Klarinet Archive - Posting 000998.txt from 2000/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Special kind of a tone
Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 07:17:38 -0400

On Mon, 22 May 2000 07:02:35 EDT, LeliaLoban@-----.com said:

> 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?
>
> "White tone" is a term of art among classical singers. It means a
> voice without vibrato. For practical purposes, among adult singers,
> it means a voice that sounds like a clarinet, instead of a violin.

You need to be careful which clarinet player you choose...:-)

> My aunt, Mary Wrany VanEss, is a retired coloratura soprano. My
> mother who as a very young woman had a brief career as a contralto (in
> a radio trio with her sister and her brother), used to teach choir.
> The three of them studied with different teachers, but all were taught
> the same definition, which I also learned from my choir conductor,
> Byron Jones, when I was a teenager in the 1960s. (I didn't have a
> white voice. I had a bad voice.) The extreme example of a white
> voice is a young child's untrained voice, which also lacks resonance,
> in part because the vibrato is one of the means of creating resonance
> (a greater variety of overtones).

Very interesting. In fact, in Italian, 'voci bianche' means 'children's
chorus' ie, a definite instruction as to *who to book*. I didn't know
that the same phrase in English had an application to adult voices.

I'll ask whether the Italian phrase applies more generally in Italy too.
(I know a few Italian singers who would find such a thing unnatural!)

Do you think that Copland meant just, without vibrato, in this
particular passage? (Goodman didn't use vibrato in the concerto, where
I suppose he might have been influenced by Copland. But I'd always
thought that that was Goodman's decision.)

Anyway.

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

... "Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.

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