Klarinet Archive - Posting 000853.txt from 2000/08

From: MVinquist@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Phrasing With the Harmony - Resend
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 22:57:23 -0400

Sorry - I left a draft in the outbox. This is finished version.

Tony Pay wrote:

>In his excellent post on the third movement of Beethoven 8, Ken Shaw
>said, in part:

>> PHRASING IS BASED ON HARMONY

>> Harmony is the basis of phrasing. A chord is like a bone in the
>> skeleton. Changes of chord are like joints. The muscles have a shape
>> and can move parts of the body only because they are attached to the
>> skeleton. To understand how phrases work, you must know what the
>> underlying harmony is and what it's doing.
>>
>> Thus, you should take a pencil and look at the harmony in the score.
>> Put in a vertical mark every time it changes. These marks will show
>> you where your phrases begin and end, or at least change direction.

>I think it's worth while disagreeing with this bit, but in a very
>specific way.

[snip]

Tony is right, as always. I wrote that section as I did, and left out Tony's
points, I suppose partly out of laziness and partly because the post was on
the verge of being too long already.

Also, I think that phrasing with harmony has to come first and is 90% of the
job. You can't phrase against the harmony unless you know what the harmony
is in the first place. You can't be "free" in a vacuum, but have to be free
*from* something you know, and as a considered, informed decision. I would
insist that a student learn to hear and phrase with the harmony before going
on to what are to me even more advanced ideas.

It's the same principle as requiring a student to learn scales and be able to
play a passage perfectly evenly first, before "adding nuances."

However, another central principle is that you must make music from the first
note you play as a beginner, and music -- even when you're practicing scales
-- is always about lines that go someplace and about expression of emotion
and personality.

All I can say is that I myself learned both simultaneously -- analysis and
synthesis -- technique and expression. Both are part of making music and are
not in opposition to one another. I think it's better to see them in a
non-competitive, yin/yang way.

Enough abstraction. I want to give credit to two master musicians whose
insights are always with me. Bernard Krainis, the recorder virtuoso and
universal genius, taught me about phrasing with the harmony in a 30 second
epiphany that resonates 20 years later. The great oboist Robert Bloom wrote
an article about matching tone colors and the need for many good tones. It
ran in Woodwind World in 1958 and urgently needs reprinting.

Finally, I have corresponded with James Gillespie, and I believe that he will
publish the piece in The Clarinet, with the score of the third movement trio.

If Mark Charette decides to put it into the OCR articles section, I hope he
will include Tony's additional material.

Best regards.

Ken Shaw

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