Klarinet Archive - Posting 000878.txt from 2001/10

From: Nichelle Crocker <nichelle@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Speculation (Bassett Soliloquies)
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 14:48:35 -0500

Tony Pay wrote:

>But anyway, whatever I know about the clarinet leads me to suppose,
>although I don't know the piece:-(, and therefore not even the dynamic
>of the E, that there isn't an unequivocal solution.

No unequivocal solution? I may be too uptight to deal with that answer. ;)

>Even if it meant a
>multiphonic, which is another suggestion in addition to those you
>quoted, you'd still have a choice among various possibilities.
>
>A very effective one of those multiphonics, though some people find it
>rather difficult to obtain, is the one ISTR sometimes required by
>Xenakis, involving a quite radical mouth position applied to a low A
>fingering. This solution has the advantage that you can concentrate
>a lot of the energy of the sound into the E under discussion, so it does
>sound quite like the written pitch, though the bottom A is still
>present. The effect is quite metallic and 'honky', but you can get it
>at various dynamics.

Thank you for the multiphonic suggestion - I'll give that a try. I was
given another multiphonic suggestion by David Keberle who did a short
lecture/recital out here in the wheat fields of Eastern WA just a few days
ago. The fingering is thumb plus second and third fingers on the left hand
and the resulting tones are the 1st line E and the E two octaves above
that. I haven't tried that yet, so I'll have to see if I can manage that
with the nice results he gets.

>If you just want a different colour for the E though, one trouble is
>that the note is *too low* to give you much variation in tone colour
>from a fingering -- I find that just releasing the register key has no
>audible effect even on pitch. (If the note in question were the Bb
>above, you'd be in a much better position, cf. the Berio Sequenza.) So
>in that case, modifying your address to the instrument in an appropriate
>way -- to be decided by you -- would probably be the best, as in your
>second quote above.

This piece is full of resonance trills, so giving this note a different
timbre would be my own best guess at what is desired by the composer. I
tried releasing the register key, and I didn't really hear a noticeable
difference either, so I sort of mentally discarded that idea because the
notation obviously calls for *some* audible difference in that note.

>Of course, it does occur to me that you could write to Bassett at:
>
>1618 Harbal Drive
>Ann Arbor, MI 48105
>
>....which is the address he gives on his web page for "Commissions and
>performance questions"; but of course, if you do that, you risk getting
>an answer 'that you might not want'.

I've been getting answers "that I might not want" all my life. Why stop
now? I may just write to him about this question, and I'll be sure to post
the results to the list.

>I hesitate to write that quite so directly, because I almost always
>argue on the other side, namely that of following the composer's wishes;
>but the alternative point of view needs to be represented from time to
>time.

I'm hesitating here too. I really want to ask what you feel the alternate
point of view is, and what its worth might be. Oh, what the heck. I'll ask.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Nichelle "Pandora" Crocker
nichelle@-----.com

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