Klarinet Archive - Posting 001159.txt from 1998/11

From: David Renaud <studiorenaud@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Prokofiev and the bass clarinet
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 00:55:01 -0500

There are a few alto sax around with a low A extension, very few.
Recently seen a web page of a music dealer with one for sale at
http://cybersax.com

reedman@-----.com wrote:

> 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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