Klarinet Archive - Posting 000545.txt from 2002/11

From: "Russell Harlow" <lharlow@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Is my taste in clarinet tone getting "darker" in my old
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 23:56:13 -0500

I asked David Weber recently how Ralph McLane spoke about sound and concept
of sound. He told me that McLane ( said by many to have had one of the most
beautiful of clarinet sounds) talked about "Gold" and "Silver" in the tone,
it had to be like "Chocolat" you had to be able to reach up and touch the
sound. Keith Stein in"The Art of Clarinet Playing" pp32 talks of "analysis
of tonal components" and uses terms such as "dark" etc. in demonstrating how
imagination is essential, in conjunction with technical means to approach
the quality of sound desired.

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>From: Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.edu>
>To: klarinet@-----.org
>Subject: Re: [kl] Is my taste in clarinet tone getting "darker" in my old age?
>Date: Tue, Nov 12, 2002, 12:09 PM
>

> Not necessarily if you're a synesthete. But it might show that the rest of
> us have bumped up against an evolutionary dead-end. 8-) There's an
> outside chance that the use of the words for colors and shades to describe
> the sound of music got started by synesthetes who thought everyone had the
> same ability. Others then picked up on it because they wanted to be a part
> of the musical fraternity (and because of the appeal of poetic
> allusion). I would suggest, particularly among you teachers, that instead
> of giving students a "tut-tut-tut" response to their use of such terms that
> you check out their claims for internal consistency. If you then are
> convinced that your student perceives something you will never enjoy then
> you can extoll your student's good fortune and go off to weep in
> private. If not you can wax eloquently about the meaninglessness of the
> description. Some folks on the FLUTE discussion group gave what I
> considered to be convincing testimonials about the colors of tones. I
> still maintain that maybe there are some members of this list who hear
> "dark" tones and neither Dan nor I will ever enjoy the same experience.
>
> Oliver
>
>>Annie dear, the very idea of calling a tone "golden" and "darker" in the
>>same sentence shows the futility of using colors to describe the sound
>>character of an instrument.
>
>
>
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