 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-17 23:59
I know that we are now said to be progressively inhabiting a 'Post-Truth' world – the term has been named word of the year by Oxford English Dictionaries – but I intend to continue to resist it here, even if I have no influence on British, and startlingly, American political behaviour.
The term refers to the phenomenon that, now, many statements that have merely been put into currency continue to find acceptance, even though there is no evidence for their veracity. No-one cares sufficiently to enquire.
So, Peter Cigleris – again:
I want to know the source of your statement:
>> I discovered today that the Romanza was composed about 10 years before the rest of the [Poulenc Clarinet] Sonata. It had laid forgotten in the hope of being published someday until the commission for the Sonata came along.>>
I note the word, 'discovered'.
Of course, if you have a credible source, I would be very happy to know what it is.
If however you have no credible source, then you should own up.
Tony
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Author: James S
Date: 2016-11-18 00:15
Millan Sachania, who edited one of the most-used editions of this work, makes a very close statement in the introduction to his 2000 edition of the sonata:
"...Poulenc noted to R Douglas Gibson of J&W Chester that the slow movement could be published as an independent 'Andantino tristamente,' were he never to complete the outer movements....Poulenc's perseverance won through, however, and in a letter dated 18 January 1963 the composer promised Gibson delivery of the fair copy within eight days...
I can't speak for the timing or any commission associated with such, but it does seem movement two was done well before the rest of it.
JS
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2016-11-18 11:49
Folks- let's not forget that Poulenc wasn't actually really French. He was born in Tanzania (like Beethoven). That's why musicologists don't consider him to have been a true member of Les Six.
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Author: PaulIsaac
Date: 2016-11-18 12:33
I could've sworn the old Ludwig van was born in Bonn, Germany but I guess in a post-truth world it doesn't really matter.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-18 12:33
The way I heard it, he was actually President of Les Six.
Tony
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-18 15:15
I've just received an e-mail from Benoit Seringe, secretary of the Poulenc Society and a member of the Poulenc family. He said that James S's version-see above-is what he has heard, at least orally, but he has not been able to find written confirmation of this, for example, mention in Poulenc's letters. He promised to research the matter more throughly in the coming week.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-19 15:56
All kidding aside, Poulenc, who used to describe himself as "mi-moine, mi-voyou" -half monk, half rascal, was one of the heirs of the Poulenc family that owned Rhône-Poulenc, France's leading chemical company. A very well-heeled rascal or monk, I would say.
Question: how many composers were there in: "Les Six"?
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2016-11-19 17:54
Hello Tony,
Firstly perhaps you could have given me the professional courtesy to get in touch via email or phone before trying to ridicule me on a public forum.
I have a masters student that is working on the Sonata and she in fact told me about the 2nd movement being composed before the other movements. So to claim "Post-Truth" is bad form on your part.
I'll ask her for her source but it seems others above have corroborated the statement.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-19 18:57
I didn't TRY to ridicule you, Peter; I simply asked what was your evidence for saying that you "discovered...that the Romanza had laid [sic] forgotten" for ten years.
That might be true; I just wanted to know how you knew.
When you didn't reply, I spoke again; and then again, more strongly.
It now seems that your statement was a colourful embellishment of an incompletely described fact. That's the way Chinese Whispers start – and lets hope that referenda and elections don't move further in that direction.
Your master's student should be learning intellectual discipline from you, not the other way around.
All sorts of things might be true about Poulenc and his clarinet sonata. Perhaps it doesn't matter very much what those things are; but when a statement about one of those things surfaces, it's important to treat it in the same way as we should habitually treat any 'statement of fact'.
Especially now.
Tony
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-19 19:24
If, of course, your masters student told you more than the 2000 edition preface gives us – and what you gave us was therefore an accurate preçis – then all well and good.
Tony
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Author: Glipman
Date: 2016-11-19 20:00
Tony, nobody looks at the clarinet BBoard for particularly "credible" statements.
It's a place to start. It's opinion. It's a "community".
Pete clearly has his sources - if you disagree, it's YOUR job to invetigate.
#respect
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2016-11-19 20:29
I'm with Peter on this - Tony, it certainly feels like a bit of a personal attack on him & the credibility of his discovery. So you feel this discovery has been misconstrued? This is a classic example of your intentions being misconstrued. You may have had the best of intentions starting this thread, but your tone seems otherwise.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-11-19 21:05
Morrigan wrote:
> I'm with Peter on this - Tony, it certainly feels like a bit of
> a personal attack on him & the credibility of his discovery.
