Klarinet Archive - Posting 000005.txt from 1997/07

From: Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: Inspirations
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 05:20:52 -0400

Larey McDaniel writes:

> The reason I play the clarinet is

And for me...

I was "away at school" and my younger sister wanted to take up another
instrument (she plays the piano far better than I do). She tried
various ones, and then when I came home for holidays we went and
visited the husband of a friend of my mother, who was a peripatetic
clarinet teacher for the county schools.

While my sister tried a `county' clarinet, I tried the daughter's
'cello (I rather liked it, but didn't get very far). My sister
brought the clarinet home, and while she was at school (state schools
have longer terms than private ones here) I found I could make a
decent sound on this clarinet.

However, I couldn't continue using it, because I was being educated
privately, and the clarinet belonged to the county.

So, that summer, I picked hops and earned something like pounds15.
Near Christmas, my father found a Boozle and Squawks clarinet for
pounds22 (at the time, that would have been something like $40-$60
... it was a special offer, new from the B&H shop at the top of
Charing Cross Road in London). I don't know what sort it was, but it
was pretty damned good: it suffered a horrible, irreparable, accident
around the time I graduated as a mathematician here.

At around the same time as I started with my sister's county clarinet,
my father brought the de Peyer/Maag LP of K.622. This (as much as my
own seeming ability at the time) was what cemented me to the clarinet.

Robin