Klarinet Archive - Posting 000578.txt from 1998/01

From: Matthew Snyder <msnyder@-----.net>
Subj: vibrato
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 01:54:07 -0500

Hello, all. Jonathan Cohler suggested that I post the following to the
list. Today I read his informative essay on vibrato that is on the
Clarinet Pages website, and was very impressed. My comments to him were:

>Hi, I just read your (nearly three-year-old) manifesto on vibrato.
>Excellent! As a jazz musician I've always wondered what the hang-up was
>with classical teachers and players on that technique. I never heard the
>theory about vibrato being a "black thing" before, but it is very
>intriguing and feels correct, considering that the prejudice against
>vibrato appears to have originated not long after jazz itself did.
>
>It's also a neat thing to compare and contrast the amount of vibrato used
>by various clarinetists in jazz, which I've just been inspired to do by
>your article. All players with a more classical base of playing have less
>vibrato (Benny Goodman, Buddy DeFranco, Jimmy Hamilton, Eddie Daniels),
>while those from the original generation of New Orleans players (and those
>who learned from them such as Pee Wee Russell) have vastly greater amounts
>of tone variation in general. Modern players, therefore, have a choice of
>legacies to follow. Don Byron has the funniest vibrato I've ever heard,
>while Jimmy Giuffre hardly used any vibrato at all and ended up sounding
>like Lester Young. To mix things up even more, Goodman played with far
>more vibrato (and far more interest, in my opinion) when he was younger,
>but past a certain point, he made his approach much "whiter".

On rereading these comments, the one thing I feel I should add is that when
I was studying with James Campbell, he also was baffled by the lack of
vibrato in most classical players, but admitted that as a soloist he
perhaps had more freedom in this regard than the average orchestral player.
Nevertheless, the most frequent comment about Mr. Campbell's playing that
I heard from other students was that they didn't like the fact that he used
vibrato. And believe me, from a jazz musician's perspective his vibrato
was extremely subtle!

Matt Snyder

msnyder@-----.net

http://www.interactive.net/~msnyder
The Clarinet In Jazz Since 1945
Various Writings On Jazz