Klarinet Archive - Posting 000829.txt from 1997/05

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: A clarinet
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 09:24:16 -0400

I *can* do slightly better than that - violinists still play Amatis as a
matter of course, if they can get them. Mendelssohn presumably had never
even heard of stringing them with wirewound nylon strings, though.
I respect what you say - it's just that, considering the historical
aspect,
it seems a bit on the extreme side. We can't know what the composer
expected to hear - we can only make attempts to reproduce the physical
aspects, and make deductions from contemporary treatises on playing
techniques for which most of the context has gone.
Roger Shilcock

On
Thu, 29 May 1997, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:

> Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 06:01:45 EDT
> From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
> To: klarinet@-----.us
> Subject: Re: A clarinet
>
>
> Roger, you may be right, but what you suggest (about practical
> advantages) is an opinion. It does not represent a fact nor
> does it contradict the clear and unambiguous fact that Beethoven
> requested a clarinet other than the one on which you are
> performing at that moment. Let me add my opinion to yours:
> I see no practical advantage to using a clarinet other than the
> one requested and several very distinct disadvantages all due to
> the act of having to transpose while playing.
>
> As you say, Beethoven did not request a Noblet Artiste C, simply
> a C clarinet. But that is a distinction that has never been made
> in music, in clarinetdom, or for any instrument. Does the
> Mendelssohn violin concerto request an Amati? Come on, Roger.
> You can do better than that.
>
> I know that my personal insistance about which clarinet to use
> under which circumstances irritates many players. And they
> all make Herculean attempts to defend the status quo which is
> this: the clarinetist, not the composer, decides on which
> clarinet to use under which circumstances. To me, this is
> arrogance gone mad.
>
>
>
> >
> >
> =======================================
> Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
> Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
> leeson@-----.edu
> =======================================
>