Glipman wrote:
> Tony, nobody looks at the clarinet BBoard for particularly
> "credible" statements.
>
I expect that when something is presented as fact, it has a credible source. When, as often happens, a comment begins with something like "Opperman told me..." or "Marcellus always said..." we know the source and can deal with it as we wish and decide for ourselves how much authority to give it. If a historical statement is made, why is it a personal attack to ask who first made it and on what authority?
[Glipman]
> It's a place to start. It's opinion.
Peter didn't present an opinion, he reported a factual circumstance he'd learned from someone else. All Tony did initially (in the other thread) was to ask what the source was. Knowing that might lead the rest of us to further information (should we want it) beyond the origin of the movement in question - or not, depending on what it was.
>
[Morrigan]
>
> So you feel this discovery has been misconstrued?
I simply didn't get this from Tony's original post (in the other thread). He has tried to suggest more than once since then that Peter's information could well be true.
[Glipman]
> Pete clearly has his sources - if you disagree, it's YOUR job
> to invetigate.
To me, this sounds belligerent and a little unfair (tone?). This wasn't at the beginning a matter of disagreement.Peter said he'd discovered something and Tony asked for further information. It's hard to investigate a source when you don't know what it is. Discussion need not be an adversarial process. And it really isn't anyone's job here to do anything except to read, to think and then, if you like, to write. We all have enough to do in our lives without our being assigned jobs here.
[Morrigan]
> You may
> have had the best of intentions starting this thread, but your
> tone seems otherwise.
>
We all hear tone differently, as everyone here knows. Tony is quite able to justify what he wrote for himself without my help, but I do have a sense that there is over-reaction at work here and perhaps an over-emphasis on "tone quality" over substance and meaning (the double entendre involving music is intended). And someone else's intent is something we really can't often know or demonstrate, so is maybe better left out of a discussion that is to remain useful.
Karl
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-11-19 22:51
I didn't notice any ridicule in Tony's posts, but then I'm not involved. The statement about the Romanza is interesting, and the query for source is reasonable.
The Sachania quote above indicates (by hearsay) the Romanza came before, but the length of time before composing the other movements is not mentioned. The posited 10 year difference might be good to verify; a lot happened in Poulenc's life between 1952 and 1962 (nervous breakdown, bereavement, operatic successes, visits to America.) One even wonders, if there were such a long break, if there might have been a revision of the Romanza before the sonata publication.
I checked a handful of websites for related information, and they all just say the sonata was published in 1962.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-11-20 03:01
I don my lawyer's hat.
Hearsay is a statement of fact made out of court offered IN COURT for it's truth.
We're not in court here, and there's no trial under way. Anyone can find out something, or even speculate about something, and post it here for what it's worth. Challenging that as hearsay is meaningless.
If someone in a position to know says that the slow movement of the Poulenc Sonata was composed before the other movements, that's interesting and valuable to know if it gives players a way to understand the markings.
All I want to know what players think about the movement and how to interpret Poulenc's often puzzling markings.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-11-20 03:58
Hearsay is a legal term, but it also has informal usage that's well established. Both date from centuries ago.
The quote referenced began, "...Poulenc noted to R Douglas Gibson", and didn't seem to be quoting Poulenc directly, so I took it (perhaps wrongly) to mean that someone said Poulenc said etc., which would amount to hearsay in the informal sense. In this I didn't mean to refer to any of the posters here, or even to Millan Sachania, but to the quote itself, to point out that the quote as given does not rise to the level of source material. I apologize for not being clearer - rereading my post I can see it was less than ideally expressed.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-11-20 08:15
Philip -
I know that "hearsay" is used loosely by non-lawyers. My point is different. I object (in the non-lawyer sense) when someone attacks an interesting statement, not on its merits, but simply for being "hearsay."
I thought, and still think, that Peter Cigleris had interesting things to say about the Poulenc Sonata. I didn't like it when he was challenged, not about what he said, but because it was hearsay.
Ken Shaw
Post Edited (2016-11-20 08:16)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-20 16:24
Well, I went and looked at the Sachania preface again, and there IS more information. (I say 'again' – I must have seen it before, because I've written 'was Andantino tristamente' in pencil above the second movement in the score.)
