Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Guildhall School of Music & Drama
"Clarinets by Arrangement"
Performers: Jane Booth (clarinet), John Irving (fortepiano)
The goal of the research encapsulated within the recordings sought to bring into the public domain performances that exemplify the provisional nature of the notated scores of much music of the late classical era. The period’s many arrangements argue that a single piece could exist in many forms with none being ‘subsidiary’ to an imagined ‘definitive’ original.
The researcher / performer had a second imperative for this research: the performance of the arrangements not only on appropriate historical instruments but also with a style of playing that acknowledged and addressed the silent signals of the musical texts by employing embellishment – sometimes improvised – informed by classical practice.
The research process therefore included a study of contemporary performance treatises such as the "Méthode de Clarinette" of Lefèvre, and music of the period - such as pieces based on a structure of theme and variations - that hint at processes of improvised embellishment. Additionally, the Lefèvre sonata presents the performers with an unfigured bass line, realised, in outline, by the researcher before the recording, but developed by her during the performance process.
These were the background research processes that allowed the performer to develop a creative engagement with the printed page - a spontaneity that energises both the performer’s work and the listeners’ enjoyment of the music of this era.
So the research linked two levels of provisionality: first, the work as a whole that can exist in a number of expressions for different instrumental combinations; and secondly, within the work itself, where an historically informed and stylistically sensitive performance requires understanding and sympathy beyond the text.
A commercial recording is published by Sfz Music.
