Klarinet Archive - Posting 000993.txt from 2000/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Special kind of a tone
Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 01:54:50 -0400

On Sun, 21 May 2000 19:36:39 -0400, agalper@-----.com said:

> I just heard the Appalachian Spring by Copland.
> At the beginning there is a short clarinet solo.
> In the part it says "White tone".
> Anyone know how to get that tone?

I once played it with Copland conducting. But it was just the once, and
I remember we had other things on our minds -- we were recording it for
the BBC, and adding the 'difficult bit' in the middle that's usually
cut; and he wasn't the easiest of conductors to follow.

Gervase once talked to me about this 'white tone', because he'd just
played the concerto with Copland, and it had come up; but I can't
remember in detail what he said, except that Copland had apparently
liked Gervase's idea of 'floating' the sound.

Anyway, when I played it, Copland wanted that bit, as I remember, --
now, here we go -- light, in the sense of gentle; almost flute-like.

(You can have your sound go that way by doing what it takes to ensure
incomplete closure of the reed during the vibration cycle. This reduces
the upper harmonic components of the sound. It's sometimes called
'echotone', and we discussed it a few months back.)

So here, I think, it's white as 'colourless', or 'colorless' if you
prefer. Or, perhaps, 'a whiter shade of pale':-) Anyhow, the opposite
of what you would do if he'd written 'bright tone'....

......and perhaps what you would do if he'd written 'dark tone' as well,
because that's colourless (or colorless), too. Shades of 'flammable'
meaning the same as 'inflammable'!

But to write that would clearly have been ambiguous, because of the
other metaphorical connotations of 'dark' for a musician, or anybody for
that matter -- sinister, dangerous....

In fact, I'd say that that ambiguity is something of a vindication of
what I posted about what happens when we apply these words to *playing*,
as opposed to just descriptions of isolated sounds. A musician is
always looking for the higher-level descriptors that may be a clue to
the character of any given passage.

It's interesting too that 'white' has an additional technical meaning to
a scientist. A scientist might hear 'white tone' as meaning what he or
she calls 'white sound', which is a scientific term for a sound
containing a mixture of all frequencies, like a radio hiss or roar.
I was about to say that that wasn't metaphorical, but of course it is,
being the use of an understanding of the properties of light in the
description of sound.

But it's not the use of the *direct experience* of light in the
description of sound, for me at any rate.

And it sure wasn't what Copland wanted!

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE www.gmn.com/artists/welcome.asp
tel/fax 01865 553339

..... Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice?"

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