Klarinet Archive - Posting 000010.txt from 2002/09

From: "rien stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] "pouchette"
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2002 15:53:33 -0400

Audrey Travis wrote

<<
violins (Stradivarius) of different shapes and sizes
(one called a 'pouchette' which was about 10-12 inches high but in the
shape of a very narrow, elongated violin).
>>

First off all I envy your enthusiasm for Paris: I never felt it. There I bought
my present clarinet -- a Buffet-Crampon BC 20 -- 17 years ago, when more or less
repeating with my wife our honeymoon. We had been in Paris 30 years before now:
we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary last week. But my wife is not very
interested in music, and certainly not in music instruments, so we never went to
the museum. We have e very good museum of music instruments in The Hague (Den
Haag, in Dutch) and also there seems to be a very good one in Berlin, but I
never saw these. This year however I hope to go to Den Haag.

But I quote the particulat passage from your writing for another reason. The
instrument you describe in it is also called the "dance master's violin". It was
so small a dance teacher could wear it in the pocket of his dress suit when
demonstrating, but play it when the pupils were assumed to follow his example.
It was used especially much in the 18th and 19th centuries in Austria, and even
more, it seems, in the USA. Of course in later years it has been replaced by the
metal discs that preceded the grammophone discs, and the grammophone discs, and
still later the cd's, but before the end of the 19th century dance teachers not
only had to be good dancers, but also good players of violin or piano, as they
had not only to watch their pupils, but also had to play the music. Must heve
been a toughh job!

Greetings

Rien

---------------------------------------------------------------------