Klarinet Archive - Posting 000085.txt from 1994/02

From: Cary Karp <nrm-karp@-----.SE>
Subj: Re: Vibrato (not just about bagpipes, either)
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 03:41:24 -0500

On Tue, 8 Feb 1994, Niall O'Byrne wrote:

> Other than that both are Celtic instruments and unless there is a different
> emotional flavour to Irish music as against Scottish the use of finger
> vibrato and finger bends should be the same-ish.

The Highland bagpipes do not use any of the tonehole shading techniques
that pervade Irish wind playing. The are, however, numerous other
Scottish bagpipes and I would also assume that finger vibrato is likely
to be used on at least some of them.

What the whole thing boils down to is that vibrato is very clearly one of
the devices that humankind regards as an expressive facet of music. In
the present-day Western classical tradition (for lack of a better term)
it is often regarded as a romantic affect. But then romanticism is pretty
surely also one of those things that has popped up here and there in various
musical contexts during the course of the millenia.

I'll write at greater length about the mechanics of clarinet vibrato as
soon as I get a chance, but this aspect of the matter is of minimal
musical consequence. The question is why vibrato is used in certain musical
contexts but not in others.