Composer and CriticAuthor(s): Robert SimpsonSource: The Musical Times, Vol. 96, No. 1348 (Jun., 1955), p. 320Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/936726 .

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THE MUSICAL TIMES THE MUSICAL TIMES THE MUSICAL TIMES

(1) Bar 6: Mr. Dickinson has F E D B in the bass. The notes should be F FE B; though this is obviously not Mr. Dickinson's responsibility but the engraver's.

(2) Bar 12: the second note in the soprano goes down to note A. Beethoven has a quaver rest, though admit- tedly it is written carelessly against the previous note E, and what looks like a note-head is clearly (as Mr. Dickinson says) on the second line of the staff. The phrase corresponds essentially to the descending phrase in the soprano in bar 6, and the descending phrase in the alto in bars 23-24.

(3) Bar 14: I think it is obvious that Beethoven inad- vertently omitted to end the alto phrase of the previous bar on the note F, leaving the alto part blank. Mr. Dickinson replaces the blank with a semibreve rest, thus leaving the phrase suspended uncomfortably in mid air.

(4) Bar 23: the third crotchet-group in the bass should be I instead of ! , though this is

probably only another playful prank on the part of the printer.

(5) Bar 25: in my opinion, the double-note A-C sharp in the bass should be a single minim note A. The MS. has a sort of vertically elongated note based on A, the upper part straying into the second space. I do not believe it was intended as a double-note, with or without the added sharp.

JACK WERNER 57 Marlborough Place, N.W.8.

Mr. Dickinson writes: I have no opportunity of re-examining the script at

the moment, but in the meantime should estimate that in Mr. Werner's first, second and fifth points he sug- gests a likely reading; in the third a reasonable correc- tion of a blank in the original text, and in the fourth corrects a misprint. As I explained in my February article, with such a fortuitously written text musical considerations must govern any decision between a literal and an approximate reading, the former being sometimes incredible. Incidentally, I have known of the fugue for a considerable time, and it is over a year since I established the exclusion of the piece from the Collected Works, 1851 catalogue and 1931 supple- mentary list cited, and satisfied myself in detail that, unlike the other pieces in the collection of sketches, the fugue is all but complete and is, in short, an integral addition to Beethoven's early works, flighty but totally a fugue. I did not ' stumble ' recently across the manu- script as Mr. Werner suggests. But I am glad to find that I am now in the company of an established prowler in the outskirts of the classical composers, if he will pardon the phrase. As he is evidently concerned to establish a clean text, I gather that Mr. Werner accepts my ruling on the other points I enumerate.

Composer and Critic In his comment on my quartet no. 3 (as, indeed, in

his advice to many another grateful composer) Mr. Donald Mitchell has given me much to think over. Giving composers advice, is, however, a tricky business, especially when it is based on a solitary hearing, without a score, of a complex piece in an unfamiliar idiom. Even an angel might fear to tread such ground.

Mr. Mitchell could have helped me by defining his terms. What does he mean by 'technique'? I am much gratified to learn from him that my 'technique' is ' good '. In all honesty I can say that I was unaware of this; now that he has informed me both of its exist- ence and high quality I shall, however, find it difficult to follow his advice that I 'should forget it'. So far as I have discovered, composing is the art of writing down what you imagine-I had no idea that there was more to it than that. Mr. Mitchell makes much of the

(1) Bar 6: Mr. Dickinson has F E D B in the bass. The notes should be F FE B; though this is obviously not Mr. Dickinson's responsibility but the engraver's.

(2) Bar 12: the second note in the soprano goes down to note A. Beethoven has a quaver rest, though admit- tedly it is written carelessly against the previous note E, and what looks like a note-head is clearly (as Mr. Dickinson says) on the second line of the staff. The phrase corresponds essentially to the descending phrase in the soprano in bar 6, and the descending phrase in the alto in bars 23-24.

(3) Bar 14: I think it is obvious that Beethoven inad- vertently omitted to end the alto phrase of the previous bar on the note F, leaving the alto part blank. Mr. Dickinson replaces the blank with a semibreve rest, thus leaving the phrase suspended uncomfortably in mid air.

(4) Bar 23: the third crotchet-group in the bass should be I instead of ! , though this is

probably only another playful prank on the part of the printer.

(5) Bar 25: in my opinion, the double-note A-C sharp in the bass should be a single minim note A. The MS. has a sort of vertically elongated note based on A, the upper part straying into the second space. I do not believe it was intended as a double-note, with or without the added sharp.

JACK WERNER 57 Marlborough Place, N.W.8.

