Klarinet Archive - Posting 000904.txt from 1999/05

From: Ken Wolman <kwolman@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sneezy Hornography
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 06:31:41 -0400

At 10:22 PM 5/18/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I love the term "hornography" but I think it should be reserved
>for flamebacious discussions such as the one we have been having on
>"Hans Moennig's solution the Dark Clarinet Tone".

I've probably said in the past that photographers do this too: argue and
bicker over which camera, lenses, etc., amount to "the best." Among pros,
Nikon is probably the Buffet of the camera business: high quality but with
a lot of value-added mystique about it that may or may not have anything to
do with quality when compared to other high-end brands. I used to live
next door to a professional catalogue photographer who said the Nikon thing
was a snowball that simply acquired a life of its own: everyone bought
Nikons because everyone else bought Nikons before them, and you could
always go down the hall to the other guy's studio and borrow a freaky lens
for a special job if one came up. I suppose that makes Rossi's horns the
equivalent of the Leica; and Selmer, LeBlanc, and Yamaha can fight over who
gets to be Canon. The word for this (my coinage as far as I know) is
"equipmentology." At the end of the day, it's silly. NOBODY is going to
know whether the photo in the magazine was made with a Nikon, Canon, Leica,
Yashica, Minolta, or grandpa's Korean War-vintage Kodak Signet hauled out
of the attic. What you see is what matters.

Can the same thing be said for clarinets or, for that matter, any musical
instrument in the same basic price class? The horn you know is the horn
you like: you get used to the sound, to how it plays. Is anyone here
sufficiently attuned to the sound of a particular clarinet brand to listen
to a Chicago Symphony recording and distinguish Yeh's Yamaha from Combs's
LeBlanc? All those recordings of the Philadelphia when Gigliotti was
Principal...did the sound of the instrument scream SELMER at you? It never
occurred to me that Sabine Meyer plays a Wurlitzer. Gee, Dad....

And while we're at equipment...how come Ricardo Morales appears to have
become persona non grata at LeBlanc? He's even out of the catalogue.

Ken

Kenneth Wolman kwolman@-----.net
"From the Meadowlands": http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1649

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