Klarinet Archive - Posting 000546.txt from 2002/09

From: "Keith" <100012.1302@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] My attempt to formalize my unstructured ideas
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 03:26:18 -0400

Dan

I agree with most of what you say. I've read your various articles on
the use of the clarinet intended by the composer, and am aware that if I
play a Bb part on an A (which I won't do unless I really cannot manage
the fingering in the original) or worse, a C part on a Bb, then I change
the orchestral palette in a way that I cannot assume would satisfy the
composers' intentions. And I have a basset clarinet, and a basset horn
on order, as you know.

But the missing part of your argument that causes me to pause, is that
there have been many other changes in clarinets and in other
instruments, which the composer likewise was unaware of when
orchestrating. You and I both play or have played soprano, basset horn
and bass parts on modern Boehm instruments; we've picked narrow bore
basset horns but in the bass case, the bores are also much larger than
the historical instruments. I recently played a bass from around 1900,
which was used in the LA symphony in the first part of the 20th Century.
Its bore was much narrower, and the sound in the clarinet register was
VERY different from my modern Buffet. It sounded more like a soprano
clarinet rather than the saxophony character of modern basses in that
register (there was less difference in the chalumeau). This struck me as
a MUCH wider difference than that between a modern Bb and A bass. I also
had the fortune to learn the clarinet on a "simple" (Albert) system.
When I changed to Boehm, I immediately perceived the different tonal
quality (especially of the C above the staff), even though I was very
inexperienced at the time. If you didn't have so many holes drilled in
your basset horn it would sound different.

Of course, the period instrument movement takes this argument all the
way. Tony Pay once said on here that the effect of a single period
instrument was not necessarily very apparent, but the effect of a whole
ensemble was very different. So even if we are true to the composer's
intentions in the choice of our instrument, the context in which it is
heard is very different.

So I would argue that the choice of instrument length, whilst important,
is but one of the factors that contribute to expressing the composer's
intentions. I agree it should not be selected arbitrarily. But I reserve
the right to play and enjoy modern instruments and orchestras as well as
proper period ones!

Keith Bowen

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From: Daniel Leeson [mailto:leeson0@-----.net]
Subject: [kl] My attempt to formalize my unstructured ideas

Now that I have watched the list for a month to assure myself that the
party who was using it for religious purposes as much as the
transmission of clarinet information is no longer doing so, I'm back as
I said I would be.

I am trying in this far too lengthy note, to formalize some rather
unstructured ideas that I have voiced over the past 5 years of posting
on this list.

There were a number of postings made over the past several weeks that
dealt with personal agendas in approaching the playing of this or that
work, though I am not speaking about matters of artistic interpretation.
It was more simple than that. One person mentioned how in this or that
section of Stravinsky's second version of Petrouchka, he (or she -- I
didn't pay attention) used an A clarinet instead of the one specified by
Stravinsky because "it sounds better."
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