Mr. Dickinson writes: I have no opportunity of re-examining the script at

the moment, but in the meantime should estimate that in Mr. Werner's first, second and fifth points he sug- gests a likely reading; in the third a reasonable correc- tion of a blank in the original text, and in the fourth corrects a misprint. As I explained in my February article, with such a fortuitously written text musical considerations must govern any decision between a literal and an approximate reading, the former being sometimes incredible. Incidentally, I have known of the fugue for a considerable time, and it is over a year since I established the exclusion of the piece from the Collected Works, 1851 catalogue and 1931 supple- mentary list cited, and satisfied myself in detail that, unlike the other pieces in the collection of sketches, the fugue is all but complete and is, in short, an integral addition to Beethoven's early works, flighty but totally a fugue. I did not ' stumble ' recently across the manu- script as Mr. Werner suggests. But I am glad to find that I am now in the company of an established prowler in the outskirts of the classical composers, if he will pardon the phrase. As he is evidently concerned to establish a clean text, I gather that Mr. Werner accepts my ruling on the other points I enumerate.

Composer and Critic In his comment on my quartet no. 3 (as, indeed, in

his advice to many another grateful composer) Mr. Donald Mitchell has given me much to think over. Giving composers advice, is, however, a tricky business, especially when it is based on a solitary hearing, without a score, of a complex piece in an unfamiliar idiom. Even an angel might fear to tread such ground.

Mr. Mitchell could have helped me by defining his terms. What does he mean by 'technique'? I am much gratified to learn from him that my 'technique' is ' good '. In all honesty I can say that I was unaware of this; now that he has informed me both of its exist- ence and high quality I shall, however, find it difficult to follow his advice that I 'should forget it'. So far as I have discovered, composing is the art of writing down what you imagine-I had no idea that there was more to it than that. Mr. Mitchell makes much of the

(1) Bar 6: Mr. Dickinson has F E D B in the bass. The notes should be F FE B; though this is obviously not Mr. Dickinson's responsibility but the engraver's.

(2) Bar 12: the second note in the soprano goes down to note A. Beethoven has a quaver rest, though admit- tedly it is written carelessly against the previous note E, and what looks like a note-head is clearly (as Mr. Dickinson says) on the second line of the staff. The phrase corresponds essentially to the descending phrase in the soprano in bar 6, and the descending phrase in the alto in bars 23-24.

(3) Bar 14: I think it is obvious that Beethoven inad- vertently omitted to end the alto phrase of the previous bar on the note F, leaving the alto part blank. Mr. Dickinson replaces the blank with a semibreve rest, thus leaving the phrase suspended uncomfortably in mid air.

(4) Bar 23: the third crotchet-group in the bass should be I instead of ! , though this is

probably only another playful prank on the part of the printer.

(5) Bar 25: in my opinion, the double-note A-C sharp in the bass should be a single minim note A. The MS. has a sort of vertically elongated note based on A, the upper part straying into the second space. I do not believe it was intended as a double-note, with or without the added sharp.

JACK WERNER 57 Marlborough Place, N.W.8.

Mr. Dickinson writes: I have no opportunity of re-examining the script at

the moment, but in the meantime should estimate that in Mr. Werner's first, second and fifth points he sug- gests a likely reading; in the third a reasonable correc- tion of a blank in the original text, and in the fourth corrects a misprint. As I explained in my February article, with such a fortuitously written text musical considerations must govern any decision between a literal and an approximate reading, the former being sometimes incredible. Incidentally, I have known of the fugue for a considerable time, and it is over a year since I established the exclusion of the piece from the Collected Works, 1851 catalogue and 1931 supple- mentary list cited, and satisfied myself in detail that, unlike the other pieces in the collection of sketches, the fugue is all but complete and is, in short, an integral addition to Beethoven's early works, flighty but totally a fugue. I did not ' stumble ' recently across the manu- script as Mr. Werner suggests. But I am glad to find that I am now in the company of an established prowler in the outskirts of the classical composers, if he will pardon the phrase. As he is evidently concerned to establish a clean text, I gather that Mr. Werner accepts my ruling on the other points I enumerate.

Composer and Critic In his comment on my quartet no. 3 (as, indeed, in

his advice to many another grateful composer) Mr. Donald Mitchell has given me much to think over. Giving composers advice, is, however, a tricky business, especially when it is based on a solitary hearing, without a score, of a complex piece in an unfamiliar idiom. Even an angel might fear to tread such ground.

