 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: C.Elizabeth07
Date: 2013-03-17 17:28
I have to give a presentation/research paper on a specific performance practice issue in a piece of solo literature for my instrument and I had choosen to study the Mozart Concerto. I am having difficulty identifying a specific performance practice issue to address within it though.
I chose the Mozart because I am hoping to re-kindle my love for it. After years of auditions and studying it and performing it multiple times a year I honestly am so sick of that piece and have felt this way for longer than I care to admit.
I am hoping to discover something new or an interesting concept to look at in depth that might help spark my interest in it again and give me a fresh out-look.
I know many of you, particularly Tony Pay...are published scholars as well as performers and I would love any guidance or suggestions.
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2013-03-17 18:09
I would suggest Tony's Phrasing in Contention to start with. I believe it's somewhere on the site though Tony will be able to point you in the right direction.
Consider ornamentation, there are many instances where one can introduce ornaments within Classical performance practice. Check Colin Lawson's Cambridge Companion to the Concerto there are some interesting accounts of contemporary extemporisation. I would also check out CPE Bach's Keyboard treatise as well as Leopold Mozart's Violin Treatise. A lot of Classical compositions came to life due to the composer's improvisation and extemporisation at the keyboard.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2013-03-17 18:32
Take a look at the "angang" in the 2nd movement --oft called a cadenza.
Bob Phillips
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2013-03-17 19:29
eingang
There are also a few in the first movement.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2013-03-17 19:40
-a very interesting avowal; being sick of it, I mean. I suggest looking at the mathematics of it. e.g. how you get a repetition of the same interval and somewhere in the phrase, a different unexpected one, for example. Look at the symmetry and by the same token, the asymmetry of it. Mozart wasn't a mathemetician per se, like Bach, but there is much mathematics in his writing.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2013-03-17 20:38
Quote:
I suggest looking at the mathematics of it. e.g. how you get a repetition of the same interval and somewhere in the phrase, a different unexpected one, for example. Look at the symmetry and by the same token, the asymmetry of it. Mozart wasn't a mathemetician per se, like Bach, but there is much mathematics in his writing.
How in the world does this relate to performance practice?
Christine,
There are numerous issues that could be addressed in a research paper. In addition to the practice of improvisation and ornamentation and the expressive/phrasing norms of the classical period, you could look at the Winterthur fragment and compare articulation markings therein to the current performing editions. I believe that some slur markings in the K 584b are not adhered to in the NMA edition (nor in the subsequent Barenreiter edition).
What is more, reading Tony's article should provide insight into the importance of these articulation markings.
The NMA website has digitized many of Mozart's manuscripts, here is the K 584b fragment:
http://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/nma/nma_cont.php?vsep=139&gen=edition&p1=165&l=2
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Author: runner
Date: 2013-03-17 22:31
In regard to performance practice, perhaps you should listen to many recordings. Franklin Cohen's recording with the Cleveland Orchestra contains many added (improvised) ornaments while others contain virtually none. This might be an area of performance practice in Mozart to study.Pianist have a wide variety of extra unique ornament choise as well as original cadenzas.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-03-18 02:46
To do useful performance practice work on the Mozart Concerto, begin with the instrument, which is very far from the modern clarinet. Listen to Eric Hoeprich and Lorenzo Coppola, and get in touch with them. The instrument determines and guides you to what's right. You might do what no one has yet learned to do do very well, playing with the reed on top.
Tony Pay has written that the entire first movement of the concerto is based on a falling third figure. While this is not strictly performance practice, I've gone through the movement looking for this figure and found that it makes a difference in how I understand the phrasing. Perhaps you could use this as an entry point.
Tony also has written with great insight on classical phrasing, which begins on a strong first note and continues through, with no notes being used as pickups for the following phrase.
One thing I've been thinking about is the difference between light and shade, foreground and background, Hauptstimme and Nebenstimme. I think that very few performers make the distinction, to the great detriment of the music. My favorite example is the last movement of the Mozart Quintet. The first variation is NOT a clarinet solo with string accompaniment. The strings have the melody, and you must be feather-light, weaving a spider-web around them. The same goes for the fourth variation.
Also, the fifth (slow) variation dispenses with the melody entirely. There, the performance problem is to find a way to hear the melody and make the actual notes the decoration to the (inaudible) melody.
Your research could go into classical ideas of light and shade, which I have not seen applied to the Mozart Concerto.
Another point of entrance is when and how to do the essential ornamentation. For this, you need to go back to baroque ornamentation (Quantz and others) which forms the foundation for ornamentation in Mozart, and then to Leopold Mozart and CPE Bach on contemporary performance practice.
Mozart is an ever-flowing spring. You never run out of ideas once you get outside of the box of today's rubber-stamp performances.
