Klarinet Archive - Posting 000166.txt from 2002/11

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Tuners (and acoustics books)
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 17:19:24 -0500

Bill Wright wrote,
>I remember someone (Ed Lacy? Karl Krelove?) once
>suggesting that triads with missing roots have a related
>problem --- namely, with the root gone, the listener
>assumes a root in order to fill the void, and the higher
>notes may not have suggested what the composer intended.

That acoustical phenomenon may be a problem for clarinet players, but it
comes in extremely handy for pianists for small hands. My husband plays
chamber music with a semi-pro pianist from China who has tiny hands. She can
play anything. She sight-reads Brahms. I asked her what she did about
pieces from the Romantic through modern era that demand tenths or even
twelfths. She shrugged, grinned and said she just leaves out the right hand
thumb note or it moves up an octave, where the rest of her fingers are busy.
She does the same in reverse with the left hand. Any note that's buried
somewhere in the middle of the chord structure can be moved by an octave, or
in some harmonies by a third or a fifth, as long as it either doubles the
octave of another note in the chord (in which case, listeners "hear" the
right pitch to fill out the chord, as Bill describes) or it creates a useful
difference tone. (Playing a note that's an octave too high *with* a fifth
above it, as in the frequently-used tonic chord of the key signature, pops a
phantom fundamental that's down an octave from the fundamental of the lower
note, for instance.)

She used this trick successfully to play Liszt and Rachmaninoff in many
competitions. "Maybe judge notice. Maybe not," she said, and added, "If
they don't like, they can jump in lake." Wish I'd thought of that back in
the bad old days! I *should* have thought of it, too, because I knew that
organ builders take great advantage of difference tones to save money and
space on bass pedal pipes.

(Speaking of which, John Weaver, head of the Organ Departments at both Curtis
and Juilliard, has scheduled Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor for his
November 10 recital in Washington, D. C., on the L'etourneau organ at St.
Ann's, and I can hardly wait! At least one newspaper critic will no doubt
harrumph that the L'etourneau, rebuilt from a worn-out Casavant, is better
suited for the French Romantic repertory later in his program, which is true;
but I've never heard Weaver play the Passacaglia and Fugue before and I'd go
even if he planned to play it on a Jaymar baby piano....)

Lelia

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