Klarinet Archive - Posting 000084.txt from 2001/04

From: rgarrett@-----.edu
Subj: Re: [kl] What you *can* say about vibrato
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 05:30:31 -0400

At 10:57 PM 04/04/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>Now, some music responds well to the use of vibrato, some not so well. I
>happen to believe that a particularly important part of classical music is
>the showing of phrase shapes, not only by dynamic modulation, but by tonal
>modulation, so that the beginning of a classical phrase has a different
>sound from its end. See:
>
>http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet/Study/Phrasing.html
>
>Hence, I tend to like less, or even no vibrato, in classical music.
>
>There are degrees and degrees of all this, of course. Joachim used
>left-hand vibrato for special parts of a phrase, and bow-modulation for
>overall shape. There is also such a thing as bow-vibrato.....

Now that's a very interesting viewpoint - and one not to be taken
lightly.........

A question for you Tony.............if you don't mind.......

When you mean "less" vibrato, do mean vibrato that is less noticeable? Or,
smaller, perhaps more narrow modulations of the tone color? I know that
sounds very ambiguous, but I don't mean it to be that way. What I am
getting at is that some players use a lot of vibrato (a quicker modulation
with a less wide "bend" if you will) - especially in chamber music settings
- in which they are working at both expressing and blending - and I have
noticed quite a bit of vibrato within the ranks - but most of it never gets
out to the audience. Similarly, I really have to listen to some recordings
of the Mozart Concerto, for example, with headphones to notice that the
soloist is actually using quite a bit of vibrato. This is the kind of
"intensity" vibrato I referred to earlier.......... Then in other
recordings that I particularly like, I notice vibrato only in passages in
which intensity is desired - but again, the modulation is similar to what I
describe directly above - faster, more narrow in scope.

I guess I'm just asking for you to be a bit more clear by what you mean by
"less" vibrato so I understand better what it is you prefer in classical
literature.

Thanks in advance......

Best wishes,
Roger Garrett

Roger Garrett
Clarinet Professor
Director, Symphonic Winds
Illinois Wesleyan University
School of Music
Bloomington, IL 61702-2900
Phone: (309) 556-3268
Fax: (309) 556-3121

"A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes
another's."
Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825)

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