27 11:21
Speaker key? On a chalumeau?
Coppola is also in that very fine group Ensemble Philidor, by the way. Still my faves when it comes to Krommer, for example.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-05-29 13:53
Ken Shaw wrote:
>> An important new recording of the Mozart Concerto has recently appeared on Harmonia Mundi HMC 901980 http://www.amazon.com/Last-Concertos-Wolfgang-Amadeus-Mozart/dp/B000XQHQWQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1243293026&sr=8-1, also downloadable for 99¢ per movement.
>> It's by Lorenzo Coppola playing a 9-key basset clarinet with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. There have been several recordings on similar clarinets, but this is several steps beyond what's gone before.>>
I didn't know this recording; but have now managed to listen to it, and enjoyed the experience. I don't know about it being several steps beyond what's gone before, though -- more of that anon.
>> First, the orchestra plays "solo and ripieno," with all the strings playing in the passages without the clarinet, but cutting back to a string quartet (plus wind parts) whenever Coppola plays. This allows him to play without having to push the instrument.>>
As has already been remarked, this isn't true. The orchestra plays at their full strength throughout, as one can hear. Indeed, they play with considerable verve and gusto, characterising their contribution in what I would say is quite a 'modern' approach. (Not much bar-hierarchy in evidence here.)
>> Second, Coppola is the first player I've heard who sounds as though he began on the old instrument rather than adapting a modern sound and blowing style.>>
It's difficult to know what this means, beyond the fact that Coppola's version is more significantly different from a performance on a modern instrument than are those of some other players of period instruments. Are we supposed to couple the remark with the 'several steps beyond' remark, and deduce that that is what Ken thinks period performance is trying to achieve -- being as different as possible?
We ALL begin on the old instrument. Then, we have it represent our notion of the piece that we're playing -- including, I might add, what understanding we may have of the 'rules of mapmaking' that characterise how performances of the time were rendered on the page. It's because different people have different notions that performances differ.
Coppola shows himself to be interested in cultivating a 'recorder-like' quality in the upper register, for the most part eschewing tonal variation and definite beginnings. If you like that, all well and good; but it's not a NECESSARY character of the instrument. The low chalumeau and basset register is another matter. Here, rightly I would say, he represents 'another operatic character'.
I have myself come to consider the Concerto to be a much more operatic piece than I did a couple of decades ago. We know that by 1791 Mozart had decided that his future lay in writing operas, because he said so. Therefore it is no surprise that in K622 there are several passages where he has the different registers of the instrument engage in a dramatic dialogue.
One of the best of these, to my mind, is the passage in bars 115-123 of the first movement. Mozart has already called our attention to the idée fixe of the work -- namely the number three. In addition to his ubiquitous three-note figures, this is instanced by the falling or rising third, and by the use of that third in both legato and staccato form. (It's amusing to note the two fragmentary versions that appear in the violas at the end of bar 2 of the solo entry, and in the cellos at the end of bar 4.)
The passage in question juxtaposes the falling, filled-in G/E third (notated pitch) in the clarinet register with the separated EGE three note quaver phrase in the chalumeau register, followed a bar later by the G/E third in separated crotchets.
It's as though a female character is pleading with a male character -- perhaps a young woman trying to win her stubborn brother round to her choice of partner? (They're brother and sister because they both belong to the 'Three' family, you see:-)
First we have the female, cajoling legato version of the falling third, leading to a version of the clarinet's second theme; which is answered definitely -- I'd say in the negative -- by the male version, separated, two octaves lower. She tries again, only to receive the same answer. This provokes an outburst, first diatonic triplets leading to a reiteration of the third a fourth higher (C/A), then chromatic triplets, and then semiquavers, all leading to C/A, and finally to C/A/F# in the pause bar. A woman in love will have her way!
I mention all this because I want to underline the sophistication that Mozart might have expected of his virtuoso collaborator. Stadler was no common-or-garden clarinet player, after all. Indeed, what was said about him was that his playing stood comparison with the best singers. Does that suggest that he SOUNDED as though he 'began with the instrument'?
No. What it rather suggests is that he possessed a wide range of tone colour and nuance in ALL registers. He was a special, charismatic player, who took the instrument beyond its first-blush possibilities.
So when Ken writes that players other than Coppola 'adapt modern sound and blowing style', how does he know what Stadler did by contrast?
For that matter, what IS 'modern sound and blowing style'? Blowing is blowing. Sound is what you want to make it. (In fact, there is not much that you can't do on these instruments when you really put your mind to it over a period of years. Did you know that Cavallini played all his etudes on a 5-key instrument?)
>> Third, he handles the cross-fingerings with complete confidence and smoothness, even at a really brisk tempo in the finale.>>
He handles the problems well, as you would expect of an excellent player in a professional recording. It's not always quite perfect -- but then, who is?
>> Fourth, his musicality is very fine....it's one revelation after another.>>
I noticed one musical detail, which is the use of inégal-type rubato in the slow movement. I don't find that particularly convincing, I have to say. It seems to me to spoil the innocent simplicity of the solo line that I wrote about in:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2000/07/000901.txt
...but you may feel otherwise.
What other musical points did you have in mind, Ken?
Oliver wrote, in part:
>> For me the slow movement is more Largo than Adagio, I have to say. Thousands will disagree with me. (Er, judging from his recording Tony will be one of them so excuse me if I just go and crawl into a hole somewhere.)>>
Oh, come on. Like most serious performers, I change tempos from one day to the next, never mind on a timescale of 25 years.
Tony
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Author: larryb
Date: 2009-05-29 14:15
Tony P:
I disagree with your analysis of the operatic quality of the passage cited.
Clearly, the male part is really the lover disguised as the brother. Thus disguised, the lover is trying to discourage the sister from pursuing the relationship, because he has recently fallen in love with her sister, who is actually the original female lover disguised as a long lost (in Albania) sister.
It all ends happily with a cheerful Rondo.
