Keepers

Keepers The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Re: Copland Cadenza Interpretation?

Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-10-04 10:25

Brian wrote:

>> So why do people do it?? >>

Because they come from a school of thought that doesn't take the text seriously.

I agree with you; there is very little musical justification for doing what you describe. And in fact, you lose an important feature of the passage by doing it, because it damages perception of the differing phrase-lengths -- they're notated by the accents, but they can be much more subtly characterised by a performer with tonal modulation at their disposal.

Also, playing too freely spoils the gradual move towards aggression that is a feature of the passage -- it almost becomes a fight between low and high accents, which towards the end can be almost ferocious.

Part of the problem is that there is a sort of follow-my-leader effect generated by famous performers' recordings. I've never had a student play me this piece without reproducing Goodman's little rhythmic quirk at 'hold back -- more deliberate'. (Worth noticing that the '--'s are missing in the clarinet part.) And if you try to tell students to play what is on the page, you are implicitly criticising the 'interpretations' of all these 'great artists' who have felt it necessary to pull the piece about.

The idea of looking at a piece of music to see what is there -- to find a real territory that nevertheless corresponds to the map that the composer has given us -- isn't a high priority for many performers. You could say that they're more interested in the audience effect that they may be able to create. And after all, you'd have to agree that most people in an audience won't be able to recognise when a performer diverges from the score of the Copland concerto, even if it's a very significant divergence.

It's almost an ethical question. I wrote something about it in:

http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2005/08/000322.txt

Anyway, you'll be pleased to know that I never do what you describe myself;-)

Tony

Post Edited (2008-10-06 13:18)

Avail. Forums | Flat View

Newer Topic | Older Topic

Topics

Author

Date

Copland Cadenza Interpretation? new

orchestr

2008-10-04 02:15

Re: Copland Cadenza Interpretation? new

Tony Pay

2008-10-04 10:25