Musica retorica, Musica poetica, Musica romantica

Voici un récital de clarinette et piano très peu habituel, car nous aurons l’occasion d’entendre des clarinettes de la première moitié du 19^ème siècle et un ancien piano Pleyel, par Juan Ullibarri & Robert Kania. Au programme, des œuvres de Clara et Robert Schumann etde Frédéric Chopin

Musica retorica, Musica poetica, Musica romantica

The title seems to suggest development, but this is not the case here.

Contrary to appearances, music of the romantism has a lot in common with baroque music rhetoric. Romantic creators use ancient composer techniques, ancient rhetoric figures, only modulations and decorative additives are, let’s say, ‘romantic’. I was the French Revolution that changed the approach towards the art. The new order in art focused on man and his feelings, at the expense of creating in the name of the Creator and his praise. Despite these changes, God - Absolute remained an extremely important inspiration for creators, while music remained the voice of sounds. Humans of the Romantic age still needed the existence of a superior being in order to be able to create, understand his art and be understood. It must not be overlooked that the human voice, as in the previous epochs, continued to be an indicator of creation of the beauty. And singing is a legato but articulated. It is therefore not just a matter of combining sounds, but of doing so with understanding. This method of performance implicates that a melody with accompaniment becomes a dialogue and not a melody with added accords. Mention should also be made of the extremely important role of text in music. It is the text that determines the nature of the piece, the choice of modulation, the type of ornaments. The importance of individual melodic returns should therefore be discovered in instrumental works. Understanding this will make us aware of how much romantic music has in common with baroque rhetoric.

Hence, the title: Musica retorica, Musica poetica, Musica romantica.

Some information about  the clarinets we use in this recital. They are the romantic 12th keys instruments .One is an original ( C clarinet from H. Kayser)and  two are copies (B and A from Bischoff )both were famous German makers contemporaries from Schumann. With the 12th key instruments is easy to achieve what Fetis in his Biographie Universelle (1839-1841) describe as German style “the accuracy in the execution of difficulties and the beautiful expressive style, the soft quality of sound”. In this time the clarinettists in their methods (for example Beer and Backofen) stress keeping the sound alive through the choice of fingering and the shaping of long notes. With the exception of the low register, they use the old cross fingerings and avoid to use the keys (just the opposite  way as we do in our times). For the musicians in this time a sensitive note in a melody should be heard as high as possible, and the old fingering with his imperfections and difficulties  to play equal in all clefs( heritage from the 5th key Mozart time instrument) had his advantages. As the famous clarinet and teacher Backofen wrote “Only the bare notes, played without feeling and expression, tell us nothing “ his talking about Musica retorica.