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2009-05-29 14:53
Speaking of the significance of the number three, let's not forget that this is a number of masonic significance, that masonry was also an strong influence on The Magic Flute, which, of course, is contemporaneous with the clarinet concerto and that both Stadler and Mozart were masons.
Vanessa.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-05-29 16:05
Nessie1 wrote:
> Speaking of the significance of the number three, let's not
> forget that this is a number of masonic significance, that
> masonry was also an strong influence on The Magic Flute, which,
> of course, is contemporaneous with the clarinet concerto and
> that both Stadler and Mozart were masons.
The number 3 is also a conveniently deniable Masonic symbol. If confronted by the Church about it, Mozart could always claim that his intent was to symbolize the Trinity!
[Edit -- What I was taught in music history class years ago was that Mozart's status with the Church was precarious due to his association with the Freemasons (Freemasonry being forbidden by the Catholic Church). Having done a little online searching just now, though, I have found several sources, including this Wikipedia article, that suggest that what I was taught was wrong, and that, in fact, Viennese Catholics of Mozart's time did not see any conflict between Freemasonry and Catholicism. As a side note, another little bit of trivia I discovered was that Pope Benedict XVI's two favorite pieces of music are Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.]
Post Edited (2009-05-29 18:55)
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-29 23:34
Tony:
> Did you know that Cavallini played all his
> etudes on a 5-key instrument?
Wasn't it 6?
> a 'recorder-like' quality in the upper register,
> for the most part eschewing tonal variation and
> definite beginnings
I haven't played a great deal of recorder but I hope it was the tonal quality rather than the attack palette you had in mind - eschewing definite beginnings on recorder is really not the way to go for so many reasons. (In fact as I see it the recorder has a variety of attack types that we reeds can only dream of - apart from the sneak-in which it really doesn't do.)
But you're quite right (of course) about the flow rather than the duration making the difference between a tempo being relaxed and just being slow - if I may say so, Coppola's 8'1" seems a lot slower for me than your 7'55". (I think that might have been what I was trying to get at with my Largo/Adagio comparison but once again clarity seems to have deserted me to the point that even I don't know what I meant.) I'm afraid I only have your one recording to judge from, though...
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-05-30 15:52
Oliver wrote:
>> I'm afraid I only have your one recording to judge from, though...>>
I don't even have that...
Tony
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-31 17:24
Koo Young Chung - it's at a'=430.
Tony - you should get yourself one, there's also a really rather amazing recording of the oboe concerto on it. Have you recorded it since? It would be great to hear the fruits of the various rethinkings you mention...
a 'recorder-like' quality in the upper register, for the most part eschewing tonal variation and definite beginnings. If you like that, all well and good; but it's not a NECESSARY character of the instrument.
I keep thinking about this bit. Do you have any helpful thoughts (or links to where you've posted them before) on the whole business of finding a way through the possibilities of the instrument when so much about it is up for debate and all the parameters seem to affect each other? (Tonal variation through the cross and fork fingerings for example relying on reed strength and mouthpiece structure which are such fundamental parameters for the overall sound...)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-05-31 23:06
Oliver wrote:
>> Do you have any helpful thoughts (or links to where you've posted them before) on the whole business of finding a way through the possibilities of the instrument when so much about it is up for debate and all the parameters seem to affect each other?>>
Well, looking at the matter superficially, you might find the situation frustrating, because although the characteristics of some instruments have remained intact over the period since they were first played -- instruments like Mozart's fortepiano, for instance -- nothing like that is true of Stadler's clarinet, which has of course disappeared.
And even if you had Stadler's instrument and mouthpiece (as we do Mühlfeld's) you wouldn't be much better off. Consider how little you could deduce of the sound and nuance of, say, Reginald Kell's playing, just from examination of his equipment.
However, I'm not so worried, because my own view is that we use these old instruments, or copies of them, just in case they may be able to give us greater insight into how the great music that was written for them might work better. And if they DIDN'T give us some such insight, then I wouldn't go on playing them.
I'm not primarily interested in getting as close as possible to early performances, even Stadler's; what I'm interested in is getting as close as possible to the fullest representation of Mozart's music that I can imagine. What was said about Stadler HELPS to orient me of course, but it's not the sole determinant of what I do. (And after all, if I had lived at the time of Stadler, I might have found myself taking issue with some of what he did with 'our' piece, just as I take issue with a great deal of what my contemporary colleagues do.)
I now find that going down this path involves the jettisoning of some sorts of expression that modern players and audiences have come to value; but then I get to replace those sorts of expression with others that I find 'fit the music' better. My 'Phrasing in Contention' article (on this website) explains some of that.
The fine-tuning of my old instrument setup -- choice of reeds and mouthpiece facing included -- reflects these concerns. Of course, the instrument itself constrains choice too, as you point out -- certain setups that might work on a modern instrument simply aren't viable if you want to show phrase-structure to any degree of subtlety on the simple instrument.
The basic point I'm trying to make is that my whole process takes place in a different context than 'does it sound sufficiently like an old instrument?', because I have an attitude to the MUSIC, not just to clarinet playing, that I need to convey.
Coppola deserves to be credited with a similar preoccupation. He's serious about what he does.
But what I say is that IF someone finds this performance 'revelatory', then how that works has to be explained in the musical domain. Hand-wavy stuff about 'what it sounds like he did', or incredulous gasping at a finger-sliding technique that is incredibly minor by comparison with what is routinely delivered by any competent violinist, is just irritating.
But even though I asked, I don't hold out much hope of getting any such serious explanation here, even if it existed.
Tony
Post Edited (2009-06-01 05:27)
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-31 23:49
I do have to confess, as the one who did the incredulous gasping in question, that I think it's a shame if you find it 'just irritating' - I wasn't implying that that one particular thing Coppola does in a couple of bars is solely responsible for the success of his performance.
I think it's fair, here of all places, for a technical feat to be talked about - and I'm certainly under the impression that it's a relatively new development as far as the period instrument goes that someone would attempt to perform those particular bars in that particular way...
