Klarinet Archive - Posting 000314.txt from 1995/06

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Neil Leupold and Nichelle Crocker are my favorite people!!
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 1995 16:11:28 -0400

The necessity to have a precise, unambiguous terminology that describes
what we need to do to play well is something about which I have spoken
about on many occasions and it warms my heart to see two articulate,
intelligent people say these same things in ways that I did not, and
maybe even better.

I have yelled and hollered so much as "dark" and "bright" sound terminology
that I see people using these terms in their notes with comments appended
such as "Sorry Dan." Well, maybe they are thinking about the words more
carefully. It is not a battle that one wins or loses overnight.

I saw a review of a concert last week in which the reviewer had the
gall to say that "The performer did not have that 'je ne sais quoi' that
one needs to get into the high ranks of creative artists."

The phrase "Je ne sais quos" means "I don't know what." So what the
reviewer was saying was that the play did not have something, but he
did not know what it was. However, whatever it was, he or she needed
a lot more of it to get anywhere. Does any business anywhere in the
world need bullshit like that to keep it running?

There is a great deal of truth in the story about the conductor who
raved on for 1 minute to the oboeist telling him how he wanted the
work played with passion and fire, but a soupcon of delicate character,
... and on and on and on. And the oboeist said, "Do you want it loud
or soft?"

There is too much meaningless, ambiguous, unspecific terminology in
music and I think that clarinet players have the majority of it.
No one can improve if they are unable to understand exactly what they
need to do to improve. To tell a young student that he needs a darker
sound is to tell him/her something that is meaningless to them.

I don't mean to jump on dark and light again. I am not doing that. I
simply used that as an example of a broader problem touched on so
well by Neal and Nichelle.

We are in a very emotional business. If we use imprecise terminology in
describing it, the combination of emotionality and imprecision makes what
we do untransmittable to anyone.

Accuracy. Precision. Specificity. Terminology. Unambiguity.

That is what we need.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================