Klarinet Archive - Posting 000353.txt from 1995/06

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Before I sign off the list for the summer in 2 weeks
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 15:53:04 -0400

Off to Alaska and gone much of the summer but I did want to
take a final swipe at Clarke Fobes (who is not permitted to use
responses to my clever ripostes as reason to fail to complete
work on the Buffet basset horn being taken with me to Europe
on June 29).

I don't accuse Clark of duplicity when he speaks of the
importance of emotional intangibles in teaching the clarinet.
I don't even object to the occasional use of it, because it does
little real harm to try to achieve imagery through the use
supplementary though imprecise terminology, providing that
one has been clear and articulate to begin with. But what
starts as a small sin gets worse and worse, more and more
vague though with greater and greater acceptance, until finally,
rationality is completely abandoned and the whole universe
winds up using vague, unstructured, and frequently incorrect
(or meaningless) descriptors.

It is nothing more or less than "The Emperor Has No Clothes."

I saw a review of the finalists for a big, BIG international
clarinet competition. Neidich was one of the finalists and he
did not win. No one won. So what did one judge say to justify
his not concluding on a winner? In substance (but not an
accurate quote), he said, "None of the players had a true
understanding of the real Mozart style needed to play K. 626."
He didn't say that they played badly or out of tune or made
wrong notes or had no rhythm. They were lacking something
in this person's mind and he tried to describe what the thing
was that they were lacking; i.e., they didn't have a true
understanding of the real Mozart style needed for the piece.
That's clear enough. Isn't it?

I wasn't there. I don't know what happened, but I did read the
judge's assertion over and over and over. First, I placed myself
in the position of being a reader trying to understand what
happened.

As a reader of his remarks I concluded that the players had an
understanding of Mozart style, but that it was not the "true"
understanding, nor was it the "real" Mozart style. That sure as
hell didn't help me understand what was wrong. I was
interested! Why didn't someone win? Considering the fact
that my observation of the reviewer led me to the belief that he
would not have known what Mozart style (true, false, or
country/western) was if it bit him on the ass, I was unable to
assimilate what the players did wrong. Maybe they played
lousy. Who knows. The reviewer is supposed to tell me what
was wrong that disabled any of these players from winning. He
or she did not do that. S/he told me doo-doo and I won't stand
for it. The entire clarinet playing world should have risen up
and shot the reviewer for making incomprehensible statements
by which no one in the world should be judged, put his head on
a pike, and thrown his body to ravenous dogs. Maybe the next
time the judge would be more specific.

Then I put myself in the shoes of participants. And having
read the remarks, I concluded that they were correct. I really
did not have a "true" understanding of the "real" Mozart style.
I am going to have to fix that problem if I ever want to get
ahead in the world of clarinet playing. So I take every catalog
of every music school in the world and start looking for
planned programs, course, seminars, lectures, studies, degree
programs, etc. that will give me a "true" understanding of the
"real" Mozart style.

That's funny. There are lots of seminars, but none of them are
advertising themselves as the "true" or "real" ones. Maybe the
person who said that I did not have it is giving such a seminar.
No. He or she does not. So the bottom line is that I want to
do the things that it is said I cannot do, but there isn't anyone
out there who will teach me the "true" way.

How do I buy this commodity? How do I improve? With whom
shall I study so as to rid myself of the awful disgrace of not
having a "true" understanding of the "real" Mozart style. Will
no one tell me what those things are? They must exists or else
someone would have said, "That reviewer is an emperor who is
not wearing any clothes!". No one said that. The contest was
over. I lost.

That is exactly what is wrong with using bullshit in one's
disciplined conversations about music. It means nothing except
as a statement about how the person saying it feels. It
communicates no information whereby one can understand and
correct an alleged problem, and it has no useful purpose except
to express something badly because the person stating it was
ill-equipped to express it properly, clearly, precisely, and
unambiguously.

Our whole musical life is to be surrounded by feelings and
intuition. Therefore we presume that that is the right way to
transmit information to others who will also soon enter into
that same world of feeling and intuition. So instead of
describing a sound character in way that it might be achieved
through mechanical means, we say, "Play with a dark sound."
and hope that the student will understand what the hell we
mean. Maybe it is only I who don't know what a dark sound
is.

The emperor has no clothes.

In the middle ages there was always a philosopher around
ready to turn baser metals into gold. You could always tell who
a philosopher was because when they spoke, you could not
understand a single word they said. They spoke of "fluxions"
and "intramurography" and terminology that had no meaning,
but rather than admit that they did not understand what the
philosopher was talking about, people nodded wisely and
agreed that "fluxions" should (or should not) be present.

The emperor has no clothes.

Now that is an extreme case, to be sure. But when I hear some
16 year old on this list ask about how to get "that nice dark
sound," I envision him looking for the philosopher's stone that
will turn a baser metal into gold. Looking for an instrument
that will give someone that "nice dark sound" is a lot more easy
than going through the exhausting work that will enable one to
achieve whatever it is they are looking for.

The use of imprecise and unspecific terminology makes us all
into philosophers. Clarinet playing is not an art that can be
discussed at a philosophical level. It is a science that has a
technical solution for every problem that arises. Some of those
technical solutions have not yet been discovered, but that does
not mean that we can fall back on our philosopher's stone
solution and say, "This is an art. God will show us the way."
I know that this is a posture that has been taken by no one; I
am using it only to magnify the extreme end to which one goes
the minute you let down your guard and start thinking of
yourself as "an artist not bound by rules, only by our emotions."
That is what Isadora Duncan used to think and she got
strangled!!

One of the reasons why we tolerate this imprecise terminology
to describe certain aspects of the clarinet is that we do not
want to admit that we don't have solutions to certain problems,
such as precisely what to do physically to create a beautiful
sound character on the instrument (and I am not even sure
what "beautiful" means). So being unable to say exactly what
needs to be done (even if it is possible to know that), we then
fall back onto "fluxions" and the philosopher's stone by saying,
"It's that nice dark sound that I want you to get." And the
student gulps and say's "Yessir!" just like he knows what we're
talking about.

And the worst part is that we believe (we think) we are
transmitting information of value. We belong to that class of
people who think that the emperor is wearing beautiful clothes.

I have used a lot of "we" in the above, but that is literary
license, not a statement of statistical truth. I make no
accusations about anyone else going around like the naked
emperor.

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