Klarinet Archive - Posting 001134.txt from 1997/09

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: What an ear!!!!!
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 06:26:29 -0400

The following post appeared on the double reed bulletin board. I
thought it wonderful. The author is Jennifer Paull who plays
oboe d'amore for the BBC symphony orchestra.
==================================================================

Greetings !
In view of some of the comments about conductors and so many endless
mailings about viruses, I thought it would be rather good to get back to
talk about music again !
We've all played for the conductors we wish would just go away, but I'm
sure many of us have great memories of the other good and wonderful ones.
As an oboe d'amore specialist I worked for many years with the BBC
Symphony Orchestra and never more so than during the reign of Pierre
Boulez. There are many avant-guarde works which include oboe d'amore (I'm
delighted to say).We must have covered many. I remember once in Punkt
Kontra Punkt (I think that's how it's written) by Stockhausen the general
panic when we all looked at the score for the first time.Sight reading in
front of Boulez isn't something indicated if you are in need of a good
night's sleep. You know the sort of thing-one measure of 5/2 followed by
3 of 4/16/ then 7 of 3/4 followed by an 11/32 in which the 2nd 32nd note
is divied into 7 and you play on the 3rd of those divisions only ? Lovely
stuff. For Boulez, this was as easy as falling off a log.He never used a
baton, you felt that his hands were actually touching the music,
sculpting it.There were about 98 of us all playing at once. After about
20 measures, he stopped. Dead silence ! We all prayed he wasn't going to
haul us over the coals for having missed a 32nd note. "Principal trumpet,
you are playing trumpet in Bb, this is for trumpet in C". There was an
audible gasp and then thundrous applause much to Boulez' amazement. In
the middle of that din-sorry, but no other word fits-he could hear the
wrong transposition of one instrument.What a musician !
=====================================================================

I would like very much to be able to say that Boulez knew what he
knew by virtue of the character of the instrument's sound rather than the
fact that the trumpet was playing incorrect notes, but I doubt if
that argument could be sustained. However, Stockhausen's music is
so anti-tonal that the notion of "wrong note" in terms of pitch
is often (though not always) not as important as "wrong note" in
terms of character. Bottom line is that Boulez probably figured
the thing out by pitch though how he could do that boggles the
ordinary head.

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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
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