Klarinet Archive - Posting 000846.txt from 2001/01

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] first clarinet. Lyon's C clarinet, the influence of teaching on people
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 19:20:52 -0500

To my great surprise in Bill Hausmann"s e-mail I read the words "my good
Selmer".

The first clarinet I bought, at that time I played clarinet for about 14
months, was a Selmer, if I remember right, the type was P9.

Even my teacher - a professionel player wih a good reputation among lovers
of Roumanian music - culdn't play in tune on it. I got another, according to
the catalogue better, or at any rate more expensive one. It had the same
problem, in an even stronger degree. And even to my teacher it was
absolutely impossible to produce an even for an average amateur acceptable
sound, let alone for me.

Of course after that experience I have always been somewhat sharp on Selmers
at the rare occasions I met one, but I never found them satisfying - of
course I am prejudiced after this experience, but it strikes me that
yesterday, in Utrecht, I was with all three music instrument shops and asked
for Selmer, there were none on stock. Do the probably scarce good ones go
exclusively to the US?

Now of course one must be careful. I have only a little experience with the
soprano clarinets. I also have but little experience with bass clarinets.
But I count the selmer basses to the BEST I ever met. My own claribass is a
"Frères Martin" instrument from, probably, 1896, so over a hundred years
old. But I had the fortune to play on several other ones too, on different
occasions, but I am convinced the Selmer is the best one. Actually the mp on
my claribass is a Selmer *.

As to the Lyon's C clarinet: one of my pupils is a now 51 years old man. I
teach him now about 3 1/2 years, but he has reached a level where my other
pupils use to be in six months, even the slowest and most untalented ones.
Some time ago he heard the Lyon's instrument, and immediately fell in love
with it. (He is a Klezmer adapt, maybe that's why.) So we went to my
favorite repairman and instrument supplier, and looked for one. In my
opinion the sound is quite acceptable, and, as someone on this list stated
already, clearly clarinet. The technique also is the same, but of course
when using the Klosé method, it falls short when studying the studies
written especially for the Böhm clarinet, due to a lack of keys. The
challenge then is, to find the best way to play those, and not to acept the
word "impossible". The unsolvable problems always are solved by persons that
didn't know the problem was unsolvable.

Now maybe you wonder why I continue to teach someone who is so obviously
ungifted. There are a few aspects of importance. The first one: this man is
so enthusiastically. He is a fysiotherapist, but uses all the little spare
time he has, to play calrinet. When in high school he played in a band that
accompanied a girl that now is a famous pop singer with us (for the Dutch
among us: Margriet Eshuis). At that time he played only by heart, in his own
words: experimentally, and after finding a good mode, tried to stick to it.
His clarinet belonged to Margriet's father, and was of German system.

The second reason is, that we have together lived through many rather
intense experiences in the course of time, that our relationship has changed
from "student-teacher" to "good friends". My experience, both as a
professional teacher of mathematics and as amatuer teacher of clarinet is,
that you do more thhan just teach, you are kind of sounding board (to stay
in style). My lessons helped a 72-years old woman to defeat her husband's
death, my above-mentioned friend to come over his divorce, a ten-years old
girl to swallow her inferior achievements in elementary school, and so on.

Maybe from a technical point of view i never was a good teacher. Not as a
teacher of mathematics , not as a teacher of clarinet. But in both
activities I have the happy feeling that to some human beings I have been
more, and have achieved more than just technical goals like passing
examinations and the like. Maybe I am a lousy clarinet teacher, but none of
my students wants me to stop to be replaced by a better, professional one.
Which poses me a dilemma; I want lessons myselves (how should I attack
Raxach, Nielsen, the Copland concerto, and so on, or even such an apparently
simple work as Finzi's "five bagatellas"?). And teaching clarinet costs me a
lot of time. But then again, I enjoy it.

Never mind.

Hope I didn't bore you with this long mail, you could have deleted it
anyhow.

Rien Stein (note the spelling of both names!)

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