Klarinet Archive - Posting 000030.txt from 2002/06

From: "Don Yungkurth" <clarinet@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Playing the Period Clarinet - for Tony Pay (was "Teaching the 'students' of today")
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 20:13:19 -0400

Tony Pay said:

>Playing the clarinet (particularly playing the period clarinet) should
>be thought of as being like having sex -- it's only any good if you
>actually want to do it. And it's not a question of thinking less of the
>student, any more than you would think less of someone who didn't want
>to have sex.

These comments bring up a subject which I've been meaning to ask Tony about
for quite a while. Back around 1980 I spent two years working in London
(not as a musician!) and heard essentially all the prominent clarinet
players. Tony Pay was by far my choice as the best of the lot, i. e., his
playing most closely matched my prejudices as to sound and interpretation.

If Tony was playing period instruments at that time, it certainly wasn't at
any of the concerts I attended, although I certainly heard period instrument
players during that period - Alan Hacker and Leslie Shatzberger, for
example.

Tony's statement that, "Playing the clarinet (particularly playing the
period clarinet) should be thought of as being like having sex -- it's only
any good if you actually want to do it", reminded me of my question:

My question for Tony is, "Why do you play period clarinet?"

I'm particularly curious about this because I'm old enough to have lived
through a significant portion of the modern increase in use of period
instruments. In the early days, the most obvious difference with period
playing was the strange sounds and horrible intonation (to my 20th century
ears). As time went on, the sounds and intonation became less strident and
currently I find that I have difficulty telling period instrument recordings
without reading the notes that come with the CD. Indeed, I remember someone
on Klarinet (Roger Garrett?) saying something to this effect about one of
Tony's period instrument Weber recordings. As the playing on period
instruments sounds (to me) closer and closer to that of modern clarinets,
the reason for playing them seems less and less obvious. It seems that in
many period orchestral recordings these days, the difference is more with
speeds, dynamics, balance between sections, size of group etc., than with
the actual sound of individual instruments. Strings are actually able to
play in tune with each other without using vibrato. To my ears, that
doesn't improve the sound of a string section, but I digress.

So - as to why play the period clarinet, some possible reasons come to mind,
such as:

1. Boredom with playing "normal" clarinet. (Too easy? Been there, done
that?)

2. Intellectual curiosity as to how well the period instruments could be
played.

3. Economic demand for period players.

4. What did Stadler, Baermann, Hermstedt or Muhlfeld sound like? (This is
slippery slope stuff considering the variety of sounds that can be made by a
variety of players on the modern clarinet.)

5. Desire to recreate the actual "period sound". (See slippery slope
comment in number 4. How would you know if you actually succeeded in
sounding like Stadler?)

This is the sort of thoughts and questions running through my head. Any
comments would be appreciated, Tony.

Don Yungkurth (clarinet@-----.net)

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