Musical questions and answers thread

[cloughie]

Why ?

How do you decide whether something isn't as good - to me Chopin is musical wallpaper compared to Alkan.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

When such committed Schubertians as Uchida and Schiff on the one hand, and Brendel on the other, have such diametrically opposing views, what are we to think?

1) Whatever we damn well want.
and/or
2) What Schubert thought. No matter how fine the interpreter, Schubert remains the better Musician and the last word on all matters relating to his Music. If he wrote an Expo repeat, he's right and the divine Brendel is wrong. No disrespect intended: he may be a superhuman pianist, but he's still human.

Does it matter?

Yes.

[french frank]

Nice question. The highest one I've ever come across is Mozart's concert aria Popoli di Tessaglio which goes up (twice!) to a high G - a tone higher than the Queen of the Night. Can anybody go higher still?

Yes, I've heard Edita Gruberova tackling that one. Pavarotti's La fille aria was legendary.

Interesting wiki article.

[Ferretfancy]

Why ?

I know I'm in trouble here but Alkan's music always seems pre-occupied with technique and display. His melodic gifts are not the equal of Chopin or Liszt, and as for Chopin as wallpaper, I wish mine was as tuneful or as well structured.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The highest one I've ever come across is Mozart's concert aria Popoli di Tessaglio which goes up (twice!) to a high G - a tone higher than the Queen of the Night.

Blimey! I don't know the concert arias nearly well enough (in fact, I think that there are many of them that I've never heard).

In the manuscript of Die Zauberflöte, the Queen of the Night's part is written in Soprano Clef, so it looks a third higher to the Treble clef-accustomed eye! Florence Foster-Jenkins, where art thou?

[makropulos]

Blimey! I don't know the concert arias nearly well enough (in fact, I think that there are many of them that I've never heard).

In the manuscript of Die Zauberflöte, the Queen of the Night's part is written in Soprano Clef, so it looks a third higher to the Treble clef-accustomed eye! Florence Foster-Jenkins, where art thou?

There's a lot of fun to be had in those concert arias! (and you need a soprano with a serious set of pipes to get through them - as French Frank says, Gruberova is pretty fearless). As for pesky soprano clefs - the old Mozart complete edition score of the aria has the solo part in the soprano clef too - so it has a quite terrifying number of ledger lines :) - if you're intrigued have a look at p. 19 of the score (p. 18 of the PDF as it starts on p. 2): http://imslp.org/wiki/Popoli_di_Tess...ang_Amadeus%29

[french frank]

Blimey! I don't know the concert arias nearly well enough (in fact, I think that there are many of them that I've never heard).

In the manuscript of Die Zauberflöte, the Queen of the Night's part is written in Soprano Clef, so it looks a third higher to the Treble clef-accustomed eye! Florence Foster-Jenkins, where art thou?

There's also the question of the exact pitch intended by the composer. Is concert pitch reckoned to be about a semi-tone different now - which might wipe out some of the differences between what composers intended (as distinct from what singers sing nowadays).

[ardcarp]

1) Whatever we damn well want.
and/or
2) What Schubert thought. No matter how fine the interpreter, Schubert remains the better Musician and the last word on all matters relating to his Music. If he wrote an Expo repeat, he's right and the divine Brendel is wrong. No disrespect intended: he may be a superhuman pianist, but he's still human.


Yes.

Before about 1950-ish it was perfectly respectable not to do do the Expo repeat in symphonies, even if it meant leaving a few sacred '1st time bar' notes unplayed. This may I suppose have had something to do with cramming stuff onto 78's or early LPs. By the time I was a music student, it was drummed into us how important it was to do the repeat.

I think one needs to be pragmatic about it....certainly insofar as one should try to consider the audience you are playing to. If, for instance, you're doing Eroica for a mixed audience, maybe one with some young people and/or not classical junkies, then the first movement...indeed the whole symphony....can to them seem interminable. So IMO, it's a question of cutting your cloth.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There's also the question of the exact pitch intended by the composer. Is concert pitch reckoned to be about a semi-tone different now - which might wipe out some of the differences between what composers intended (as distinct from what singers sing nowadays).

