Klarinet Archive - Posting 000604.txt from 2002/09

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] formalizing ideas, the "right" instrument, etc.
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 13:26:10 -0400

Bear Woodson wrote,
> Since I didn't want to burden future players by
>forcing them to transpose highly chromatic music,
>and since I am my own Publisher, I simply put all
>4 movements of the Trumpet's Part in Bb, followed
>by all 4 movements in C, bound in one book!

Good common sense solution, IMHO. My instincts are purist; I try to play the
instrument the composer wants, unless it's really convenient not to...but
I'll bet most composers run into similar situations, and have to choose an
instrument purely because somebody plays X instead of Y at the time, not
because the gods of music demand a certain instrument for some refined nuance
of sound. (The nuances may disappear into the acoustics anyway, depending on
whether the venue is Carnegie Hall or the high school gym...).

I just made a similar choice, for a related reason, with a piece I'm writing
for four clarinets and piano. I'm not a real composer, just another slobby
amateur musician messing around with the Sibelius program while I avoid
finishing an article my editor's pestering me about because it's already late
(!), but FWIW, this chamber piece includes alto clarinet.

I play alto clarinet. I like alto clarinet a lot. Hardly anybody agrees
with me. Therefore I made sure the Eb alto clarinet part is playable on Bb
bass clarinet, and I extracted an extra part for bass clarinet to include as
a substitution, in case I ever let this quintet out the door, which I
probably won't do, because my husband's reaction to hearing the computer play
the first draft of the last movement was the facial expression I would expect
to see if I cooked liver with cabbage for dinner.

Anyway. Including the alternative part for bass clarinet naturally would
raise the question of why I scored for alto clarinet in the first place,
since the bass clarinet is by popular consent a better instrument, not to
mention more available. I prefer a bass clarinet myself. I asked to switch
to it 42 years ago in junior high school, but because the music director
thought I wasn't big enough or male enough to play bass clarinet, he let me
switch to alto clarinet instead, as the booby prize. Besides, I don't own a
bass clarinet yet, but did happen to run across a first-rate alto clarinet
for a bargain price a few years ago. Therefore the honest answer to the
obvious question is: I scored for alto clarinet in order to give a
long-suffering alto clarinet player something challenging to practice, for a
change, because I never got over being cheesed off about all the boring
"hoot, honk, hooooooty, honk" parts I had to play in junior high.

(Does 42 years sound like kind of a long time to hold a grudge? Most band
arrangements look to me as though the arranger assumed that [1] no decent
clarinet player would ever *volunteer* to switch to alto clarinet, and [2] if
forbidden to throw anybody out of the band class, a teacher would always
assign his or her rock-bottom stupidest student to play the alto clarinet, in
the hope that the kid would get miserable enough to quit and go away.
Anybody who does enjoy the alto clarinet and volunteer to play it soon
discovers that the solo and chamber music repertory strongly resembles a
black hole, minus the event horizon.)

So I've got no real musical excuse to score that part for an alto clarinet
instead of for a bass clarinet. However, since I'm wearing the composer's
hat instead of the alto clarinetist's hat when I make this decision, and
since nobody's paying me to write this music anyway, I figure that anyone who
doesn't like it can take a running jump.

So much for artistic considerations.
;-)

Lelia

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