Klarinet Archive - Posting 000029.txt from 1994/04

From: James Langdell <James.Langdell@-----.COM>
Subj: More woodwind poems
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 18:23:16 -0400

As requested by some folks, here are the verses for
other woodwinds and their players, from "People of Note"
by Laurence McKinney (1940):

THE WOODWINDS

The name is quickly understood:
They're full of wind, they're made of wood*

*Except for the flute which is usually metal.

[Footnote by the poet.--JL]

FLUTE
[The Gluyas Williams illustration shows a piccolo player--JL]

First of the woodwinds we salute
The clever rogue who plays the FLUTE
He points his pipe the other way
Fixes his lips and starts to play.
To sound those notes--so chaste, so pure--
He blows across the embouchure
Which gives him, pardon the digression,
A strangely squirrel-like expression.
These queer highhanded players know
Another trick--the PICCOLO--
Just half as long and twice as shrill
It paralyses ears at will.
(Our artist, I deplore the fact,
has caught him in the very act.)
The flautist's task is the pursuit
Of toot and nothing but the toot.

OBOE

Hard to pronounce and play, the OBOE--
(With cultured folk it rhymes with "doughboy"
Though many an intellectual hobo
Insists that we should call it oboe)
However, be that as it may,
Wheneve'er the oboe shounds its A
All of the others start their tuning
And there is fiddling and bassooning.
Its plaintive note presaging gloom
Brings anguish to the concert room,
Even the player holds his breath
And scares the audience to death
For fear he may get off the key,
Which ahppens not infrequently.
This makes the saying understood:
"It's an ill wood wind no one blows good."

[I think the final quote was from Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary."--JL]

ENGLISH HORN

The ENGLISH HORN I must reveal
Has no conneciton with John Peel;
In fact Old John would find it meaner
To play on than a vacuum cleaner.
Its tone would make his horses skittish
For it is enigher horn--nor British.
Some call it--to increase this tangle--
The Cor Anglais--or horn with angle--
Concerning which I'm glad to state
The English Horn is long and straight.
Its misery and constant dwelling
On tragedy has caused a swelling
Just where the doleful note emerges;
Imbued with melancholy surges
This makes an English Horn cadenza
Sound fearfully like influenza.

CLARINET

The happiest of the woodwinds yet
The liquid, limpid CLARINET,
Here is the instrument that's best
Wherewith to soothe the savage breast,
Invade a cobra's bailiwick,
Accompany a Hindu trick,
Or charm a tiger, stop a leopard
Or just to imitate a shepherd.
Its upper notes, uplifting, gay,
Make children dance their cares away
While others gurgled soft and deep
Give listeners a needed sleep.
And yet, should clarinetists plan
To sport like Fauns and play like Pan
And dance in amorous gyrations--
Congress would start investigations.

[Sorry, no poem about Eb or bass clarinets.--JL]

BASSOON

"The wedding guest here beat his breast
For he heard--" I'm sure you know the rest,
But readers constantly infer
It was the Ancient Mariner
That spoiled his day and changed his tune,
Ah, no,-- "he heard the loud BASSOON."
This half a cord of wooden plumbing
Enjoys the habit of becoming
First deep and dismal, fierce and snarly,
Then laughing at you jocularly.
(A contra-bassoon can be had
Just twice as long and twice as sad.)
Italians call this bag of tricks
"Fagotto" (meaning "bunch of sticks")
Which helps to clarify the notto
I cling to: "Horn but not fagotto."

That's all the woodwinds. We clarinetists come off
best of the lot, I think.

I can't resist adding what I think is the wittiest of
the whole collection. Keep in mind that this was written
more than 50 years ago when reading the first two lines.

HARP

If there's one lady in the bunch
To find her takes no special hunch
Nor sight particularly sharp
She is the girl who hugs the HARP.
The very longest tuner-upper
She has to have an early supper
And seated on a lonesome chair
Proceeds to wind up the affair.
Then she will sit and sit and wait,
Dispassionate and desolate,
Till the conductor's nod, or frown,
Sets her to stroking up and down.
And after these chromatic bits--
She simply sits and sits and sits.
A harpist must have lots of pluck--
A black silk costume--and a truck.

--James Langdell jamesc@-----.com
Sun Microsystems Mountain View, Calif.