When It All Clicks
When I was an even younger man, a few decades ago, I had a unique opportunity. I was engaged to play the Mozart ‘Symphonie Concertante’ with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Neville Marriner conducting. We did it not just once but 6 times.
These were not the first concerts I had played under Marriner’s baton. Having been a member of the chamber orchestra for two years I knew his abilities well.
He was, at that time, I very tidy musician. A violinist himself he understood string playing and knew where the technical challenges were. He used rehearsal time efficiently.
What he didn’t know was how to get an orchestra to ‘flow,’ particularly in Mozart. For one thing his beat was rather pedestrian. More importantly, however, was he didn’t understand the subtlety of Mozart’s meters.
Many Mozart first movements have what I would call a ‘subdivided two’ feel. They are not really in four and they are not in two either. They are in an in between meter where the second and fourth quarters of the measure receive less stress than one and three.
Conductors, for some reason, have trouble with the beat pattern that must be used to indicate this.
When we began rehearsals for these concerts it became quickly apparent that Marriner was not going to place the orchestra in this deliciously subtle meter. He beat the music in ‘common time’, 4/4.
I appealed to him several times. ‘Can we play this movement in a subdivided two,’ I implored.
‘Quite,’ he would respond, in his crisp English accent. Again we would start the music, and again he would conduct in four. He could not hear that his beat pattern was in opposition to his intellectual intent. The music, therefore, could not flow.
We played five very tidy, competent performances this way. Always impeccable, always clean, always Flat.
At the last performance, however, something happened. Partly it was the orchestra and both soloists taking matters into their own hands, partly it was the overflowing audience (the presenters had to set up a camera and broadcast the performance into an adjoining space), and partly in was the ‘Maestro’ showing the beginnings of a subdivided two beat pattern.
In any case, it all clicked.
Not just the first movement but the whole piece (the last movement is in another ‘subdivided’ meter). And it was one of the most satisfying experiences of my career.
The reason I’ve related the story isn’t to make myself feel good, or to ‘dis’ Neville Marriner.
Give this a try in your own playing of ‘classical period’ music. Consider counting ‘one-and-two-and’ instead of ‘one-two-three-four’ in the first movement Allegros. In finales, marked in ‘two’, try thinking, or counting, in a subdivided one – one-and-one-and.
There are exceptions to this. But only enough to prove the rule.
All the best,
Clayton Haslop
P.S. The days are a getttin’ noticeably shorter. So is the time before I will raise the price on the Masterclass/Seminar.
