Klarinet Archive - Posting 000649.txt from 1999/04

From: Clarguy3@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] two totally unrelated questions: Full clarinet gliss
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 14:09:16 -0400

In a message dated 4/12/99 12:17:22 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
ebray@-----.edu writes:

> @-----.org> =====
> >On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Erin Margarette Bray wrote:
> >
> >> I don't think that you can gliss over that second
> >> break! I don't think that Whittacre was a clarinetist!
> >
> >Actually, it's entirely possible, and pretty easy when
> >you develop facility with loosening the embouchure and
> >opening the throat. I have no problem glissing - sans
> >any discernible breaks or glitches - from clarion D to
> >altissimo Ab.
> >
> >Neil
>
> Mu issue is with the fingers--going from a fairly open fingering
> to a fairly closed one--a la clarion C to (is it altissimo?) c
> sharp? My embouchure can a bend a pitch pretty far in either
> direction and it is pretty controlled--just can't seem to make
> a really good gliss say from the throat B flat to the (clarion?)
> B natural? How would one make the fingers not make a bump?
>
> ebray@-----.edu
> Erin Bray
> Grad. Assistant
> University of Tennessee, Knoxville
>
There's an article called "A Clarinetist's Slide guide" in an old NACWPI
Journal (late 1970's) that addresses this problem directly, based on
challenges presented in pieces like John Eaton's "Concert Music." The short
answer is, you have to gliss in each of the registers individually and match
the top pitch of one register to the bottom pitch of the next. Thus a slide
from low G to high G involves three individual glissandi, blended together at
the register breaks. So at the top of the chalumeau, one slowly opens the
register and A keys with one trill key (rh index finger) and then pops across
to clarion B. The high clarion C then is matched with an overblown 4th space
E-flat fingering, and the process can go to G-sharp altissimo like that.
When one goes the rest of the way to high C (as in the Eaton piece), one can
go that distance on the rh trill keys, but it has to go fast, as these tones
are really unstable. Obviously, one makes considerable oral adjustments, but
I hesitate to call it "throat opening" after Anfinson's and others'
cineflurographic thesis research.
I will never forget Robert Marcellus' first response in one of his summer
masterclasses upon hearing someone gliss from low F across the register to
high D at the end of the Copland Concerto: "How the h*ll did you do that?"
That indicates, I guess, that some pretty distinguished careers are sustained
without needing to do this particularly often. But it's a good trick.
Chuck West
Virginia Commonweath University

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