Bach, Mozart, chromatic runs

[Paul Hahn]
>Erh? These are the runs that Mozart said must "flow like oil"?

It is quite possible that early-music style phrasing (I'm sure there's a
name for it) and/or historical fingering didn't last as long as I thought.

[somebody else]
>it is clear that such descending and ascending chromatic passages are not
>featured in Bach, unless they are mostly chordal outlines.

Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in Dmin, BWV 903 comes to mind (obviously).
There are many other counter-examples. These runs still don't function
like Mozart's, but that would be asking Bach's music to be Mozart's. Fact
is, neither Bach nor the musicians who played and improvised on his music
were strangers to chromatic runs.

-Carl

Carl Lumma wrote,

>Although there is never a way to be sure how something was played 200 years
>ago, everybody seems to agree that runs, both diatonic and chromatic, were
>not played smoothly, but instead played as strings of tiny phrases, up
>until Beethovan, at least.

Then Paul Hahn wrote,

>Erh? These are the runs that Mozart said must "flow like oil"?

Then Carl wrote,

>It is quite possible that early-music style phrasing (I'm sure there's a
>name for it) and/or historical fingering didn't last as long as I thought.

Carl, first you say "everybody seems to agree . . .", and then you retracted
the statement. Who is this "everybody"? You and Daniel Wolf? Apologies for
the rudeness -- I just think you occasionally overstate your level of
confidence on certain issues.

That last message to Carl should have been off-list. I'd like to consider
Carl a friend of mine, but my last message was pretty uncool. I slap myself
on the wrist and will do my best to follow Joe Pehrson's suggested decorum
in the future.

The fact that Mozart had to make a remark about it, is a pretty convincing
indication that such runs were NOT usually played smoothly in the Viennese
style. A plea to performers to make runs as smooth as �l will still not
erase the basic unevenness of his meantone chromatic scale and classical
fingerings (aside from still-limited use of the thumb, the two small fingers
were limited to the lower (white) keys).

I had intended to leave my disagreement with Paul Erlich as an agreement to
disagree, but having the opportunity to sit down between a fortepiano (in
MT) and a harpsichord (in Kirn. III) today, I managed to reconvince myself.
Not only was the contrast in rhetorical styles found in Bach and in
Haydy/Mozart striking, but the way the temperament at hand reinforced the
rhetoric was at times overwhelming.

The Viennese classicists simply do not use the continuous motoric found in
Bach (Kagel's "St. Bach Passion" makes great fun of this), and their
harmonic language does not presuppose, as Bach's always does, free
modulation to twelve tonics where g# is equivalent to ab. Instead, even in
their dance music, the metric continuity is always being shifted or
interrupted, broken up into the smallest meaningful gestures, the field of
harmonic possibilities, like meantone, is open ended (although Mozart
parodies this in works like the _Fantasie_ K. 475, which deliberately moves
through the most radical and barely plausible modulations) and the way in
which chordal, diatonic, and chromatic materials are contrasted with and
nestled among one another to create characteristic topoi, is largely
dependent upon the fact that the chords and scales are uneven creatures.

Most convincing to me was the way in which Contrapunctus V from _The Art of
the Fugue_ just fell apart in meantone on the fortepiano, while the bits of
fugetta in the Rondo K. 494 completely lost their sense expansiveness when
played in well temperament. For a moment, I think I really understood why
the fugal tradition did not survive Bach except as a passing topos, but at
the same time how this was not a tragedy in that a alternative compositional
function (the Sonata) was developed where one could make convincing tonal
closure although the tone system itself was not closed.

Daniel Wolf
Frankfurt am Main

> From: "Paul H. Erlich" <PErlich@Acadian-Asset.com>
>
> Carl Lumma wrote,
>
> >Although there is never a way to be sure how something was played 200
years
> >ago, everybody seems to agree that runs, both diatonic and chromatic,
were
> >not played smoothly, but instead played as strings of tiny phrases, up
> >until Beethovan, at least.
>
> Then Paul Hahn wrote,
>
> >Erh? These are the runs that Mozart said must "flow like oil"?
>
> Then Carl wrote,
>
> >It is quite possible that early-music style phrasing (I'm sure there's a
> >name for it) and/or historical fingering didn't last as long as I
thought.
>
> Carl, first you say "everybody seems to agree . . .", and then you
retracted
> the statement. Who is this "everybody"? You and Daniel Wolf? Apologies for
> the rudeness -- I just think you occasionally overstate your level of
> confidence on certain issues.
>
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>

>>It is quite possible that early-music style phrasing (I'm sure there's a
>>name for it) and/or historical fingering didn't last as long as I thought.
>
>Carl, first you say "everybody seems to agree . . .", and then you
>retracted the statement. Who is this "everybody"? You and Daniel Wolf?
>Apologies for the rudeness -- I just think you occasionally overstate your
>level of confidence on certain issues.

Well, my source on the "everybody agrees" part was Laurette Goldberg. My
source on the "until Beethovan" part was me. I see I wrote "Beethovan, at
least", which makes it sound like it's pushing beyond Beethovan, when what
I meant was, "it certainly stopped with Beethovan".

Laurette's statement was about Couperin -- Mozart was not part of our
discussion. After Daniel's post, I made the jump. If it means anything, I
was running a high fever at the time. Come to look at it, my post didn't
have much content.

-Carl

Daniel Wolf wrote,

>A plea to performers to make runs as smooth as �l will still not
>erase the basic unevenness of [Mozart's] meantone chromatic scale

Although we agree he favored extended meantone in theory, haven't we
established that most of his pieces would require more than 12 pitches in
meantone, and hence some kind of circulating temperament is indicated?

Paul Erlich:
>
> Although we agree he favored extended meantone in theory, haven't we
> established that most of his pieces would require more than 12 pitches in
> meantone, and hence some kind of circulating temperament is indicated?
>

I don't think we agreed to that. He actually used meantone (1/6-tone for
organs, perhaps 1/5 tone for other keyboards) and in the solo keyboard music
and recitatives 12 tones are sufficient, if you accept that he limits his
use of extensions to a basic set of 12 to passing/neighboring tones and to
daring or playful enharmonic substitutes. (I've been playing the Andante
from K. 533 and the Fantasie K. 475 today with a Mellosoftron set to 1/5
comma -- both really come to life!).

Austria adapted circulating temperaments after northern Germany, and W.A.
Mozart's position under the Archbishop of Salzberg was that of court
organist, so he really spent his journeyman's days in the meantone
environment.

On Mozart, Daniel Wolf wrote,

>I don't think we agreed to that. He actually used meantone (1/6-tone for
>organs, perhaps 1/5 tone for other keyboards) and in the solo keyboard
music
>and recitatives 12 tones are sufficient, if you accept that he limits his
>use of extensions to a basic set of 12 to passing/neighboring tones and to
>daring or playful enharmonic substitutes.

When my 15-year old sister came over and played my meantone piano, she
played some Mozart and there was a clear E major chord and a clear Ab major
chord. Needless to say, the latter was laughably out-of-tune (granted, I did
aim for 1/4-comma meantone when tuning).

>Austria adapted circulating temperaments after northern Germany, and W.A.
>Mozart's position under the Archbishop of Salzberg was that of court
>organist, so he really spent his journeyman's days in the meantone
>environment.

Interesting.