...but oh dear, look at the time! More tomorrow, I suspect.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-06-01 05:25
Oliver wrote, in part:
>> I think it's fair, here of all places, for a technical feat to be talked about.>>
OK, point taken. Sorry.
Tony
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-06-01 08:07
(Tony, that may be the first time I've ever read that on a message board!)
![[toast]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smiley15.gif)
A persistent thought for me: I'm not sure that Coppola's version is in fact "more different" from a 'modern' instrument than previous historical efforts. At least not in one particular sense (there are so many parameters!): as Tony noted, the tonal palette is smoother than many players have gone for, and for me that applies both between the registers and within them (as in: between the 'full' and the cross-fingerings). The exception is the basset notes, which as Ken pointed out at the beginning do pop out of the texture a bit. (Nothing wrong with it but it's certainly there.)
I think most performances in general have an aspect to them whereby they attempt to 'locate themselves' relative to previous generations of performers, especially to the one immediately before. For me the Mozart in general from the Freiburgers has that element of participating in a dialogue which now includes a few generations of historical-instrument playing. And one element of that dialogue lies in various approaches to the 'differentness' of the instruments - nowadays not only historical vs. modern, but between the various approaches to the historical instruments.
So we now have a perceptible difference opening up between period-instrument players (across and within 'generations') with regard to the differentiation they adopt within the instrumental palette. There have been some historical performances on all instruments which for me have overplayed the heterogeneity of the instrument. That's particularly true with the horns, I think, who have in various times and places gone for an approach which highlights the raspiness of the stopped notes at the expense of other parameters. But with any instrument (I think), old or new, there's the same kind of balancing act to be done.
To me the 'revelation' in Coppola's performance is primarily a technical one: how smoothly (in terms of both intonation and timbre) it's possible to play this instrument. I do think it's the most homogeneous performance I've heard on a period instrument. I don't know if I would do it that way myself given the chance (the question's entirely academic anyway, I doubt that I'll ever play the piece!) - but the point is that that kind of approach is now part of the collective palette available, whether or not an individual period player chooses to put it on the canvas. It's also something that can redefine a piece for a listener (and for this piece that's what I am...).
And to come back to a contentious note: the written B below middle C is for me indeed disproportionately important in that regard. It's a note that's often required but which on an instrument with no key for it has no stable fingering that's 'in tune' for modern ears. What a player does with that note reveals quite a bit about the general approach, to me. It can be played with a key (whether Stadler had one for it we can't know - that little passage in the first movement could be seen to be an argument for it even though the earliest surviving examples of such a key are from quite a few years later). Or with a double hole (not inconceivable but again rather on the unlikely side). Or just by half-holing a normal hole (as I mentioned, I had no idea it could be done as spotlessly as Coppola does - I know a very conscientious period player who finally had to give up on the idea). Or just by using the hole as it is: that's very low (depending a little how the instrument is built!) but has a certain kind of spice to it which I can imagine being fitted into a general intonational approach a lot further from equal-tempered across the whole instrument, especially if one were to use it in those particular tricky bars. (Eric Hoeprich's most recent recording of the quintet uses that approach for the Bs in the arpeggio at the end of the first entry - he doesn't need to play the note that low but he's chosen to. I find this quite provocative as an approach to investigate...)
There's another kind of smoothness, as Tony noted: the hierarchy of the beats within the bar which period sources such as Türk would call for isn't really there, for the most part (a bit of accentuation creeps in late in the first movement). That's an angle I don't personally find either musically persuasive or historical but YMMV.
But that's more than enough droning from me.
Post Edited (2009-06-01 11:54)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2009-06-01 12:01
>>Peter- Lorenzo didn't have a double hole for the Bs. He plays them using half holes. Apparently if you practise this enough it isn't too hard.>>
I'm an amateur, so please don't take my comments as holy writ, but I think half-holing is not a difficult technique on a hole with no ring. I also play recorder. Half-holing is necessary on that instrument. Recorder players learn the technique as beginners.
Lately, I've been experimenting with half-holing on a J. Wallis & Son clarinet in C, probably made between 1884-1891. (It's boxwood with brass keys and tenon bands.) This clarinet has 13 keys and no rings. The lack of rings makes half-holing almost as easy as it is on a recorder. However, so far, I've gotten poor (unusable) results on ringed holes on modern, Boehm-system clarinets, although I can get a decent half-hole from the non-ringed right-hand B/F on clarinets with 6 rings. I haven't put much practice into that effort because I don't see the need for half-holing on a Boehm-system clarinet, but half-holing seems quite useful on the Wallis.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-06-01 20:44
You shouldn't really need to half-hole on a 13-key, should you? What do you use half-holing for on that? (A real question, not a rhetorical one.)
I haven't had any recorder lessons, I just tootle for my own amusement. But when in the process does one start to learn half-holing on that exactly (apart from for overblowing)? The double holes for 6 and 7 on nearly all recorders are only barely historical as far as I understand - Denner made (at least some) recorders with no double holes at all and I think it's from a Bressan example that the half-holes have been taken for practically every reproduction recorder you'll ever see.
The thing is, as far as I understand half-holing for the B below middle C doesn't really have any historical evidence for it either. (I'd be glad to be wrong, let me say that now!) The Lefèvre tutor in 1800 doesn't mention it for that note: he just says to pinch the lips and raise the low G# key while fingering x/xxx/xoo. And that's no beginner's guide but a Conservatoire tutor, with plenty of music in it using that B accented, exposed, long and even next to A#. (He does include one fingering with a half-hole, but it's for the b'b-c'' trill fingering...)
Post Edited (2009-06-01 20:45)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-06-01 21:17
Oliver wrote:
>> The thing is, as far as I understand half-holing for the B below middle C doesn't really have any historical evidence for it either.>>
...as Alan Hacker maintained when he recorded the Johann Stamitz concerto with AAM and Hogwood. He played an exposed flat B natural loudly and insistently on all the takes. When challenged, he said that it was clearly a JOKE made by the composer at the expense of his performer, and refused to compromise by half-holing.