Here is the complete first paragraph:
"Poulenc completed the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano at Brive-Noizay late in the summer of 1962. The project had been occupying his thoughts for at least five years. He had drafted the slow movement as early as August 1959, but the demands of the Gloria, then in the final stages of composition, halted further progress. It was under these circumstances that Poulenc noted to R. Douglas Gibson of J. & W. Chester that the slow movement could be published as an independent 'Andantino tristamente', were he never to complete the outer movements. (The 'Andantino' later donated its 'tristamente' label to the first movement, and in the process acquired the title 'Romanza'.) Poulenc's perseverance won through, however, and in a letter dated 18 January 1963 the composer promised Gibson delivery of the the fair copy within eight days. He also requested that the task of engraving the work be entrusted to 'un bon graveur assez musicien pour deviner les notes douteuses'. Twelve days later, Poulenc suddenly died. The notational ambiguities thus remained unresolved and accordingly contaminated the text of the first edition, which was published later that year."
I take issue a bit with the last sentence; you can read what I and others have to say about it, plus scans of Poulenc's corrected MS, in:
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=285357&t=285332
Anyhow, the idea that the slow movement was written ten years before, and then "laid forgotten in the hope of being published someday until the commission for the Sonata came along", goes beyond what Sachania writes here – indeed, contradicts it.
Perhaps the graduate student has more.
Tony
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-11-20 18:26
Ken Shaw wrote:
> I object (in the non-lawyer sense) when someone
> attacks an interesting statement, not on its merits, but simply
> for being "hearsay."
>
I want to leave Peter's comment out of this for a minute, because he has described his source and others have identified possible supporting evidence for a version that is at least similar, so it seems to me (opinion) that Tony's original question about Peter's source has been answered.
But, more generally to Ken's comment, a statement can only have "merit" if there is authority for it. Unless a writer identifies a statement as "opinion," in which case logic need not be involved and personal reaction can in itself be validating. If a statement is offered as fact or even possible fact, its "merit" lies in whether or not it's verifiable as true, not in its having been offered at all.
> I thought, and still think, that Peter Cigleris had interesting
> things to say about the Poulenc Sonata. I didn't like it when
> he was challenged, not about what he said, but because it was
> hearsay.
>
He wasn't at first "challenged" but only asked where he learned what he said. No one accused him of making it up, and Peter might have said immediately in answer to Tony's question what he finally said in this thread.
In an age when people who *do* make things up (again, not referring to Peter) are able to circulate their fictions with breathtaking speed over "social media" and Internet news sites like Yahoo, the only reasonable reaction for readers is to ask where the information comes from. The term "post-truth" isn't Tony's invention, and it describes an environment in which truth and fiction have become dangerously difficult to distinguish from one another for reasons that have been well covered in the media since the Brexit and Trump upset victories. This is a much broader and potentially cataclysmic shift in how we get information that has global implications for society.
I know the BB represents only a microcosmic use of the universe of electronic information technology and our discussions haven't much real importance to the rest of the universe, but it seems as though a little recognition of the need for care in circulating factual information would be a good thing.
Karl
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Author: GBK
Date: 2016-11-21 04:54
[ We've culled the thread and retained the postings which are important. Please keep future discussions civil and not sprinkled with sarcastic attacks on those who post. Disagreements are fine, as long as the tone is respectful of those who differ. We're leaving the thread open for now, hoping more musical facts will emerge, rather than just petty sniping - GBK ]
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-21 08:41
Perhaps it's a shame they're deleted.
Because, from the relationship between those three or four deletions, I learnt more about this BBoard than I'd ever understood before.
Thank you to all of Ken Shaw, Philip Caron and Karl Krelove. And I mean that sincerely.
Tony
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-11-23 14:36
Thank you too, Tony. I always learn something when you post here.
Ken Shaw
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2016-11-24 13:52
Tony,
Firstly I owe you an apology. I was unaware that you had commented on the previous post regard the metronome markings within the Poulenc Sonata. You see I visit here rather infrequently nowadays and rarely post. I also realise that I posted like it was a statement. That wasn't my intention but rather to mention something that I had learned from another. My initial reaction was due to my perceived tone of the message but in hindsight I could have been less short but I maintain it wasn't a post-truth. I trust my student who is doing musicology, so she wouldn't have made this claim without a viable source.
I now know that this information told to me by my student is from the preface to the 2006 Chester edition of the Sonata. This is what she sent me:
"Poulenc completed the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano at Brive-Noizay late in the summer of 1962. The project had been occupying his thoughts for at least five years. He had drafted the slow movement as early as August 1959, but the demands of the Gloria, then in the final stages of composition, halted further progress. It was under these circumstances that Poulenc noted to R. Douglas Gibson of J. & W. Chester that the slow movement could published as an independant 'Andantino tristamente', were he never to complete the outer movements..."
You said:
"Your master's student should be learning intellectual discipline from you, not the other way around."
I agree with you on this but I'm also aware that one can learn anything from anyone.
