Klarinet Archive - Posting 000636.txt from 2002/05

From: Bear Woodson <bearwoodson@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Brahms' own recording
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 11:04:02 -0400

> Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 00:59:44 -0400
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> From: klarinet <klarinet@-----.net>
> Subject: Re: [kl] More Brahms Trivia
> Message-id: <000e01c202df$d2375780$0686b918=default>
>
> The first cylinder recording which Edison played
> on the newly invented phonograph in 1889 was
> Brahms playing own his own Hungarian Rhapsodies
> (after shouting the greeting: "To Dr Edison from
> Dr Brahms") ...Glenn Kantor

Hello, Klarinet List.

A few years ago, one of the Visiting Com-
posers, who came to lecture us, here at the Uni-
versity of Arizona in Tucson, was from a uni-
versity where their computer wiz guys had done
an Acoustic Clean Up of these early recordings
by Brahms.

We only got to hear a few seconds of the
digitized result, but the Visiting Composer
(whose name I just can't remember), pointed out
the Improvisation that Brahms had played. The
interesting feature was that Brahms was playing
a Reverse Dotted Rhythm on the piano, meaning
a pattern of a Sixteenth-Note followed by a
Dotted Eighth-Note, in each beat.

Brahms not only played piano in bordellos
when he was a youth, but also sometimes
improvised in popular music styles at his
favorite tavern, in his older years. (It just shows
that you never can trust them thar fuzz-faced
boys!)

Meanwhile, last week I have already written
my new "Sonata for Unaccompanied Clarinet"
(May 2002, 3 mvts., 16 min.), and yesterday I
finished the First Movement of the new "Sonata
No. 1 for (Bb) Clarinet and Piano". I am writing
my Cycle of Clarinet Works for Professor Joze
Kotar of the Music Academy in Ljubljana
Slovenia. There is also the new "Quintet for Bb
Clarinet with Violin, Viola, Cello and String
Bass" in progress. Since he wants to perform
these works this Fall, I am writing as fast as
I can on these works.

Bear Woodson
Composer in Tucson, Arizona, USA
"Bear Woodson" <bearwoodson@-----.net>

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