Klarinet Archive - Posting 000814.txt from 1997/12

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: Ricardo Morales' posting
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 05:14:42 -0500

Garret and I were asked why there was no response to Ricardo's posting on
the matter of basset clarinet. My system had gone down for the entire
weekend and I missed his posting until Monday of this week when I got
back up again.

First, I very much enjoyed his posting. It was temperate and pleasant.
I took no offense from it. Furthermore, I think the entire dialogue
did nothing but help this group, advance the cause of clarinet playing,
and make a lot of people aware of the details of the objections voiced
by several people, me included.

No one's opinions were very much changed by what Ricardo wrote, though
there were some points that could be made a little more clear. For
example, Ricardo said (and this is my spin on what he said because
I don't have his note any longer) that his many predecessors played
the aria the way he did, so it should have been pointed out that a
lot of people before him played it that way.

Well, it turns out that Titus was not mounted at the Met until 1984
and there has to have been a hiatus of considerable time before
1984 when the opera was not done at all at the house. For example,
I know that his predecessor Herb Blayman, who was there for about
29 years never played the opera. It just wasn't done. But if it
had been done, there was no knowledge at that time of what the
aria required in terms of a clarinet with a special extension. Maybe
a few experts knew about the low d issue, but not many. And one
expert even suggested that Mozart did not know the range of a clarinet.
That was a remark made around 1937.

So it is not reasonable to suggest that, because it had been done
that way in the past (in the very distant past) that it was OK to
continue the practice today. And besides, one simply could not
buy a basset clarinet off the shelf until at least 1985. Bottom line,
no one prior to ca. 1980 could be criticized for doing the Titus
aria in the traditional way since there was no other way it could
have been done in any practical sense.

Ricardo made another point worth noting. He said, correctly, that
no one other than the German makers produced a basset clarinet in
B-flat. But I think he was under the impression that one could
only get the instrument in a German system. Of course I don't know
what he thought but that was the way his note read. But the fact
is that the German makers will make anything you want in a French
system so that is an avenue that might have been explored. Well,
perhaps Ricardo would not want a French system with a German bore.
I can understand that, but one can buy a basset clarinet in B-flat
in a French system from either of two German makers at this instant.

I also noted that I used a B-flat soprano clarinet with extension
to low E-flat to play that aria with the low d's as early as
about 1975. That's when I read an article in Clarinet by Bill
McColl of the University of Washington which described how to get
a low d on such clarinets (though it required one to give up the
low E-flat). I took his article and picture of the extension to
a repairman and, for $35, played low d 'till the cows came home.
I still have the clarinet and the extension. I think I also wrote
that I used the extension on either my B-flat or my A clarinet both
of which have the low E-flat extension.

But the bottom line out of all of this was that this was an
exciting and valuable discussion for everybody. Well, let me
modify that a little. There were a couple of testy people who
just wanted to shush any exploration of this matter. I saw at
least two notes suggesting that the dialog be stopped. But
except for this, everybody learned something.

Now there are a lot of postings about reeds and mouthpieces and
the mechanics of clarinet playing that have been repeated
endlessly over the past 4 years. But I don't remember when
there was a topic of this importance so examined by this group
before. We have had discussions about "dark sounds" and "bright
sounds," and whether German players sound differently and even
if you can tell nationality from the character of sound, and
all of that is good. And it's valuable too.

There are probably a dozen or more participants in the group who
know a lot more about the subject of Mozart's Clemency of Titus
and its impact on clarinet playing than they did before the
disucssion, the performance, and the dialogue. So everybody
gained. Me too.

What we had was "contention" and from such dialogue a great deal
of both heat and light are made. I think we made a lot of light.
By what standard do I think this to have been the case? Well
everyone knows and understands the issues now, and I am convinced
that most did not before the dialog.

Moral: you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

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

   
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