Whether the above information from the preface is correct or not I was simply unaware of this.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-24 20:01
So the upshot is:
Sonata always conceived as a 3 movement piece from 1959, though delivery to publisher delayed as explained in letters from FP – does this imply Goodman commission dates from 1959? Or before?
Middle movement sketched 4 (not 10) years before completion of sonata, and not 'forgotten'.
You might get your student to check p509 in "The Music of Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): A Catalogue" (by Carl B Schmidt) in the library, as suggested in the reference cited above by Seabreeze – the reference mentions 'letters', and there might be more, say about the Goodman connection. The book's not in my library, and costs $225 to buy.
Let us know.
Tony
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-11-24 22:10
Two other reference sources that might shed further light on the provenance of the Poulenc peice are an article by Jean-Marie Paul and Guy Deplus in The Clarinet (magazine), March 2010, pp.82-83, entitled "The Poulenc Sonata," and program notes written by Maureen Hurd for a 2009 concert sponsored by the Yale School of Music: http://issuu.com/yalemusic/docs/09-09-22_benny_goodman.
The theme was "The Classical Legacy of Benny Goodman." Hurd, who has extensively researched Goodman's role in promoting classical composers to write for the clarinet, maintains that the Poulenc Sonata was NOT commissioned by Goodman, though he planned to give the premier performance with Poulenc at the piano. When Poulenc suddenly died, Goodman performed the work with Leonard Bernstein.
In liner notes written for the Naxos CD by Julien Herve, entitled "Waiting for Benny," Jean-Marie Paul points out that Poulenc had written works for clarinet throughout his career, including the clarinet duo, the piece for bassoon and clarinet, and others--even a piece for clarinet and string quartet that is now lost.
He remarks that the history of the last sonata for clarinet is complicated and refers readers to his article in The Clarinet, March 2010, for further details.
Post Edited (2016-11-24 22:40)
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2016-11-24 22:42
I'd STILL like to know how the performance tradition came to be what it is in regards to the tempo of the third movement.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-25 18:29
>> He remarks that the history of the last sonata for clarinet is complicated and refers readers to his article in The Clarinet, March 2010, for further details.>>
Can someone tell us what this article says, further to or even in contradiction to what I and others wrote in the link above?
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=285357&t=285332
I subscribed to 'The Clarinet' for one year only, and then unsubscribed, so I can't access it.
Tony
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-26 02:00
nellsonic wrote:
>> I'd STILL like to know how the performance tradition came to be what it is in regards to the tempo of the third movement. >>
I suppose I'd say that the notion of 'performance tradition' might be more appropriately applied to, say, the performances of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra over the years. (But even that orchestra is changing.)
I am occasionally forced to hear that some clarinet players rather routinely play the last movement really quite fast – much faster than the metronome mark. But that could be for very many reasons, and I judge it depending on the outcome.
Some of the players are foolish and ineffective showoffs; some of them are trying really hard make their fast tempi work; some of them are just thoughtless; some of them are trying to make the piece flashy in an inappropriate acoustic.
Older conductors famously make Haydn allegros sound faster by playing them slower. Something like that might be true about the Poulenc third movement.
I suppose you're a player. I'd say, don't worry about what OTHER people do – who they?
Try to make what YOU do work.
Tony
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-11-26 03:39
Nellsonic,
I would agree with Tony that tempo is relative to other concerns, such as overall style and phrasing; does the pace cause the performer to drop too many notes; is the rhythm tight enough to make the line cohere; and does it sound like a musical statement or a gratuitous technical display.
I'm trying to get a benchmark for what you consider too fast. Specifically, in the performances by Andre Boutard and the recent one by Andreas Ottensamer, do you believe each player has the tempo about right or too fast?
Boutard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz5V2XaKxz4.
Ottensamer: (select "U21 Vernetzt Andreas Ottensamer--Sonata fur Klarinetten von Poulenc) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ottensamer+poulenc.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-26 04:40
I imagine that most performers judge the third movement to be a relatively trivial piece of music – I can only agree. It's a bit of fun, with some possibly serious interpolations from the first movement – and of course, what Gervase de Peyer used to call 'the Shirley Bassey bit'.
In that spirit, I sometimes follow Kari Krikku's IMO excellent suggestion to play the G on the second beat of bars 72 and 73 with the fingering spTxxo/xoo, which makes it sound a sharp G#, like a snake charmer.
But you can find more in it, as I suggested in my previous post, if you play it slower than very fast.
Tony
Post Edited (2016-11-26 14:32)
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The Clarinet Pages
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