But that aside; as I said, the rational thing to do is to take the position that an out-of-tune B natural wouldn't have been acceptable to you had you lived in that period, and be a force for change, either by adding a key or practising a lot.
Clearly, intonation was important to the good musicians of the time. Otherwise, why all the fuss about temperaments, which are just attempts to get fixed pitch instruments 'better in tune'?
>> (I'd be glad to be wrong, let me say that now!)>>
Yes, I know. But I think you should look harder at WHY you'd be glad to be wrong. It exposes an inconsistency in your position that you'd be better off without.
Tony
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-06-01 22:11
I'm not actually trying to have a 'position' though - I'm asking questions, not trying to present answers. In that situation I'm perfectly happy to be exploring inconsistent positions. I don't feel I would be better off dismissing inconsistency for the sake of it.
I would be glad to have some historical evidence for the practice of half-holing the B below middle C - if anyone has some I'd be really happy to read it. It's not in Backofen's or Lefèvre's fingering charts, at least. (I'm happy to practise it though, and do.)
I think it's at least worth exploring the possibility that the B natural fingering we now consider as being unacceptably out of tune would not have been considered as unacceptable more than two centuries ago. Actually, it's precisely the issue of temperaments, which have become more important in recent performance practice of this music, which make me curious about this very possibility - that uncorrected fingering for B natural has a mean-tonish effect about it that I find not unattractive in itself (although I suspect it wouldn't sound that great blurted out). It's a little bit akin to major thirds in the natural brass, for example.
What does 'out of tune' mean? In itself, not a lot. I've just been listening to Eric Hoeprich's Glossa recording of the Mozart quintet - as I said, I'm fairly sure he's using the uncorrected fingering in the Bs in the opening entry even though I'm sure he's capable of half-holing it (and he built his own instrument so I'm sure adding a key would be a perfectly simple option for him). It's tangy, certainly. (The Froberger harpsichord music I was listening to after that was a lot tangier again.) Would I as a hypothetical clarinettist of 1790 have wanted to remove that tanginess? And if so, why? I'm not sure I would - certainly if any of the actual clarinettists of 1790 did, they kept quiet about it.
But this is the point: I'm not sure.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-06-02 02:52
oliver sudden wrote:
> I think it's at least worth exploring the possibility that the
> B natural fingering we now consider as being unacceptably out
> of tune would not have been considered as unacceptable more
> than two centuries ago.
Since B natural is the leading tone of the key in this case, it seems like you'd want to play it a little on the sharp side, wouldn't you? That's what string players do. (at least modern string players do this) Was that not the practice back then?
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2009-06-02 11:43
Oliver Sudden asked,
>>You shouldn't really need to half-hole on a 13-key, should you? What do you use half-holing for on that? (A real question, not a rhetorical one.)>>
No, I don't need to half-hole on the Wallis, but the lack of rings on this clarinet gave me the opportunity to experiment. All of my other clarinets have from four (Albert system) to seven rings. I don't get good results with half-holing on those. I'd like to get fluent with the technique on clarinet in case I ever get hold of an earlier style of instrument with fewer keys.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-06-02 13:24
Ah, I see.
One thing that's really worth exploring is the Lefèvre tutor from 1800 or so, along with a 5- or 6-key instrument. (No rings at all.) If you can get the tutor (it's out of print but copies circulate among period-clarinet students) it's a great experience - the exercises are tailored to the instrument of course and there's a series of sonatas which takes you all the way from the basics. Although as I said he doesn't mention half-holing as a technique, you have plenty of material for getting it up to scratch in a historical context. (He also makes it clear that he's talking about a clarinet with the reed facing up. I think as far as historical clarinet playing goes that's sort of the proverbial elephant in the room! Fortunately for most of the repertoire it's at least likely that players at the appropriate time were using both options.)
mrn - leading notes: I know Lefèvre doesn't address the topic other than to say you have to be able to trill on them, and recommends working up even the impossible trills until they're 'tolerable'. Klosé (1843, so rather later - he already has the French system in mind since he had just co-invented it...) of course mentions them and has a page of special fingerings some of which are pretty much a quarter-tone high! Eric Hoeprich's book The Clarinet has an ENORMOUS list of period tutors - it would be great to have the chance to compare what they all have to say...
Post Edited (2009-06-02 13:26)
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2009-06-02 14:31
Allow me to add my 2 pence worth of thoughts to this discussion.
While I do not have Tony's depth of experience, I have been fortunate to have done performances on period clarinets and basset horns including a memorable performance in Boston of Mozart Requiem with Hogwood conducting (I used a copy of a Backhofen basset horn made by William McColl). I also owned clarinet copies made by Daniel Bangham (Simiot copies with the corp de rechange). Unfortunately, here in Chicago, there is no period instrument activity of the Classical era and that which was occurring around the USA has dried to a trickle. It is up to you folks across the pond to keep the flame alive.
1) I agree with Tony that poor intonation would have been a nagging issue with top flight performers of the era given the standards that were expected from string players and the introduction of the tempered scale on keyboard instruments. That may have been why the leading composers aside from Mozart did not bother to write for the clarinet until added keys made intonation more tolerable. I do not consider the Stamitz concerti to be more than novelty items primarily for the freak shows at the Concert Spiritual.
2)While not actually written into the tutorials of the time including the wonderful Lefevre tutorial mentioned by Oliver, I cannot believe that half holing would not have been a widely practiced technique given that it is relatively easy to do on holes without rings and that most wind players of the era were doublers who played flute, recorder, bassoon, and perhaps oboe. Even Lefevre himself was primarily a flute player and would not have considered his primary instrument to be clarinet. I believe that players of the era were much more flexible than our contemporary era which puts a premium on specialization.
3)I think audiences were more accepting of the quirks of wind instruments and adjusted expectations accordingly when listening. I am sure that the Stadler's performances of the Mozart would have been viewed as being as technically breathtaking as modern performances of the Corigliano concerto by Drucker. But I doubt given the limitations of the instrument, there is no way that live performances of the Mozart concerto would have been flawless or even close.
