Tuesday 28 – Wednesday 29 September
Workshop: The Intimate Mozart and the Performer as Creator – Improvisation in Mozart’s Piano Concertos (Guildhall School of Music and Drama)
In association with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Centre for Extemporisation and Creative Practice
Convenor: David Dolan (Guildhall School)
28 September 2pm – 6pm: Open Workshops and Masterclasses; 29 September 7 – 9pm: Lecture and Concert
Using both period and modern instruments, this project explores the performance practice issues - for example the role of the performer as creator and extemporizer - arising from Mozart's designation of the three so-called 'subscription' concertos, K.413, 414 and 415 as being suitable for performance 'a quattro'. In this setting, the three concerti will be performed effectively as chamber music, rather than concert music, offering multiple opportunities for dialoguing between the performers, and between score and sound, and thus challenging our modern perception of traditional generic boundaries.
For further details please contact David.Dolan@gsmd.ac.uk
Monday 4 October, Tuesday 14 October and Tuesday 19 October
Recitals: Mozart Sonatas for Fortepiano and Clarinet
Jane Booth (basset clarinet) and John Irving (fortepiano)
Monday 4 October, 1.15pm (Kingston Parish Church, Kingston Upon Thames, KT1 1JP)
Thursday 14 October, 3pm (Morden College Chapel, Blackheath, SE3 0PW)
Tuesday 19 October, 5.30pm (Haldane Room, UCL)
For further details please contact John.Irving@sas.ac.uk
Tuesday 26 October
Seminar (Senate House, Room G22/26), 2 – 5pm
Legacy and Legend: Historic(al) Performance in the 1980s
Colin Lawson (Royal College of Music), Trevor Herbert (Open University) and John Irving (IMR)
Historical performance in the 1980s
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1. Hindemith, 1952:
‘All music ought to be performed with the means of production that were in use when the composer gave it to his contemporaries…’
‘Our spirit of life is not identical with that of our ancestors, and therefore their music, even if restored with utter technical perfection, can never have for us precisely the same meaning it had for them. We cannot tear down the barricade that separates the present world from things and deeds past; the symbol and its prototype cannot be made to coincide absolutely’.
2. Harnoncourt, 1982
‘People today find a car or an aeroplane more valuable than a violin, the circuitry of a computer more important than a symphony…200 years ago music was a living language..[it] has now been reduced to the merely beautiful and to what can be universally appreciated’.
3. Shai Burstyn, 1997
‘We [as listeners] encounter the vast musical treasures of the past from the one vantage point available to us – our own aesthetic experience’.
Reviews of the seminar on 26 October
Monday 29 November
Seminar (Stewart House, Room ST273), 2 – 5pm
The Urtext Revisited
Barry Cooper (Manchester), Roy Mowatt (Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment / Founteyne Editions) and Rupert Ridgewell (British Library)
Like Robin Hood and the Loch Ness Monster, the Urtext is arguably a myth. Nevertheless, some continue to believe in this strange and beguiling phenomenon. The speakers in this DeNOTE seminar, of relevance to textual scholars, editors, performers, publishers and bibliographers (to name but a few), will attack the question from at least three contrasting standpoints. Roy Mowatt is a professional violinist who works across a wide range of repertoires for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and as co-director of Founteyne Editions, has produced several performing editions used by that orchestra in its groundbreaking projects. Prof. Barry Cooper (University of Manchester) is an internationally-respected authority on the music of Beethoven and editor of the 35 [sic] Piano Sonatas. Dr Rupert Ridgewell (British Library, London) is a specialist in Viennese publishing houses in the age of Mozart and has recently published a major article (in JRMA) on the tangled publication history of Mozart’s piano quartets. They may make you wonder why you ever thought you needed an Urtext.
The IMR’s DeNOTE seminars encourage interaction and discussion among scholars and performers of eighteenth-century music across a wide range of topics. Please come along and add your voice to the debate. The seminars are free of charge, open to the public and no advance booking is required.
