Klarinet Archive - Posting 000571.txt from 1997/02

From: CLARK FOBES <reedman@-----.COM>
Subj: Male & Female players / natural ability
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 20:54:32 -0500

The fact that there are more men playing the clarinet than
women has mostly to do with the ingrained sexism in the classical music
scene. Fortunatley, we are beginning to see a break away from that
tradition.

There was a very interesting article published in the "Busines
Section" of the San Francisco Chronicle that spoke about the disparity
of male and female populations in symphonic orchestras. There has been
a dramatic increase in the number of women in US Orchestras since the
mid 60's due primarily to the "blind audition". The Boston Symphony was
the first orchestra to institute this policy way back in the 1950's. It
has taken time for other orchestras to follow suit, but it is
happening. Consequently, women are being hired in much greater numbers
based on ability alone.

It makes sense that as more women make it into the Symphonic work
scene that more women will be encouraged to compete with men for the
same jobs.

I find it absolutely idiotic to think that men are inherently
better clarinetists (or musicians) than women. One of the absolute
finest clarinetsits of our time is a woman - Sabine Meyer.

NATURAL ABILITY/ NEIL LEUPOLD'S COMMENTS

In a nutshell, Neil maintains that anyone can overcome difficulties
on the clarinets with, in his personal experience, a LOT of practice.

Wel Neil, as much as I admire your ability to make things work
through practice, I think you singular experience is not a definition
of the norm.If one were to accept Neil's position we would have to
throw out the idea of natural ability and musical "gifts" . To take an
extreme example let's look at Mozart. He was composing Operas by the
time he was 13. I don't think it was a matter of hours of practice. He
had a gift, a supreme gift.

We all have gifts in greater or lesser degrees, some very obvious.
I have a good friend who would really like to be a great bass clarinet
player, yet this person has extremely small hands and will, quite
frankly, never be able to negotiate the instrument with virtuousity due
to physical limitations. In regards to tonguing, some people just have
a physiology that promotes an extremely fast tongue. I don't have an
extremely fast tongue, but instead of beating my head against the wall
to improve my tongue speed by one or two points I have learned double
tonguing. I understand my limitations.

Even though I do not teach any more, I once had over 30 students
per week. It becomes quite apparent when you teach that many children
that some just have more natural ability than others. It is this
natural ability or natural affinity that most often draws a person to
be a musician, writer, artist or whatever. We are not all created equal
when it comes to physical, mental or artistic gifts AND THANK GOD!

Clark

   
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