Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Guildhall School of Music & Drama
"A new edition of Franz Schubert (1797-1828) 'Ivy Leaves', Volumes 1-5, Clarinet & Piano arranged by Carl Baermann (1810-1885)" and CD "Schubert's Lieder: music and words", Volumes 1 and 2
Carl Baermann’s 1887 publication of "Epheublaetter" (“Ivy Leaves”), for clarinet and piano, offers the performer's transcriptions of fifteen lieder by Schubert. It is a remarkable publication in at least two respects in that the texts of the songs are printed beneath the clarinet line, and Baermann’s articulation marks suggest a clear interest in how those texts could best be rendered on the clarinet.
The goal of the research was twofold: first, to produce a new edition of Baermann’s transcriptions; and next, a first recording of the pieces. The researcher / performer used instruments that Baermann would have recognised, engaging with the scores according to his text-based interpretative intentions.
The research process included a study of Baermann’s pedagogical work at the Munich Hochschüle; here he investigated rhetorical aspects of the spoken word and its relationship to the unfolding of musical expression. With this knowledge the researcher / performer was able to approach Baermann’s transcriptions sensitive to the need to align phrasing and articulation with the consonants, vowels, letters and words of Schubert’s poets. This process allowed the recordings to demonstrate ways in which the clarinet’s melodic line might echo the singer’s exposition of the songs’ narratives, but often in a way very different from commonly-held twenty-first-century views on the meaning of “cantabile”.
Baermann’s own research at Munich was closely related to his work as a leading teacher of the clarinet, it is therefore highly likely that his "Epheublaetter" transcriptions were studied by his students. The current research has established that Baermann’s students often performed in the school’s regular series of concerts, so the CD now produced illuminates not only a largely forgotten aspect of rhetorical woodwind playing, but also the pedagogy - and perhaps performance life - of a leading nineteenth-century conservatoire.