Mr. Mitchell could have helped me by defining his terms. What does he mean by 'technique'? I am much gratified to learn from him that my 'technique' is ' good '. In all honesty I can say that I was unaware of this; now that he has informed me both of its exist- ence and high quality I shall, however, find it difficult to follow his advice that I 'should forget it'. So far as I have discovered, composing is the art of writing down what you imagine-I had no idea that there was more to it than that. Mr. Mitchell makes much of the

fact that I have been, in my time, poverty-stricken enough to take to music criticism, and his knowledge of this regrettable fact leads him to observe that the least satisfactory parts of my work are those in which 'the composer recedes in favour of the perceptive critic '.

Evidently he has his own ideas about the value of perceptive criticism; these prevent him from blundering into it himself. I am most grateful to him for a hint that in future I shall act upon. Henceforth I shall be as self-critical as possible, but not perceptively.

Your critic remarks that Carl Nielsen's influence on me is 'slight'; while I appreciate this tribute to my independence, may I remark that this influence is pervasive? He also refers to the length of the develop- ment in my second movement; this section is, in fact, the shortest part of the piece, concerning itself only slightly with what he calls the 'basic rhythm'. How valid is his assessment of the form of a work if he confuses its main issues and identifies what he thinks to be the development with the recapitulation? In view of this mishit, I should be intrigued to know what subtleties he professes to see in the work-in a scheme he erroneously imagines to be a 'kind of chamber- musical Introduction and Allegro'. What is an 'en- larged and subtle scale'? What are 'classical sym- pathies'? What is 'comparative orthodoxy of lan- guage'? Oh, for a stiff course in semantic discipline for our critical scribes (especially the perceptive ones)! The enjoyment of one's own vocables does not neces- sarily produce good sense.

ROBERT SIMPSON

Mr. Mitchell writes: Dr. Simpson's 'mishit' badly misfires. I criticized

the second movement of his third string quartet on two counts, in one sentence: ' It was surely this manifesta- tion of an academic conscience which resulted in the tedious prolongation of the finale's development and the exceptional repetitiveness of the movement's basic rhythm, though the latter may well be a dubious legacy from Schubert'. Dr. Simpson states that his development concerns itself' only slightly' with what I called the movement's 'basic rhythm', as if I had claimed the contrary. As may readily be seen, I hadn't.

From this mistaken interpretation of a straight- forward sentence he has obviously misunder- stood, Dr. Simpson draws the no less erroneous conclusion that the development and recapitulation of his movement are wrongly identified therein. But they aren't.

As for the length of his development, perhaps Dr. Simpson would have been better pleased-semantic- ally satisfied-if I had written that 'the shortest part of his piece ' was not short enough.

The Dubious Dot I had occasion recently to compile a list of metronome

marks from half a dozen well-known editions of the ' 48 '. (I found it an inane pastime, guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of any Bach lover.) Among the many curious diversities I find that no less than three (Bischoff, Kohler and-inevitably-Czerny) give dotted crotchets as the unit in the G major prelude of Book 1.

One can dismiss the omission of dots (Kohler, preludes in E and F, Book 1) as a typographical error, but one cannot understand their wholesale admission.

Semiquaver triplets in twenty-four/sixteen time played with a metronome dancing at 92/100 dotted crotchets baffles one as much as trying to play the E major prelude, Book 1, with an undotted crotchet at 104.

Thank goodness Bach was born before Maelzel!

GEOFFREY LAYCOCK

fact that I have been, in my time, poverty-stricken enough to take to music criticism, and his knowledge of this regrettable fact leads him to observe that the least satisfactory parts of my work are those in which 'the composer recedes in favour of the perceptive critic '.

Evidently he has his own ideas about the value of perceptive criticism; these prevent him from blundering into it himself. I am most grateful to him for a hint that in future I shall act upon. Henceforth I shall be as self-critical as possible, but not perceptively.

Your critic remarks that Carl Nielsen's influence on me is 'slight'; while I appreciate this tribute to my independence, may I remark that this influence is pervasive? He also refers to the length of the develop- ment in my second movement; this section is, in fact, the shortest part of the piece, concerning itself only slightly with what he calls the 'basic rhythm'. How valid is his assessment of the form of a work if he confuses its main issues and identifies what he thinks to be the development with the recapitulation? In view of this mishit, I should be intrigued to know what subtleties he professes to see in the work-in a scheme he erroneously imagines to be a 'kind of chamber- musical Introduction and Allegro'. What is an 'en- larged and subtle scale'? What are 'classical sym- pathies'? What is 'comparative orthodoxy of lan- guage'? Oh, for a stiff course in semantic discipline for our critical scribes (especially the perceptive ones)! The enjoyment of one's own vocables does not neces- sarily produce good sense.