Thanks for this lively discussion. I have been enjoying the posted comments be everyone.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-06-02 20:53
Oliver wrote:
>> What does 'out of tune' mean? In itself, not a lot.>>
Oh yes, it does. That's why temperaments exist -- because there is an absolute sense in which simple chords are preferred by the ear in particular tunings. And note I say THE ear, meaning the human ear, the product of evolution, which is the same nowadays as it was in the eighteenth century.
The temperaments of fixed pitch instruments are designed to make particular keys 'better in tune' in this absolute sense.
>> I'm not actually trying to have a 'position' though - I'm asking questions, not trying to present answers. In that situation I'm perfectly happy to be exploring inconsistent positions. I don't feel I would be better off dismissing inconsistency for the sake of it.>>
All well and good. But in this case, you want to be on the side of what is true about the ear/brain system. The inconsistency lies in the relativist claim that 'whatever they did' is just as good as 'whatever we do' in this case --which it isn't. So you can see that if they played B naturals out of tune -- and that B is much flatter than the one corresponding to the in-tune 'narrow' major third in G major you mention -- then they were either incompetent or unmusical, and so can be dismissed.
By the way, you aren't alone. I once played with a very eminent 'period' 'cellist in a performance of the Schubert Octet. At one point, he asked, "What temperament are we playing in in this performance?" -- and proceeded to outline what he thought were the options.
But there are no fixed pitch instruments in the Schubert Octet, and so there is no need to make a choice that has to be adhered to in all tonalities.
My trying to explain that he had the whole idea of temperament backwards fell on deaf ears, in more senses than one. I 'didn't understand' the subtlety and refinement of response that he brought to baroque and period performance in general, being a 'mere' clarinet player.
There's much more to be said; but just allow me to note that the attitude is symptomatic of the tendency to reduce performance to historic rule-following, rather than to the creative use of TOOLS that WE MAY JUDGE to be more appropriate to the music of the time -- which tools we may have got out of the habit of using.
Tony
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-06-02 21:50
...The human ear is indeed the product of evolution. I would suggest that the musical ear is also the product of training. There's no objective acoustical reason for much of our harmony - an exact equal-tempered semitone is to be found nowhere in the overtone series, for example, and yet much of our music (from Debussy and Liszt on) needs to be heard on the basis of equal temperament. The major third in Pythagorean tuning is dissonant, so music written to be sung in such a temperament ends in bare fifths and octaves. It's very often not possible to perform music that modulates freely in a manner that ensures that all its intervals are acoustically pure.
What I would further suggest is that musicians have used not only the purer-tuned elements of their available temperament but also the less-pure elements as part of their musical palette. There are many examples - the one in my head at the moment (I don't know why!) is a little scena by Schütz (Vater Abraham, erbarm' dich mein), with a rich man in hell begging Abraham to send a messenger to his brothers so that they don't also end up "in this place of torment". At the words "place of torment" Schütz modulates to the outer reaches of his (at that period still rather mean-tone) harmonic system and the cadence is violently dissonant. That's a quite purposeful effect and it relies completely on the instrumental resource. It's not out of 'incompetence or unmusicality' that that music sounds impurely tuned, it's a careful (and brilliant) decision of the composer. Recreating that effect relies on considering the instrumental reality of the composer's environment and instead of rejecting it because it's 'out of tune', trying it to see what that 'out of tuneness' tells us.
I'm no more interested in blind 'historic rule-following' than the next chap, but of course I am interested in considering the historical situation of the piece as precisely as I can to see if it has something to say that I've missed. A purely consonant effect might not always be dramatically or musically preferable. What I'm suggesting in that one particular case (the first movement of the concerto, bars 118 and 122) is that if Mozart's dwelt on a note that was notoriously out of tune on the instruments of his time (which he knew well), in a very exposed context (and only there! in the rest of the piece it's only used in passing...), maybe he had something else in mind? Especially if we can't find a historical basis for the sorts of techniques that would be needed to get the note 'in tune'...
(Don't want to harp on it all though. I'll hush up now.)
Post Edited (2009-06-02 22:16)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-06-02 22:16
Oliver wrote:
>> There's no objective acoustical reason for much of our harmony - an exact equal-tempered semitone is to be found nowhere in the overtone series, for example, and yet much of our music (from Debussy and Liszt on) needs to be heard on the basis of equal temperament.>>
Absolutely wrong. What the members of a superlative orchestra do is perform microtonal adjustments so that simple chords fit the overtone series, and complex chords contain compromises that make 'sensitive' intervals like fourths, fifths and major thirds not 'obviously' out of tune. They also become masters of balancing difficult chords.
(I once had a conversation with Barenboim in which he pointed out that balancing solo piano chords was an important factor in making the instrument sound 'better in tune', and that he was constantly aware of the problem.)
The claim that 'out-of-tuneness' is used by composers for particular affect is often trotted out; but if it occurs, it occurs in such a minute proportion of music that it is effectively negligible as a guide to how to proceed in general.
It IS true that we can become desensitised to out-of-tuneness, as to any initially unpleasant experience -- an equal-tempered organ springs to mind -- but I suggest you can easily turn on the wince-factor by imagining that the chord you're hearing is one produced by a wind section, when the unsatisfactory nature of the equal-temperament compromise is suddenly laid bare. Bach's 'well-temperament' (NOT equal temperament, investigate the literature) was designed to minimise such experiences, which were unpleasant to seventeenth and eighteenth century ears as to our own.
>> ...if Mozart's dwelt on a note that was notoriously out of tune on the instruments of his time (which he knew well), in a very exposed context (and only there! in the rest of the piece it's only used in passing...), maybe he had something else in mind? Especially if we can't find a historical basis for the sorts of techniques that would be needed to get the note 'in tune'...>>
Well, I'll consider it...
...OK, I considered it. The answer's No:-)
Tony
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2009-06-02 22:59
Oliver,
Thanks for posting the YouTube link to Mr. Coppola. It is truly amazing and wonderful playing, both technically and musically.
I guess we can now call Mr. Coppola the "Godfather" of the period clarinet.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-06-03 07:35
Oliver wrote:
>> ...if Mozart's dwelt on a note that was notoriously out of tune on the instruments of his time (which he knew well), in a very exposed context (and only there! in the rest of the piece it's only used in passing...), maybe he had something else in mind?>>
I wrote:
>> Well, I'll consider it...
...OK, I considered it. The answer's No:-) >>
I'll reconsider this again;-) -- but this time my answer is a different sort of answer, that leaves the technical problem still to be solved.
Mozart had a relationship with Stadler that was distinctly a 'teasing' one -- as is shown by his quintet fragment that has the clarinet change clefs every bar. So it's possible to imagine him writing an exposed awkwardness here deliberately in order to give his virtuoso friend something ELSE to think about, on top of the difficulties of the rest of the concerto.
Tony
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-06-03 08:20
>> There's no objective acoustical reason for much of our harmony - an exact equal-tempered semitone is to be found nowhere in the overtone series, for example, and yet much of our music (from Debussy and Liszt on) needs to be heard on the basis of equal temperament.>>
>Absolutely wrong.
Gosh, we are going well, aren't we?
I wasn't talking about orchestras... but an orchestra that tries to play all its major thirds actually pure (14 cents flat to equal-tempered - as opposed to just approximating them which I suggest is much closer to the truth) is going to run into some rather juicy problems. I wasn't actually thinking primarily about tonal music either.
Whole-tone or twelve-tone music relies on a relativisation of the ear's intonational criteria - which is not only possible but desirable, indeed necessary. If you try to play an augmented triad with pure thirds then you don't reach the octave at the top! But such music still can (and must) be played in tune, and heard as being in tune, according to its own criteria, which are those of equal temperament.
I don't find it the least bit productive simply to assert that anything but what's in the harmonic series is 'out of tune' and thus automatically "incompetent or unmusical". Every age and school has made music in its own temperaments and exploited its characteristics according to the extent of their imaginations. Bach's 'well-tempered' (and Kirnberger's and Werckmeister's) has no pure keys - each key has its own "wince factor" if you want to put it that way, but that's what Bach makes music with. Not "minimising such experiences" but choreographing them.
(Whose harmonic series anyway? A clarinet's harmonics (even the odd-numbered ones) don't fit the theoretical series. Neither do those of a string instrument, even - if their strings actually have mass. )
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-06-03 08:41
Oliver wrote, in part:
>> Whose harmonic series anyway? A clarinet's harmonics (even the odd-numbered ones) don't fit the theoretical series. Neither do those of a string instrument, even - if their strings actually have mass.>>
Yes, they do. You need to brush up on your acoustics. Any driven, and therefore periodic waveform has a harmonic spectrum that consists of whole-number multiples of a fundamental frequency.
What you may be confusing this with is the fact that the normal modes of oscillation of a clarinet -- the series you get if you overblow it -- don't fit the harmonic series.
The harmonicity of driven instruments (as opposed to struck instruments like pianos, gongs and so on) is why the harmonic series is evolutionarily important, and why our ears are built to fit incoming sounds to harmonic series patterns. Things that might eat us, or that we might eat, emit such periodic waveforms, which we needed to disambiguate, identify and locate in short order in order to survive.
See, eg:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1999/01/000043.txt
..and read 'A journey into Musical Hyperspace':
http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/mem/papers/LHCE/lucidity-note-58.pdf
Tony
Post Edited (2009-06-03 09:05)
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-06-03 09:36
Ah, thanks for that - good to know. Mode locking's a new one on me.
(The thought that our ancestors might have been helpless in the face of a marauding army of pianos or gongs is a spooky one. One does have to be wary of palaeofantasies, especially in dealing with things humans have done once they got out of caves.
This link is rather entertaining on that subject! And even better: the article it refers to.)
Everything else in my post before this one stands, though...
By the way, back on Mozart... it occurs to me that the accompaniment to the concert G# in question is a G# major chord in the middle of a tiny excursion to C# minor; it's all in the violins; the G# in the said violins is held from an E major chord where of course it's low anyway; there are no open strings; the bass isn't playing so there's no question of a keyboard being involved. The violins will also keep playing their low major third because there's nothing in their part to show that C# minor is happening underneath it. And if you drop in the C# as a perfect fifth under that low G# then the whole tonal centre will be low anyway.
Maybe we have a little Mozartian microtonal subtlety here?
______________________
Hm, having tried out a few things while practising...
For the B-A# bars: I would still certainly want to give it a try with the straight fingering if I had the chance to try it out with some tame a'=430 violinists. If one were to take the prevailing C# minor from the low G# as a hangover from E major then it could be worth a go. At any rate the B with a bit of a squeeze can be as high as 25 cents flat on each of the three clarinets I've just tried it on when they're warmed up (Joel Robinson Bb after Grenser, Peter van der Poel Bb after Lotz, Daniel Bangham A after I'm not sure whom (the B key looks a bit Simiot but that's not the point of course) - none of them are bassets though). Bearing in mind that a pure major third is 14 cents low to equal tempered it would certainly be pretty blue but if the strings have already come some of the way, who knows?
Where it doesn't seem to work without half-holing or some other trick is in the little chromatic fragments moving from B to Bb: near the end of the Adagio, and the chromatic runs from low F# up to C in the Rondo. Funny that it should work sort of OK when a diatonic semitone is written but not when he's written a chromatic semitone! I shall of course continue experimenting with lipping and maybe the results will get better. I wasn't going to stop practising half-holing anyway...
Post Edited (2009-06-03 16:59)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-06-08 16:48
Oliver wrote:
>> Everything else in my post before this one stands, though...>>
..viz:
>> The thought that our ancestors might have been helpless in the face of a marauding army of pianos or gongs is a spooky one. One does have to be wary of palaeofantasies, especially in dealing with things humans have done once they got out of caves.>>
I'm sure you were joking about this, but I think I should comment anyway.
There is no doubt that matching incoming sounds to harmonic series templates is a large part of human and animal hearing. It results in the miracle that we can effortlessly and unconsciously disentangle the various instruments of an orchestral recording from just ONE complex waveform; that is surely inexplicable on any other consideration than that it is an ability that had survival value, and therefore was selected for. (The 'orchestra' that we and other animals have evolved to disambiguate is the 'jungle-full of animal sounds' that McIntyre talks about in the 'Hyperspace' article I referenced.)
The anharmonicity of pianos is small; but it does give rise to the phenomenon that the pitch our ear assigns to a piano note is sometimes not identical to the lowest mode of vibration of the string, because our ears try to fit the whole sound spectrum of the note into an exact harmonic template. That means that if we try to play a clarinet note at the same pitch as a piano note that has just been sounded and stopped, we need to play a slightly DIFFERENT pitch from the pitch that gives zero beats if we play together with the piano.
A bell, which is often VERY anharmonic, is perceived by us either as a chord or as an indeterminately pitched fundamental with overtones. The indeterminate pitch often creates intonation problems that are inherently impossible to resolve -- say, in the Symphonie Fantastique, even though a tubular bell is designed to minimise the difficulty.
>> I wasn't talking about orchestras... but an orchestra that tries to play all its major thirds actually pure (14 cents flat to equal-tempered - as opposed to just approximating them which I suggest is much closer to the truth) is going to run into some rather juicy problems.>>
As I indicated above, playing in tune can be a complex and even insoluble problem. If you have to play the major third of a common chord together with a piano sounding that chord, including its own version of the major third, you are caught between two stools. You can EITHER play 'in tune' with the root of the chord, OR match the pitch of the 'out-of-tune' major third of the piano, OR compromise. Careful balancing can help -- as Barenboim knew -- but the difficulty remains.
>> I wasn't actually thinking primarily about tonal music either. Whole-tone or twelve-tone music relies on a relativisation of the ear's intonational criteria - which is not only possible but desirable, indeed necessary. If you try to play an augmented triad with pure thirds then you don't reach the octave at the top! But such music still can (and must) be played in tune, and heard as being in tune, according to its own criteria, which are those of equal temperament.>>
Equal temperament is a good starting point, sure; but even complex chords have to run the gamut of our ear/brain processing systems. That's not a matter of choice. And such chords, being perceived by those systems, 'sound' better in tune if they are subtly modified.
>> I don't find it the least bit productive simply to assert that anything but what's in the harmonic series is 'out of tune' and thus automatically "incompetent or unmusical".>>
What I said, about that passage in the Mozart concerto first movement, was:
"if they played B naturals out of tune -- and that B is much flatter than the one corresponding to the in-tune 'narrow' major third in G major you mention -- then they were either incompetent or unmusical, and so can be dismissed."
...and in that remark, I was trying to underline the notion that we should aspire, not to what was common-or-garden at the time, but to what the BEST PLAYERS would have done.
I find it impossible to imagine that Stadler would have been satisfied with an unmodified B natural in that passage.
What I said wasn't intended to be equivalent to the assertion that 'anything but what's in the harmonic series is 'out of tune' and thus automatically 'incompetent or unmusical'. That would throw away the whole mechanism of tension and resolution that's so important to music.
>> Every age and school has made music in its own temperaments and exploited its characteristics according to the extent of their imaginations. Bach's 'well-tempered' (and Kirnberger's and Werckmeister's) has no pure keys - each key has its own "wince factor" if you want to put it that way, but that's what Bach makes music with. Not "minimising such experiences" but choreographing them.>>
Well, I'd say he turned a limitation of fixed-pitch instruments to some advantage, having made a contribution to the repertoire of temperaments of his time.
When we play K452, we have the fortepiano tuned to a temperament around Eb -- if that doesn't interfere with the rest of the programme. I don't believe we're serving Mozart's intentions by deliberately making his chords sound sour.
Tony
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-06-11 08:33
We’re some way off topic, I suppose…
>>The thought that our ancestors might have been helpless in the face of a marauding army of pianos or gongs is a spooky one. One does have to be wary of palaeofantasies, especially in dealing with things humans have done once they got out of caves.>>
>I'm sure you were joking about this, but I think I should comment anyway.>
I was half joking. I’m afraid I don’t go for this particular evolutionary argument for many reasons.
One is that it’s a known trap to try to analyse modern humanity in terms of our distant ancestors. We’ve evolved since the jungle: for example, the ability of adult humans to digest lactose has evolved over the past 7000 years or so, not just once but in four separate mutations across the world.
Another (which is where my half-joke comes in) is that what’s important to survival in the ‘jungle-full of animal sounds’ is surely the rustlings in the undergrowth, the breaking of twigs and the banging of rocks more than the prehistoric choirs. It’s the sudden changes in the acoustic environment which we have to be good at interpreting, whatever the nature of the sound. That’s also how our other senses work – we’re very good at picking up minute changes in the information our eyes bring in, for example. (The evolutionary basis for our TV addiction…).
>even complex chords have to run the gamut of our ear/brain processing systems. That's not a matter of choice. And such chords, being perceived by those systems, 'sound' better in tune if they are subtly modified.>
(Gamut or gauntlet?) The benefit of making isolated chords sound purer has to be balanced with the needs of the musical argument. It’s easy to say that in tonal music major thirds should be played pure – but we surely never extend this privilege to the dominant seventh chord. (The alteration would ‘only’ be a little over twice as much...) And once we’re out of the tonal environment: the whole concept of a sustainable whole-tone or twelve-note discourse relies on twelve equal semitones.
>When we play K452, we have the fortepiano tuned to a temperament around Eb -- if that doesn't interfere with the rest of the programme. I don't believe we're serving Mozart's intentions by deliberately making his chords sound sour.>
The point for me is whether not ‘sourness’ but simply a variety of different tastes (in large part due to different sizes of major third) are part of the composer’s expectations. Many theorists from around Mozart’s time write about the different characters of the keys. To me it’s clear that they were referring to characteristics of the tuning system. I won’t quote them here, but a google for Vogler, Schubart, Knecht, Galeazzi will turn up some rather interesting stuff. For German readers this is a rather lovely page:
http://www.koelnklavier.de/quellen/schubart/s-377_tonarten.html
(It’s also worth looking up what Mozart himself wrote to his pupil Thomas Attwood about the varying sizes of the semitone - John Chestnut has extrapolated a 'Mozartian' tuning system from that.)
