Klarinet Archive - Posting 000288.txt from 1995/07

From: Stephen Cranefield <stephen@-----.NZ>
Subj: Reed on top
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 21:01:38 -0400

Sal Lozano writes:
> Come on people. Let's step up the pace here.
>
> Have we exhausted all other clarinet topics?
> Is it time to talk about experimenting with playing the mouthpiece upside
> down?

Actually I've been meaning to post a message about this for a while.
I recently saw the French film "The Accompanist" and one scene
featured a performance of Shepherd on the Rock with the clarinettist
playing with the reed on top (i.e. with the mouthpiece rotated so that
the reed was against the player's upper lip). This scene was set in
Vichy, France during World War II. I know that this was once the norm
in clarinet playing, but I thought it had died out well before the
20th century. Flicking through Rendall's "The Clarinet: Some notes on
its history and construction" I came across the following passage:

In the early 1780s [Frederic] Beer left Paris and, passing through
Belgium, heard for the first time ... a German clarinettist named
Schwartz. Struck by the the superiority of his tone over his own,
especially by its soft expressive quality, he applied himself to
reform his style and possible his embouchure. After some months of
study he was able to add the German tone to his considerable
technique and brilliance. Wherein lay the difference of tone? Had
Tausch and other German players already adopted the practice of
playing with the reed downwards? We do not know. In 1818, it may
be noted, a writer in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung counselled
all clarinettists to to play with the reed downwards. `By doing
so,' he says, `they may lose some of the high notes, but will gain
the whole instrument.' From this it may be inferred that some at
least of the German players had already adopted the modern
embouchure.
(Third Edition, Ernest Benn Ltd., p. 81)

The film suggests that either there were still players using the "reed
on top" embouchure in France in the 1940s (and the film was
historically accurate) or that there are still people playing like
that today and it just happens that the clarinettist used in the film
is one of them. Can anyone shed any light on this?

- Stephen

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Stephen Cranefield Phone: +64 3 479 8083
Department of Information Science Fax: 479 8311
University of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealand E-mail: scranefield@-----.nz
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