Klarinet Archive - Posting 000527.txt from 1999/01

From: Martin Pergler <pergler@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Mahler 5/last mvmt solo
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 13:15:15 -0500

Hi all...our university orchestra is playing Mahler 5 later this
quarter. I'm having trouble with the 1st clar solo at the beginning
of the last movement. A simple quarter note legato melody which
"innocently" becomes staccato eigths (above the staff) DADE F D C A
...at the end. Can anyone help?

The difficulty is this. If I play the whole thing, I often get the
wrong harmonics (with the right fingerings) on the staccato DADEF.
If I isolate the DADEF, it's fine. I can be safer on the whole thing
if I (feel that I) pinch more and toungue "harder", but then the
whole thing is far too shrill and that shouldn't be the right answer
anyway. It seems to me I must doing something with my embouchure or
tongue on the legato bit which I shouldn't be, but I can't figure
out what. Any suggestions/hints?

Also, esp. in 1st movement, "bells up" is clear, but where do bells
go back down? In some cases the sensible answer seems to be "at the
end of the big honking phrase", but sometimes there is
"Schalltriller auf" written twice in quick succession, or the
musical phrase builds, goes down, and then builds again without
stopping and I'm not sure what to do. Are there general "logical"
conventions to follow here? I suppose I should have asked the same
question when we did Mahler 1 a few years back, but somehow it
seemed less confusing there, or maybe somone had firm opinion and
the rest of us just followed like sheep.

Many thanks for advice....and other pointers or reminscences of
course welcome!

Martin

--
Martin Pergler pergler@-----.edu
Grad student, Mathematics http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~pergler
Univ. of Chicago

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