Klarinet Archive - Posting 000102.txt from 1994/03

From: "Robert E. Winston" <ab228@-----.EDU>
Subj: Why Shouldn't We be Better Players? (was: Mozart a
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 02:26:31 -0500

I found myself agreeing with your post about the "perennial problem of
youth vs age" right up until you quoted something I said.

> And I even saw on this list a note making reference to
> Stubbins book on clarinet playing that contained the phrase
> "good for its day" as if somehow there has been a major
> revolution in how to play the clarinet since Stubbins stopped
> teaching just 20 or so years ago, maybe 30.

Stubbins' book "The Art of Clarinetistry" wasn't about art, it was about
the mechanics of clarinet playing. What we know now about mechanics,
acoustics, instrument design, materials and all that neat techno stuff is
way past what Stubbins knew, even if he could play the Mozart concerto as
well as anyone today.

That book - and I must confess, this is from memory, I read it over 25
years ago - that book is like my 1976 manual for the TRS-80 computer -
"good for its day".

If you were to go through it (the Stubbins book or the computer manual)
with a red pencil and cross out everything that's now obsolete, it would
look like it was bleeding profusely.

But going back to your thesis, why shouldn't we be better players today
than the players of say 30 years ago? We have the advantage of the
accumulated experience, both technical and artistic, that they had - they
taught us, after all - plus everything that has come since. If that doesn't
make us better players, then why do we spend so much money for these modern
instruments and why do we waste our time on all this musicological
research.

Not to pick on poor old Stubbins, but if he could play the Mozart as well
as we can, maybe we've been wasting time researching Wolfgang, his life and
times, that could be more productively used practicing our Albert system
clarinets.

________
Robert_E._Winston@-----.com