Klarinet Archive - Posting 000612.txt from 1999/10
From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] CRACK 2.
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 04:44:56 -0400
On Wed, 20 Oct 1999 04:10:02 EDT, U4Duemke@-----.com said:
> I've got warranty on my Instrument and a good dealer. What hurts is
> that I have always handled my instruments carefully. I have played new
> instruments not more than 15 minutes a day in the first time, watched
> and felt the wood, played longer when I felt that the wood doesn't
> work. I never got trouble before and was proud. But now - my clarinet
> cracked!!
>
> Is it the wood, fate?
> How do you handle a new Instrument?
Here is a sad little story.
As you may know, many Dutch players use Wurlitzer 'Reformed Boehm'
clarinets.
These are expensive hand-made instruments -- or were, at any rate. I
don't know what the situation is now.
I remember teaching a class for two or three days in the Hague around
10 years ago, and feeling that I couldn't help some of the students with
the details of instrument set-up problems that they had, because the
'feel' of the Reformed Boehm instrument was unfamiliar to me.
So when someone in the class stood up with an R13, I was relieved, and
said so. But the student looked embarassed. "I'm getting my *proper*
instrument next week," she said.
I then learned that, because of the cost, students quite often began
their advanced studies on the Buffets they already owned, and only
'graduated' to their 'proper' instruments when they could afford it, or
when their name came to the top of the list at Wurlitzer.
Anyway, there was a student there, not actually a participant in the
class, whom I knew from a summer course of mine she'd attended. This
particular student, a good though not outstanding player -- let's call
her 'Helen' -- was going through this process of getting her Wurlitzer.
I can't now remember how much of the following story she told me, and
how much I heard later from a friend of hers. The *end* of the story I
certainly heard later.
(BTW, I haven't checked out the accuracy of any of it, so 'caveat
lector'.)
This is the story as I remember it.
A couple of weeks after Helen got her new Wurlitzer Reformed Boehm
clarinet, the top joint cracked.
She had looked after it, she said, just as she had been instructed.
Wurlitzer, when informed, were none too pleased. Their instruments,
they said, were made of well-seasoned wood, and almost never cracked if
looked after properly.
However, it happened that they could on this occasion match the old
bottom joint with the top joint almost immediately, and they did so.
Helen received the new top joint, looked after it carefully as
instructed, playing it for only limited periods for two weeks, at the
end of which time it too, cracked.
This time, Wurlitzer were more difficult.
They were in the end persuaded by Helen and her teacher to replace the
second top joint for free. However, she would have to wait for two or
three months, until appropriate wood/keys/time/whatever were available
at the workshop.
In the meantime, her teacher said that he had a spare Bb instrument she
could use. "Don't crack *this* one," he joked.
Helen looked after her teacher's instrument with even more care, if
possible, for a period of two weeks.
At the end of this time, she suddenly gave up the clarinet.
The world was trying to tell her something, she decided; and she
wouldn't be persuaded otherwise, though many people made the effort to
get her to change her mind.
Helen apologised to her teacher for cracking his clarinet, and is now
doing something else with her life.
Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339
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