Klarinet Archive - Posting 000311.txt from 2000/08

From: "Tony Wakefield" <tony-wakefield@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] My memory /Tony Pay`s Weber
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 17:13:36 -0400

What an enlightening "bit" of Sunday evening reading Tony. Between all
contributors, not least of all yours, I think we`ve, (you`ve) "crack`d it".
Thank you - ta.

Hope you`re "Italian Job" went well. And glad also you managed to cope with
your mail.

And talking about Italy. - Does anyone know anything about Italian
clarinets? Or is there a trick, when Respighi
sends his Bb clarinet parts down to Eb (Db concert). Do players use the "A"
and transpose, or is it essential to have the "newish" low Eb fitted to
one`s own Bb? I have heard that it >is a standard fitting in Italy.

Best,
Tony W.

----- Original Message -----
From: Tony Pay <Tony@-----.uk>
Subject: Re: [kl] My memory /Tony Pay`s Weber

> On Sun, 13 Aug 2000 17:53:26 +0100, tony-wakefield@-----.net said:
>
> > I expect that the orchestras had less hassle than what the soloist
> > would have had to cope with, he, (Baermann) probably having to carry
> > another case in addition to his clarinet(s), stacked full of different
> > length barrels. (I suppose travelling horn players` crook cases
> > rattled around a bit in transit also).
>
> Just so. In a particular musical environment, it's not too hard to
> stabilise the pitch, though because of changing temperature and
> different reeds, the wind players need to be good ones.
>
> A travelling soloist needs to be more flexible -- so, when I had to play
> on a modern instrument with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra once, the
> pitch was higher, and I had to be prepared for that. Baermann would
> have had a much worse time.
>
> > There also is the dilemma of the opera houses - and again, no organs.
> > Their pitch levels also varied widely, as you may have observed. (I
> > don`t suppose the singers` noticed too much tho`).
>
> Quite the reverse, in fact. A high pitch can make the life of a high
> soprano exceptionally difficult.
>
> In Florence a few years ago, a pitch of 445 wasn't unusual, and the
> singers often complained. When I did a concert with the Tuckwell Wind
> Quintet there, around 25 years ago, we actually refused to play the
> Beethoven piano and wind quintet because the piano was even above that,
> and couldn't be retuned in time.
>
> There was a big newspaper article about it afterwards, bringing up the
> question of singers' problems too; and whether or not we had anything to
> do with it, I think they do better (flatter) now.
>
> > I really only wanted to know if it is known if Baermann`s pitch was
> > 430.
>
> No, not really. He'd have had to change about just like everyone else.
>
> When people started to play classical music, many of the original German
> and French wind instruments, and therefore also their copies, were found
> to go well at around 430. Some of them played lower, some higher, but
> 430 was a reasonable consensus.
>
> Interestingly, the English instruments of around the same period were
> higher, clustering around 440 rather than around 430. Alan Hacker, one
> of the pioneers of early instrument performance, and preferring to play
> on English instruments himself, argued at the time that we should choose
> 440 -- modern pitch -- to cluster around; but he was essentially
> outvoted.
>
> The point was, we had to *decide* on a pitch for 'classical' music, and
> settled on 430. Trying to follow geographical variation in pitch
> according to where a piece was written would have been silly. Some
> people with good instruments that went best slightly higher or lower
> weren't really happy, but either changed their setup slightly or had new
> copies made. So, there were more and more instruments that went at 430.
>
> In later music, 435 is sometimes chosen. In this case, you either play
> on another instrument, or use a shorter barrel and different setup,
> which can be more or less satisfactory according to how your
> instruments behaves.
>
> As has been noted, historically there was a trend towards higher pitches
> as time went on, so pitches higher than 435 are now chosen for Brahms
> and later composers. This is not really for historical accuracy, but
> because surviving specimens of later instruments go naturally at those
> higher pitches.
>
> I suppose the old joke, "better sharp than out of tune" has something to
> do with the rise of pitch. But it was exceptionally high in England
> around the turn of the century. Muhlfeld, coming to England to play the
> Brahms quintet, sent ahead his 440 tuning fork, because English pitch at
> the time was so high (around 452), and he couldn't have coped.
>
> Of course, very few people coming into a concert can tell what pitch
> you're playing at without referring to a tuning fork, so actually the
> difference isn't all that important to the listener.
>
> > At present, he doesn`t seem to be very forthcoming with the "horses
> > mouth" offer to put my mind at rest. Please Tony, can you come in at
> > this point? Do you know if these differences in pitch would have
> > disturbed the soloists` to any great degree?
>
> I'm now back home from Italy.
>
> All I know about is my own experience, and, yes, it's a bloody
> nuisance, even to the limited extent I have to do it, compared to
> Baermann. But there's no easy way around it, if you want to play on old
> instruments. You can't have a different instrument for every pitch.
>
> If you want an explanation of why there were different pitches, I
> suspect the question is the wrong way round. You have to ask, why would
> they be the same? Different musical environments were much more
> isolated than they are now. And standardisation is always difficult.
>
> BTW, there were about 900 posts. That's just a few MB, and it was
> compressed too. Not very much disc space on a 20GB hard disc. And it's
> really hard to refer back to people's posts if you *don't have* them;-)
>
> Tony

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