Klarinet Archive - Posting 000813.txt from 2000/11

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Interpreting versus playing
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 00:16:18 -0500

The silliness of your personal comments aside, Tony, I certainly
*do* admire players who make the clarinet seem like an easy instru-
ment on which to make music. Leister, Stoltzman, Shifrin, and Combs
are names that come readily to mind. There are at least a couple of
sides to the issue. There's the clarinet itself, a mechanical tool
subject to physical laws, with technical demands to be addressed.
There's also the musical side, which draws in all kinds of consid-
erations about style and performance practice and composer intent,
etc.

Naturally, technique for technique's sake is not a musical activity,
but absent technical development on the clarinet it is not possible
to make music with it. Perhaps you and others will disagree with me
on this, but it has been my experience that the more technically pro-
ficient a player becomes, the easier it also becomes for that player
to express themselves musically. It almost seems self-evident. This
is not to say that the music itself should be made to sound effortless,
unless that is what the composer had in mind. Since so much of music
involves the establishment and resolution of psychological tension, ef-
fortlessness from a psychological standpoint would seem to be counter-
intuitive to the musical aesthetic. A technical master can make a
piece of music sound like a walk in the park and, at the same time,
completely defile the composer's intent, creating an utterly dif-
ferent and invalid piece of music using the exact same notes.

Most of the members of Klarinet are not professional players, much
less technical masters of the clarinet. I'm certainly neither. Per-
haps you, Tony, are technically perfect on the instrument and are at
liberty to focus 100% of your energy on emotional and musical consid-
erations when you play. I direct much of my writing on Klarinet to
the issues of basic technique and fundamental musicianship because I
believe that many members share my desire to continuously improve
those areas in their playing as I do in mine. I've received enough
positive feedback to know that my posts, and my intentions, are well-
received. I'm also not musically unsophisticated for choosing to fo-
cus my time in this area, having played for 22 years, including prior
and current orchestral & chamber activities throughout the U.S., and
having trained with several first-rate major-orchestra players while
earning my performance degree.

All of this having been said, maybe I'm just a little perverse in
that I actually derive a discrete pleasure from the pursuit of tech-
nical effortlessness on the instrument. I can't imagine that I'm
the only one. And when I take the fruits of that labor with me to
rehearsals and performances, I experience greater freedom to realize
the intentions of the composers's music in front of me, drawing more
readily than I otherwise might on all of my knowledge about music
history, style, and performance practice, using my ear to guide the
process, of course. All of this is afforded me for having struck a
balance in practice between technical development and musical sensi-
tivity, even if that balance is not reflected in my contributions to
the Klarinet list. Obviously I'm not the only one who chooses to di-
rect their posts more commonly toward certain areas of the clarinet
world. Doing such a thing makes a contributor no less valid or val-
uable than somebody who purports to wax erudite on nearly every sub-
ject line in the header. Perhaps the opposite.

One final thing, Tony. Whatever you think or feel about me, about
an issue, or about anything else on the list, I wish you would dis-
continue your repeated use of harsh obscenities such as:

> Wickens, used to call "the great fucking unheard."

Nobody else has publically commented on this, but with regard to those
who find it objectionable, again, I can't imagine I'm the only one. Pon-
tificate and lambaste away, Tony, but keep language like this offline.
I'm sorry I had to repost it in order to make my point.

-- Neil

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