Klarinet Archive - Posting 001157.txt from 1998/11

From: reedman@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Prokofiev and the bass clarinet
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 20:12:48 -0500

Dear Friends,

I have been playing the Prokofiev opera "Betrothal in a Monastery"
with the San Francisco Opera under the baton of Valery Gerghiev. I am
playing the bass clarinet part and am having a ball.

I have played many scores of Prokofiev on bass clarinet and it has
occured to me that he ,Stravinsky and Shostakovitch (Perhaps Schoenberg?)
were the only composers in the first half of the century that wrote for the
low extension of the bass clarinet,(D - C) as a common practice. I have
often wondered if Prokofiev was influenced because of a particular player
who had an extended range clarinet or were Low C bass clarinet common in
Russia. The score to Romeo and Juliet also calls for the Tenor sax to play
a Low A!

Any ideas?

Clark W Fobes

Clark W Fobes
Web Page http://www.sneezy.org/clark_fobes

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