Klarinet Archive - Posting 000913.txt from 1997/03

From: Douglas Barton <DOBARTON@-----.NET>
Subj: questions
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 22:06:00 -0500

Greetings.
I have a couple of questions that I hope people won't find stupid.

1. I am performing Rachmaninov's Vocalise tomorrow night for Good
Friday Service. Does anyone have useful background for the piece.
Mostly I'm curious what prompted the writing of such a sorrowful piece.
It's hard not to feel the grief as you listen to or play the tune.

2. Secondly, I took a recent plunge which I don't regret but has raised
some questions for me. I was playing on an old Alexandria hard rubber B
clarinet. All the talk of wood clarinets encouraged me to go out and
buy one. The place I went to had a few Selmer's I could try. The first
was a student model and I found I actually liked the tone on the hard
rubber one better. Then he showed me a Selmer Series 10. That had a
much nicer tone as I played it. I was using a broken in Rico 3 1/2 and
a metal ligature on a plastic mouthpiece. Then I asked about
mouthpieces and settled on a Bari BDF 3. I was still using the metal
ligature and same reed. I loved the way it made the low tones resonate
and the high tones were no more difficult to play and the tone seemed
good. He then gave me the Luyben ligature that went with the Selmer
mouthpiece which I didn't buy. I didn't try the ligature in my
ignorance.
When I got home, I was of course excited about the purchase and started
playing. Well, kind of playing. I found that with the Luyben ligature,
I had to use much more air support to produce the same sound on the same
reed. In fact, I had to drop to a 2 1/2 initially. I'm now back on a
3. A 3 1/2 is at best difficult for me to play and at worst impossible.
Any comments or thoughts on what the difference is? Why does the
Luyben require so much more support? Am I going to find the same
difference if/when I switch to a Rovner as most people on the list seem
to advocate? Just curious.

3. Lastly, on Emma Johnson's CD Encores, there is a tune by Paul Harvey
called Etude on "It Ain't Necessarily So." About two minutes into the
tune, it sounds like she plays a scale without changing fingerings.
Does anyone else know what I'm talking about? Am I hearing this
correctly? If so, how? I didn't think you could change notes without
changing fingerings...

Please forgive my ignorance if these seem like obvious questions. Even
so, I was once told there are no dumb questions. I suspect the truth is
that there is bad timing and audiences to ask questions of.

Thanks in advance,
Doug Barton,
St. Louis