Good point - and one which would put Herzegewachse back at the ... err ... top! (The question referred to "highest written" note, so may not count?)

Anyone know what the Soul's last notes are in Die Jakobsleiter?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think one needs to be pragmatic about it....certainly insofar as one should try to consider the audience you are playing to. If, for instance, you're doing Eroica for a mixed audience, maybe one with some young people and/or not classical junkies, then the first movement...indeed the whole symphony....can to them seem interminable. So IMO, it's a question of cutting your cloth.

So, the first of my two options?

(Although it does sound a leeetle like those "arguments" that "mixed audiences with some young people" can't cope with Shakespeare in the original language and therefore need the assistance of Mr Fellowes )

[LeMartinPecheur]

No matter how fine the interpreter, Schubert remains the better Musician and the last word on all matters relating to his Music. If he wrote an Expo repeat, he's right and the divine Brendel is wrong. No disrespect intended: he may be a superhuman pianist, but he's still human.

Yet last week's BaL surely exposed the fallibility of even the composer's published score. Dvorak's 6th symphony 1st mov't has a repeat marked, with some extra second-time bars IIRC. Yet we were told that there is a performance score carrying D's own very emphatic MS instruction not to observe the repeat under any circumstances!

[cloughie]

There's also the question of the exact pitch intended by the composer. Is concert pitch reckoned to be about a semi-tone different now - which might wipe out some of the differences between what composers intended (as distinct from what singers sing nowadays).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqE3peddhek

Cheryl Bentyne sings pretty high towards the end of this.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yet last week's BaL surely exposed the fallibility of even the composer's published score. Dvorak's 6th symphony 1st mov't has a repeat marked, with some extra second-time bars IIRC. Yet we were told that there is a performance score carrying D's own very emphatic MS instruction not to observe the repeat under any circumstances!

Dvorak??!! I was referring to ... oh, well; in the Spirit of the Season:

Indeed, there is a case to be made that those composer who wrote Sonata structures after Marx formulated the whole idea of "Sonata Form" might be considered to have written repeat marks at the ends of Expositions in deference to Classical precepts, rather than out of structural/Tonal necessity. But the great masters of the Classical period (who had never heard the expression "Sonata Form") knew what they were doing (as demonstrated in those Sonata Allegro movements that do not mark a repeat at such points) and were thinking of the repeats in terms exactly of such structural/Tonal necessity, rather than tradition/convention. The greatest Symphonists of the 19th Century, Brahms and Bruckner, both understood when such repeats were needed or not (IIRC, Bruckner follows from Beethoven #9 in creating Music that needs to surge into the Development section): to omit the repeats in Brahms' first three symphonies is as silly as adding one to the Fourth. (And, yes, I'm aware that Brahms is reputed to have said to somebody who was a pupil of x who overheard y telling z that Brahms once said in his sleep that you could miss them out if you were so cloddish as to play all four symphonies in the same concert. The Music, and its sensitive performance, claims otherwise.)

You can do what you like with Dvorak - although I find the melodic charm of the Movement cited so lovely, I think it's an enhancement to hear it twice: the composer's first thoughts better than his later ideas, IMO.

[ardcarp]

In the manuscript of Die Zauberflöte, the Queen of the Night's part is written in Soprano Clef, so it looks a third higher to the Treble clef-accustomed eye

Does it? Surely top F is perched on top of a mere 2 leger lines? Or have I misunderstood your drift?

a.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Does it? Surely top F is perched on top of a mere 2 leger lines? Or have I misunderstood your drift?

Hi, ardy; Soprano clef has middle C as its bottom line (the equivalent of the E for "every" in Treble clef) with D on the top line. To get the F that's the top line of treble clef ("Favour"/"Food"/"Flogging" according to preference) you need an extra leger line; to get the F an octave higher than that (which Mozza uses for the Queen of the Night) he needs a further three leger lines - or four leger lines in all. (And he needs five for the higher G to which LMP refers!)

I first saw the part in a facsimile of the manuscript and thought that he'd written a top A - now that would have brought the walls of Sarastro's palace down!