Klarinet Archive - Posting 000082.txt from 2000/12

From: "Michael Bryant" <michael@-----.uk>
Subj: [kl] Mahler 4
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 03:48:21 -0500

Thank you everyone for your generous post on
transposition and "messy" parts. I have not yet
had time to read all of them

I absolutely take on board Walter's thoroughly
professional standpoint. But I cannot quite fathom
why the parts are like that in the first place, (not for the
sound of the instruments or to simplify the part)
but by some misunderstanding by the composer
and/or the copyist? Brahms, Dvorak and Bartok did it.
Kodaly provides the clarinet with some really wonderful solos
on the wrong instrument or the right instrument with an impossible
change over.

Simplifying the part: Reicha does it in his wind quintets
25 Quintets, therefore 100 movements: in the first editions
50 movements are for the C clarinet
25 are for the A and 25 for the B flat.
Beethoven requires the C clarinet in the finale of the
5th Symphony and the slow movement of the 1st Piano
Concerto (actually his second chronologically).
Smetana (and Rossini) write for the C clarinet
in nearly every work. The list is endless. Richard Strauss
simply asks for more clarinets to drown out the flutes and oboes
(their point of view). Der Rosenkavelier uses the C clarinet quite
extensively in the first and second parts in addition to Eb/D and
basset horn quite extensively and transposing all the chromatics
is no picnic.

I have been playing the clarinet for 40 years on and off,
but almost exclusively chamber music. as I used to work in the
evenings and weekends quite a lot, so I have had very
little orchestral experience. On the other hand I have accumulated
more chamber music than I can reasonably handle now. Just recently
we have been chomping through Septets by Beethoven, Kreutzer,
Berwald, Blanc, Lichtenthal and next Bruch (viola replaced by violin 2)
and the Irish Victorian Charles Wood, then much less recreationally,
Septets by the Dutch composer Jan Koetsier and the Norwegian Tor Brevik.

Having come to attend orchestra more regularly rather late, the conditions
seem quite adverse to good results. The music is covered with graffiti or
beginning to disintegrate, the lighting in dreadful and the conductor
is virtually inaudible from the back desks, "Let's begin again from letter
mumble", followed instantly by a down beat. Clearly, I need to stay in
after
school for a spot of extra homework, preferably supervised by some of you,
to get acclimatised.

I have never seen or played an A bass, but was once shown an old C bass that
had been found in France, possibly made for military use. It had lost it's
mouthpiece and crook and required some experimentation (by Ted Planas
in his garden shed, - - a brilliant man, who, I think, kept his American
passport to the end)
after it was discovered that it played out of tune with itself with a
standard crook.
No one guessed it was a C bass before that.

MB
_____
Michael Bryant, Michael@-----.uk
Tel (messages 24hrs) & Fax by request
+44 (0) 20 8390 3236
http://www.bryant14.demon.co.uk
Rosewood Publications url:
http://freespace.virgin.net/s.westmeath
and http://www.rosewoodpublications.co.uk

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