Klarinet Archive - Posting 000534.txt from 1997/02

From: Virginia Scarfino <scarfinv@-----.NET>
Subj: Odds 'n Sods
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 19:00:52 -0500

Just catching up on mail from the last few days, and thought I'd make a
couple of comments.

One summer at a CAMMAC music camp, someone asked our clarinet coach (who
was also a saxophonist), Paul Bendza, the difference between the clarinet
and sax embouchures. He summarized it for us in very simple terms (i.e. a
generality rather than finely detailed specifics!). He said to think of a
sax embouchure being the size of a quarter, blowing warm air, and a
clarinet embouchure being the size of a dime, blowing cool air.

On breathing, my clarinet teacher used to help me with phrasing etc. in my
pieces and encouraged me to breath at the logical points in the music, but
used also say, if you need a breath, breathe! -but do it musically. By
this he meant don't clip notes as you gasp for a breath, or if in a long
series of many sixteenth notes, look for a spot or two where you can
conveniently drop one or two in favor of grabbing a quick catch breath to
help you make it to the end of the phrase.

On breathing, my piano teacher (whom I started studying piano with, after
many previous years of clarinet lessons), marvelled at how she didn't have
to tell me to breathe when playing the piano. All music requires
"breathing", regardless of whether or not it is being played on a wind
instrument. Because of all my years playing a wind instrument, I guess I
played the piano as if it were a wind instrument - and my teacher sure
liked it! I'd do things like breathe in, in tempo, at the beginning of a
piece, at the beginning of a phrase, etc. My teacher used to say how
disconcerting it is for an audience to listen to music played in incredibly
long phrases, longer than a natural breath - not breathing in the music is
sort of like asking your audience to hold their breath too! All you have
to do is go listen to some really wonderful string quartets performing
live, and you'll see how important breathing is for them in their music.

Ginny Scarfino
Waterloo, Ontario
scarfinv@-----.net