Klarinet Archive - Posting 000820.txt from 1997/05

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: A clarinet
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 09:24:07 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.91
> Subj: RE: A clarinet

> On May 28 Dan Leeson wrote (I've snipped virtually all of his (as usual)
> thoughtful comments):
>
> This is not a performance practice issue but a matter of a sonic pallette
> as selected and used by the composer but arbitrarily ignored by the player.
>
> The question is: What evidence do we have that a certain composer selected
> a certain clarinet for a certain composition because of the "sonic palette"
> he or she wanted to create? As far as I can see, we never have such
> evidence, unless the composer happened to say or write "I wanted the A
> clarinet here for its distinctive sound," or at least, "Here I used the
> distinctive sound of the A clarinet." As far as I know, Mozart, for
> instance, never said such a thing -- if he had, surely Dan would know and
> would have adduced this statement in support of his position.

Gary - I cannot believe what I read. You want evidence that a
certain composer selected a certain clarinet for a certain composition
because of the sonic palette?

Stravinsky: three pieces for unaccompanied clarinet, 2 for B-flat
clarinet and 1 for A clarinet (or maybe the other way round, I forget).

Rufus Airie was rehearsing the works in the hall that he was planning
to use that evening. Stravinsky was there at Airie's request.

Airie was playing all three works on one clarinet (i.e., ignoring
Stravinsky's explicit request) and was stopped dead in his tracks
by the composer.

Stravinsky said, "I wrote the one you are playing on B-flat clarinet
for a clarinet in A and that is the way I want it played."

One can argue that Stravinsky "saw" the fact that Airie was using
only one clarinet and was just showing off. Who knows?

But you cannot ignore Stravinsky's motivation for writing those
works for UNACCOMPANIED clarinet and requesting a switch from one
instrument to another. There is no rational reason for doing this
if it does not have to do with instrumental sound.

As for the rest of your note, it is terrific, but if I respond,
I am simply going to repeat myself (which I have probably done
too many times already), so if it is OK with you, let me turn
to the younger people on this list whose perspective of the
clarinet is being formed and suggest the following to them:

Don't believe anything about clarinet playing just
because the "big expert" says so. It may be true.
It may not be true. Depite the fact that it requires
no special training or even any intelligence to hold
an opinion, most of what you will hear about the
clarinet and clarinet playing is raw, unvarnished,
opinion or else hand-me-down stories that have little
basis in fact. This is particularly true with
respect to the unfortunate vocabulary used by many
musicians, clarinet players included, that attempt
to deal with very subtle, complex notions by using
a single, badly chosen word that attempts to
summarize them. Demand proof. Insist on rational
thought. Probe. Think. It takes a great deal
more than fast hands an three opinions to play
the clarinet.

>
> Dan's argument, stripped to its essentials, seems to be this (this is an
> invitation to Dan to tell me where I've misunderstood him):
>
> 1. Composer X had (or has) a very sensitive ear. Cf. Dan's "Mahler, who
> had a pretty good ear" and "a person with as good an ear as Mozart (and
> Beethoven, too)." In other words, X can (or could) tell the difference
> between A, B flat and C clarinets.
>
> 2. Therefore if X uses (say) an A clarinet, it is because X wants the A
> clarinet's particular contribution to the "sonic palette" X seeks.
> (Fallback position: When X uses (say) an A clarinet, for whatever reason,
> X will exploit the A clarinet's particular contribution to the "sonic
> palette" X seeks.)
>
> 3. Therefore, if we use a B flat clarinet to play X's piece, we are
> violating X's intention in a significant way -- i.e. not merely by using an
> instrument that differs from the one X specified, but one that differs in a
> way X regarded as important. We're screwing up X's sound palette!
>
> At first point 1 sounds trivially true -- don't all composers have good
> ears? Well, no. In particular, there is no reason to think a priori that
> a randomly selected composer could tell the difference between A, B flat
> and C clarinets in a blind test consistently. So as a general argument,
> this fails.
>
> Dan loads the argument by citing Mozart, Beethoven and Mahler. Suppose Dan
> could prove to us that these composers could tell an A from a B flat,
> consistently in a series of blind tests. (And just how would he do that,
> if not by a rhetorical appeal to our enormous respect for these composers?
> How can we tell which composers can distinguish clarinets and which can't?
> For certainly not all can.) So what? This brings us to step 2. Did
> Mozart write the Concerto and Quintet K. 581 in A major because he wanted
> the special sound of the A clarinet? That's what step 2 says. Or did he
> write the pieces for A clarinet because he wanted them to be in A major?
> Isn't the latter a real possibility? Dan's reply (the fallback position
> of step 2) is that this does not matter: even if Mozart wrote the Concerto
> for A clarinet because he wanted it in the key of A,
>
> "once the clarinet of specific pitch was selected by virtue of the reason
> above, is there any doubt that a person with as good an ear as Mozart
> (and Beethoven, too) would not exploit that particular clarinet's unique
> sound?"
>
> Here I confess puzzlement. However you state it, step 2 requires the
> concept of the A clarinet's "unique sound." What does Dan mean by this?
> Dan has, in a series of fascinating postings to Klarinet and articles on
> sneezy, argued that "dark," "bright," "mellow" and other such terms do not
> denote any intersubjectively meaningful properties of clarinet sound.
> (Note that this view is consistent with the possibility that a given
> person, say Mozart, could always tell whether a clarinet was an A or a B
> flat -- it just means he could not explain the difference to anyone else in
> intersubjectively meaningful terms. It's like chicken sexing.) But aren't
> these the very terms that people use to describe the difference between the
> sound of an A and that of a B flat? (E.g. Fred Jacobowitz, in a recent
> posting, said the A's sound is "mellower" than the B flat's. I want to say
> the same thing.) If these terms are meaningless, how can we describe the A
> clarinet's "unique sound"? What could possibly make us think it is unique?
>
> On Dan's view, if I understand it, that leaves only experimentally
> verifiable physical properties of clarinet sound as a basis to distinguish
> A from B flat clarinets. Moreover, those objective properties must not
> underlie the use of such ordinary words as "dark" and "bright" and "mellow"
> to describe clarinet sound, for if they were the objective basis of such
> talk, then such talk would be intersubjectively meaningful. At this point
> I reach the limit of my knowledge, and can only ask: Are there any such
> demonstrable differences between the sounds of A and B flat clarinets? If
> not, then Dan's step 2 (and thus step 3) is inconsistent with his view that
> "dark" etc. have no meaning.
>
> Well, I've gone on long enough. I hope this makes some sense. Thanks for
> your patience with this quasi-philosophical stuff. I've found Dan's
> comments always stimulating and often persuasive, and it may well be I've
> missed his point here.
>
> Gary Young
> Madison, WI
>
=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
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