Ken Shaw
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Author: bmcgar ★2017
Date: 2013-03-18 19:28
Do you mean "issues," as in subjects that need to be discussed or as a synonym for "problems," as is the fashion now?
B.
Post Edited (2013-03-18 19:30)
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2013-03-18 19:46
If I had to choose something performance practice related, I'd look into how some of today's common conventions came about, and which of them, while aiming at "authenticity", are actually not at all consistent with the practices of 100+ years ago.
Some sort of angle on anachronism, how we'll play something "because that's how Mozart would have done it" where the truth is actually quite the opposite. Like how Bible programs/films produced in the US almost always have the actors speaking with vague British accents.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2013-03-18 22:13
>> If I had to choose something performance practice related, I'd look into how some of today's common conventions came about, and which of them, while aiming at "authenticity", are actually not at all consistent with the practices of 100+ years ago.>>
All that would do would be to reinforce the notion that it's a worthwhile end in itself to recreate accurately the practices of 100+ years ago.
What would 'accurately' mean in this context, anyway?
You can do better than that.
Tony
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Author: C.Elizabeth07
Date: 2013-03-19 13:55
bmcgar: Yes I mean issues or problems found in interpreting the music, whether its the use of cadenzas or articulation, ornamentation etc. I'd like the topic to be practical for myself as well and to be able to apply what I learn in a useful way to my practice.
I've been holed up in a practice room since I posted this question (well not really but basically) so thank you for all the responses. I haven't quite mentally processed them all but I will later this afternoon. I really appreciate all the assistance from everyone. Especially Tony, we discuss your writing quite a bit. The last paper/presentation was on the Dvorak Serenade for Winds, and we listened to your recording!
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2013-03-19 15:51
Ken, Stadler is supposed to be the first player that played with the reed down. The review considered that to be the reason why Stadler's tone imitated the human voice.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-03-19 19:13
Peter -
Not as a challenge, but for my own edification, please let me know the source for the information that Stadler played with the reed down.
While the Riga engraving http://www.sfoxclarinets.com/Stadler.html is not completely clear, it appears to show the reed on top. When I asked Eric Hoeprich about this, he agreed but said that he had never been able to master the reed-up embouchure. Nina Stern has made a valiant effort, and players as recent as Gino Cioffi learned to play the modern clarinet reed-up and said they preferred it.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Connor
Date: 2013-03-20 18:08
Frederick Neumann: Ornamentation and Improvisation in Mozart.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. xiv, 301p. ISBN 0-691-
09130-7
Fantastic scholarship in ornamentation and improvisation in Mozarts piano works. There are endless correlations to the Clarinet Concerto!!!!
MM. Clarinet Performance University of Texas at Austin (2012).
BM. Clarinet Performance University of Northern Colorado (2010).
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Author: Phurster
Date: 2013-03-21 07:09
Peter Cigerlis said:
"Stadler is supposed to be the first player that played with the reed down. The review considered that to be the reason why Stadler's tone imitated the human voice."
Peter do you have any evidence for this?
One of my former teachers (Peter Clinch) made a claim in one of his academic works that Tausch may have been the first. His evidence was a bit flimsy, claiming the wide leaps in a composition would have been impossible with the mouthpiece having the reed on top.
I'd be interested if you have any real evidence.
Many thanks,
Chris.
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2013-03-21 11:31
Chris and Ken,
If you have access to Colin Lawson's Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet you'll find on page 140 Colin talks about the reed up method and states:
"However, in Austria and Germany the change came much earlier, Backofen c. 1803 showing an awareness of both methods, implying that reed-below had been in use for some time; evidence of various kinds clearly suggests that this was the technique adopted by Anton Stadler for performances of Mozart's clarinet works."
This is backed up again in Colin's Cambridge Companion to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. I don't have that book to hand right now but will dig it out.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Phurster
Date: 2013-03-22 11:49
"evidence of various kinds clearly suggests that this was the technique adopted by Anton Stadler for performances of Mozart's clarinet works."
So it doesn't actually state that he was the first to play with the reed down.
And it only says that "evidence of various kinds" exists to suggest that he played with the reed down and then, unfortunately, doesn't mention what the evidence is.
Must say though It's very hard, from my perspective, to conceive of works like the Mozart Quintet being performed with the reed upwards.
Chris.
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2013-03-22 13:14
Chris,
If I can find my Cambridge Companion to the Mozart Concerto i'll see what Colin says there.
I wish I could remember where I first read it. It's well over 10 years since being a student :-)
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Phurster
Date: 2013-03-23 01:15
Thanks, I understand. Be very interesting if he was 'the first'. My guess is that playing with the reed down would have come into fashion a bit earlier. It would be interesting to look at engravings or portraits of the time.
Chris.
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