Klarinet Archive - Posting 000929.txt from 1998/11

From: Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.Net>
Subj: Re: [kl] THIRD FINGERS STRAIGHT?
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 07:05:19 -0500

Edwin V. Lacy and Mark Charette, whose opinions always deserve respect,
both took issue with Roger Garrett's dictum that a clarinetist's third
fingers should be straight. (By straight, I believe he meant not absolutely
straight, but not crooked or arched into a pronounced curve.) Edwin and
Mark cited several virtuosi, including pianists Horowitz and Van Cliburn,
as examples of great musicians who violated the rule that a pianist's
elbows should be above the wrists, the back of the hands about flat, and
the fingers in a gentle, natural curve. To that list I could add Bud
Powell, Nat Cole and some other great technicians among jazz pianists

All that is true, but it doesn't make it right. I intend to continue to
teach clarinet students to hold the clarinet away from their bodies at a
40-or-so degree angle, with their elbows away from their sides far enough
to allow their hands to assume the same comfortable, non-stressful and
mechanically-efficient alignment that I teach on piano. I think curving the
fingers beyond the gentle curve that they naturally assume when relaxed
impedes the development of technique. I put it in the same category as
puffing the cheeks. Dizzy Gillespie and some other less-famous jazz
trumpeters puffed theirs, but does any trumpet (or reed) teacher advocate
that?

I firmly believe that one's fingers should be completely relaxed, free of
the burden of holding the instrument, which is balanced on the ball (not
the side) of the right thumb and steadied by the mouth. Not only do they
work better that way, but but one is much less liable to develop repetitive
stress injury, because the tendons that run up into the forearm are not
dragged around an angle through the hollow carpal bones of the hand and wrist.

Horowitz, Powell and others played so amazingly because their technique was
highly developed. In her latter years, Wanda Landowska's hands were so
deformed by arthritis that it was hard to believe she could still play. She
played as well as ever, because her technique was so highly refined that
small, almost imperceptible movements of her fingers produced the effects
she wanted. I have watched Horowitz, Powell, and many great performers on
other instruments, such as guitarists Charlie Byrd and Chet Atkins. They
all have one thing in common. In fast passages their hands seem almost to
be at rest. They play, or played, with an absolute minimum of finger and
hand movement, with the ultimate economy of effort. Some do, or did, it
with an incorrect posture. Most of us could never manage that.

This subject seems to come up on the Klarinet in one form or another every
few months. I'm on Roger's side, uncompromisingly. I believe what he
advocates, in the rest of his post as well, represents traditional clarinet
technique, and is what most teachers have taught and most players have
conformed to since the time of Hyacinthe Klose, and probably before. The
reason is simple. It's what works best for most of us.

Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.net>

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