ROBERT SIMPSON

Mr. Mitchell writes: Dr. Simpson's 'mishit' badly misfires. I criticized

the second movement of his third string quartet on two counts, in one sentence: ' It was surely this manifesta- tion of an academic conscience which resulted in the tedious prolongation of the finale's development and the exceptional repetitiveness of the movement's basic rhythm, though the latter may well be a dubious legacy from Schubert'. Dr. Simpson states that his development concerns itself' only slightly' with what I called the movement's 'basic rhythm', as if I had claimed the contrary. As may readily be seen, I hadn't.

From this mistaken interpretation of a straight- forward sentence he has obviously misunder- stood, Dr. Simpson draws the no less erroneous conclusion that the development and recapitulation of his movement are wrongly identified therein. But they aren't.

As for the length of his development, perhaps Dr. Simpson would have been better pleased-semantic- ally satisfied-if I had written that 'the shortest part of his piece ' was not short enough.

The Dubious Dot I had occasion recently to compile a list of metronome

marks from half a dozen well-known editions of the ' 48 '. (I found it an inane pastime, guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of any Bach lover.) Among the many curious diversities I find that no less than three (Bischoff, Kohler and-inevitably-Czerny) give dotted crotchets as the unit in the G major prelude of Book 1.

One can dismiss the omission of dots (Kohler, preludes in E and F, Book 1) as a typographical error, but one cannot understand their wholesale admission.

Semiquaver triplets in twenty-four/sixteen time played with a metronome dancing at 92/100 dotted crotchets baffles one as much as trying to play the E major prelude, Book 1, with an undotted crotchet at 104.

Thank goodness Bach was born before Maelzel!

GEOFFREY LAYCOCK

fact that I have been, in my time, poverty-stricken enough to take to music criticism, and his knowledge of this regrettable fact leads him to observe that the least satisfactory parts of my work are those in which 'the composer recedes in favour of the perceptive critic '.

Evidently he has his own ideas about the value of perceptive criticism; these prevent him from blundering into it himself. I am most grateful to him for a hint that in future I shall act upon. Henceforth I shall be as self-critical as possible, but not perceptively.

Your critic remarks that Carl Nielsen's influence on me is 'slight'; while I appreciate this tribute to my independence, may I remark that this influence is pervasive? He also refers to the length of the develop- ment in my second movement; this section is, in fact, the shortest part of the piece, concerning itself only slightly with what he calls the 'basic rhythm'. How valid is his assessment of the form of a work if he confuses its main issues and identifies what he thinks to be the development with the recapitulation? In view of this mishit, I should be intrigued to know what subtleties he professes to see in the work-in a scheme he erroneously imagines to be a 'kind of chamber- musical Introduction and Allegro'. What is an 'en- larged and subtle scale'? What are 'classical sym- pathies'? What is 'comparative orthodoxy of lan- guage'? Oh, for a stiff course in semantic discipline for our critical scribes (especially the perceptive ones)! The enjoyment of one's own vocables does not neces- sarily produce good sense.

ROBERT SIMPSON

Mr. Mitchell writes: Dr. Simpson's 'mishit' badly misfires. I criticized

the second movement of his third string quartet on two counts, in one sentence: ' It was surely this manifesta- tion of an academic conscience which resulted in the tedious prolongation of the finale's development and the exceptional repetitiveness of the movement's basic rhythm, though the latter may well be a dubious legacy from Schubert'. Dr. Simpson states that his development concerns itself' only slightly' with what I called the movement's 'basic rhythm', as if I had claimed the contrary. As may readily be seen, I hadn't.

From this mistaken interpretation of a straight- forward sentence he has obviously misunder- stood, Dr. Simpson draws the no less erroneous conclusion that the development and recapitulation of his movement are wrongly identified therein. But they aren't.

As for the length of his development, perhaps Dr. Simpson would have been better pleased-semantic- ally satisfied-if I had written that 'the shortest part of his piece ' was not short enough.

The Dubious Dot I had occasion recently to compile a list of metronome

marks from half a dozen well-known editions of the ' 48 '. (I found it an inane pastime, guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of any Bach lover.) Among the many curious diversities I find that no less than three (Bischoff, Kohler and-inevitably-Czerny) give dotted crotchets as the unit in the G major prelude of Book 1.

One can dismiss the omission of dots (Kohler, preludes in E and F, Book 1) as a typographical error, but one cannot understand their wholesale admission.

Semiquaver triplets in twenty-four/sixteen time played with a metronome dancing at 92/100 dotted crotchets baffles one as much as trying to play the E major prelude, Book 1, with an undotted crotchet at 104.

Thank goodness Bach was born before Maelzel!

GEOFFREY LAYCOCK

320 320 320 June 1955 June 1955 June 1955

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Mon, 8 Dec 2014 02:28:57 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions