Klarinet Archive - Posting 000964.txt from 2000/12

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] The Mazzeo System
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 12:26:00 -0500

I owned a Mazzeo system basset horn, probably the only one ever made.
But it is not that I was interested in that system or could even play it
effectively. I had bought Rosario's own basset horn directly from him
when he retired the BSO and, naturally, it was a Mazzeo system because
he used it as such. Tony Pay was conducting the San Diego Symphony and
I went down there to play the Gran Partitta with him. He may not
remember, but he played on that instrument just see what it was like.

Fortunately for me, it had a clutch installed that permitted the Mazzeo
B-flat to be turned on or off. I always used it turned off. When Tony
played it, he asked that it be turned on. After using it for a few
minutes, he turned it off.

There were two kinds of Mazzeo clarinets. First there was the Bundy
model (also made in the Selmer brand) that had nothing but the Mazzeo
B-flat mechanism; that is, one got a throat tone B-flat by opening the A
key and the depressing the rings in the right hand.

The other model was what Dave Weber once called "a repairman's
nightmare." When I was in the army in the 1950s, an excellent Boston
clarinetist by the name of Tom Ferrante owned a pair of Selmers with the
complete and full Mazzeo mechanism on it. It was loaded with keys. I
never saw so many keys in my life. Tom had studied with Mazzeo and had
had the pair made by Selmer at Mazzeo's suggestion. He played them
beautifully. We did gigs together, often Saturday night dance jobs, and
he played his Selmer full-Mazzeo system on those gigs.

We were also both studying with Weber at the time so that is how David
saw Tom's instruments and called them the repairman's nightmare.

The Mazzeo system once resulted in Rosario becoming very angry with me
for a line I wrote in an article intended for the Clarinet magazine. I
was giving a list of mechanical alterations to the clarinet over the
last two centuries which, while being an improvement, simply did not
survive for any of a dozen reasons. One of the examples I used (and
rather thoughtlessly, too, since Rosario was still alive) was his
clarinet mechanism. It was a case of being technically correct but
thoughtless in including the remark. I think he was hurt by it and I
have regretted my including that remark ever since. The tragic thing
was that the article never got published so it was a brouhaha about
nothing. He had seen a typescript copy that never got published.

He was also somewhat bitter that his invention had not caught on. He
wanted there to be a Mazzeo mechanism in the history just as there is a
Boehm mechanism or an Albert system, etc. It's one thing for one's
ideas to fail after one's death, but to see them going down the tubes
when one is alive is a bitter pill to swallow.
--
***************************
** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
***************************

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