Klarinet Archive - Posting 000628.txt from 2000/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Stand or Sit? (what about...?)
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 19:32:43 -0500

On Tue, 12 Dec 2000 06:28:07 -0800 (PST), leupold_1@-----.com said:

> Alright, it's time to annoy Tony Pay again and focus on technical
> things that inhibit the ease of clarinet playing vs. those that make
> it easier (apparently an irrelevant subject in his mind).

I'm reminded of that parable in which the husband says his life is
difficult, the wife says her life is easy; and the daughter says her
life is "neither easy nor difficult: when I am hungry, I eat; when I am
tired, I sleep."

What I argue against is the idea that our job is to make it *look easy*,
*sound easy* -- or even *feel easy*. Our job is to *do it*, and what
the 'it' is, or isn't, is something important to understand, or embody.
I got annoyed with you last time only when you interrupted an enquiry
into that important subject.

I am all for the problems of the execution not getting in the way of the
problems of representing the music. But we have to start with what we
are trying to represent. As soon as we say, what we want to produce is
a beautiful relaxed and resonant sound (not always what's required) and
then move to saying that *therefore* our bodies must be as relaxed as
possible when we play, and that extra tension in any part of it will
necessarily travel elsewhere, we change our goals from musical ones to
physical ones -- and to sometimes inappropriate physical ones, too.

If you said something like: to achieve brilliant-sounding passagework,
it's often helpful for the fingers to move faster over a longer
distance, so that they reach the toneholes at speed, and for the sound
to be non-resonant, but rich in high harmonics; whereas for a slow
legato melody, you can help achieve a sense of stillness by moving the
fingers slowly, so that there's almost no applied force, and everything
is relaxed until the moment of climax...

...then I'd say that was useful information. You could then go on
to explain something of how to achieve these relaxations and tensions in
ways that don't allow the techniques for the tensions to spill over into
the techniques for the relaxations, or vice-versa.

You want us all to be swans, which is no good when the music needs us to
be squirrels. And, being the size we are, for us 'squirrel-like'
behaviour requires the use of physical oppositions, not only in the
abdomen/diaphragm system. So studying to be 'squirrel-like' means
studying to play with some *necessary* tensions.

Not with *unnecessary* tensions, I agree. But the point is that the
'necessary/unnecessary' judgement is a *musical* one, not a pedagogic
one.

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

... When the chips are down, the buffalo is empty.

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