Of course a big part of the reason Mozart and Beethoven wrote their quintets with piano in Eb is that that’s the Harmoniemusik tonality par excellence. But the piano’s role is hardly a small one and it seems likely to me that they would have written for the instrument on which they were both renowned soloists as idiomatically as they did for the winds – which means using the quirks/impurities of its tuning as part of the musical argument. I do feel strongly that the various tonalities are supposed to sound different, in other words, and I want to try to find a way of approaching their differences that doesn’t necessarily require tidying them up.
Of course you’re a well-known performer of all this stuff (your recording of KV 452 is spinning even now at Sudden Manor) and I am but a harmless tosser-
;)
-around of ideas. Still, with any luck I’ll have the chance to give some of this an outing on stage in the next few years and that’s certainly the angle I’ll be coming from.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2009-06-11 13:00
Dragging the topic even farther afield, but.... Mozart grew up speaking European, non-tonal languages. Apparently the percentage of people with absolute pitch is orders of magnitude greater in countries where people speak tonal languages, particularly the various forms of Chinese. In Western languages, we use pitch and tone of voice to convey emotion and attitude. In China, pitch and tone are even more important because they also convey basic dictionary definitions.
For instance, while speaking English, if I react to someone else's assertion by saying, "Oh, sure," in a pitch that's no higher or lower than average for me and if I also speak quickly, in an offhanded tone of voice, I convey simple agreement with what the other person said. But, if I lower the pitch of my voice and drawl out the words, with "Oh" at a much higher pitch than "sure," and especially if I turn the "O" into a dipthong, then I express sarcastic disagreement -- or agreement with what I perceive to be the other speaker's mockery of something someone else has said. But, if I were speaking Mandarin, then changing the pitch and tone would change not only the emotional content of the words but also their literal meaning. I might mean to say, "horse" and say, "rutabaga," instead. (I'm making up that example, since I don't speak Mandarin. As far as I know, it's not really possible to intend to say, "horse," and have it come out, "rutabaga." But you get the idea.) Pitch discrimination is so much more important in China that people there fine-tune their hearing from birth.
What I'm getting at is that the evolutionary development of pitch perception over the course of human history is a fascinating subject, but pitch perception is changing right now, as learned behavior, as China becomes more important in world affairs -- and, as musicians travel between Asia and the West more and more (the National Symphony Orchestra is in China right now), they're going to change our concept of what's in tune. An evolution in learning (unlike biological evolution) can happen almost overnight, in historical terms. I think people in general, all over the world, may be sharpening their pitch perception now, simply because transportation and electronic communication have improved to the point where we can all talk to each other (barring censorship, which doesn't work efficiently the real world, in the long run).
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-06-11 14:31
Lelia Loban wrote:
> Apparently the
> percentage of people with absolute pitch is orders of magnitude
> greater in countries where people speak tonal languages,
> particularly the various forms of Chinese.
I have read that, too. The really interesting thing about it is that understanding and speaking Chinese is really an exercise in *relative* pitch. For example, in Mandarin, you distinguish between a high pitch, a falling pitch, a rising pitch, a falling-then-rising pitch, and unaccented syllables.
Somehow, though, if someone grows up thinking about pitch in this way (as an integral part of their language), they are more likely to develop absolute pitch.
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Author: Christopher Bush
Date: 2009-06-11 19:06
Having done a bit of study on amusia and its apparent lack of effect on the speech processors in the brain, I would be very interested in the sources for these claims of higher incidence of absolute pitch in tonal language speakers. Any journal articles in particular to which you could point me?
Christopher Bush
Prof. of Clarinet - NYU
Princ. Clarinet - Glens Falls Symphony, Metro Chamber Orchestra
Director - NYU Composers Ensemble
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-06-11 20:40
Christopher Bush wrote:
> Having done a bit of study on amusia and its apparent lack of
> effect on the speech processors in the brain, I would be very
> interested in the sources for these claims of higher incidence
> of absolute pitch in tonal language speakers. Any journal
> articles in particular to which you could point me?
>
Sure. Probably the leading proponent of the view that there is a connection between tonal language and absolute pitch is Diana Deutsch of UC San Diego. Her website is http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/. She's written a bunch of articles about this topic, so that would be the place to start. Her research is apparently pretty high profile, so I imagine that many (if not most) current papers in the area are going to cite her work.
Basically, past research of hers indicates a strong correlation between speakers of tonal languages (Chinese and Vietnamese, for example) and the prevalence of absolute pitch. The theory, as I understand it, is that we all have some kind of latent absolute pitch ability and that speaking a tonal language somehow develops this ability (which, if not developed, disappears as we age).
An alternative view would propose that the correlation might be explained by genetics, the idea being that the people we're talking about (e.g., Chinese and Vietnamese) developed tonal languages because they are genetically predisposed to have absolute pitch.
She's apparently done some more recent studies to support the view that language is more of an influence than genetics, but I haven't read them.
There is another article in this vein that is quite interesting at http://cogprints.org/643/0/pitch.HTM which discusses a possible connection between pitch memory and AP. A surprisingly high number of people can REMEMBER absolute pitches, but can't necessarily put a name to a pitch. If asked, they can usually produce the correct initial note of a song within a semitone or two without a reference.
I tried this myself with iTunes not too long ago and figured out, much to my surprise, that if I'd heard the tune enough times, I was pretty much always spot on with the initial pitch, even though I can't put a name to a pitch to save my life (which is probably a good thing seeing that clarinet is a transposing instrument). I'm betting that many other people on here can do the same thing and probably don't even realize they can.
Post Edited (2009-06-12 00:46)
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