Klarinet Archive - Posting 000081.txt from 1994/11

From: Michael Drapkin <Michael.Drapkin@-----.COM>
Subj: Bass Clarinet Stature & Berg
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 1994 08:09:34 -0500

Lee Callet:

Your comments are well taken. Crowded airplanes are
a personal pet pieve of mine - especially when the person
in front pushes their seat all of the way back. I too have
experienced problems with the large size of the Selmer
low C bass clarinet: one time I did a concert tour to
Japan, where the chairs on stage were the size of the ones
we had in elementary school (make that EARLY elementary
school), and I had the peg pushed in so far that the instrument
was almost sitting on the bell. I'm not sure how short
Japanese bass clarinetists are able to wield their instruments...

Christopher Zello:

I did in fact excerptize the Berg concerto in the key that it
appeared in the score. Excerpts I had obtained from my
former mentor Gary Gray were in the same format - these
came originally from a bass clarinet audition for the Boston
Symphony where he was runner-up (this was when Rosario
Mazzeo won the job) - so I included these for study
purposes. Later on I performed the Berg in NYC, and
obtained a nice transposed part (Bb, treble clef) which
made life easy. I've toyed about publishing a book of
transposed parts performance ready for the bass clarinet,
but I want to finally finish Vol. II first. Some publishers
have retypeset some of their works with transposed bass
clarinet parts. Reading A bass clarinet in bass clef is
a pain, no doubt about it, but reading bass clef is a
must. Good question, though.

When I was a Tanglewood fellow in 1978 I asked
Gunther Schuller why he wrote the bass clarinet part to
his Duo in A. He replied (Gunther was a horn player)
that "everyone should know how to transpose and that
it would be a good exercise for bass clarinetists."
Draw your own conclusions.