Margaret Mikulska replies to Mike Leghorn:
>>Call it myth if you will, but I'll let my ears be the judge, and to my
>>ears, the themes from Bastien und Basteinne and the Eroica are identical,
>>and not by coincidence.
>
>Your ears are a poor judge - check the score. The themes are not
>identical.
I checked the score, and I realize now that I couldn't have been more
wrong! After doing some research, I became aware of a unique technology,
used by composers and performers of Mozart's and Beethoven's time, which
resulted in music sounding different from what the score indicated. Mozart
and Haydn had a lot of fun with this technology, and used it to communicate
jokes to each other. For example, if you look at the score to Mozart's
38th Symphony (Prague), and play the notes in your head, you'll be
surprised to find that it is actually Haydn's 86th Symphony. And that's
only the half of it: if you look at the score to Haydn's 86th Symphony,
you'll find that they are the notes to Mozart's 38th Symphony. However,
by applying this technology for modulating notes, whenever Mozart's 38th
Symphony is played, it sounds like Mozart's 38th Symphony, and whenever
Haydn's 86th is played it sounds like Haydn's 86th Symphony.
>It also takes a tiny bit of intellectual effort to find out if the composer
>in question could have been familiar with the work in question. This is,
>however, beyond many people's ability. ANd, more importantly, willingness.
Now, about Mozart's Bastien overture: My ears really fooled me this time!
Upon consulting the score, I was surprised to find that it was scored for
Kazoo band, marimbas, Ondes Martenot, and 20 off stage zithers (submerged
in Jell-O -- not the zithers themselves, but just the players). Not only
were the instrumental forces drastically different from what my hearing had
suggested, but the notes were different also. What sounded like the Eroica
theme was actually an inverted, retrograde, 12 tone row, with 8 tones
missing, taken from a Bach choral, but turned inside out, and shifted up
about two meters, so as to sound like the inside-out version of a previous
piano sonata by someone whose name I can't remember -- I'll get back to you
with the name. Also, my ears totally missed the accompanying trombone
glissandi. It's amazing how much light my musicological endeavors has shed
on my total musical awareness. The way I've been doing it before, which
was listening to music, is for the birds!
Mike
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