Klarinet Archive - Posting 000350.txt from 2002/12

From: "Patricia A. Smith" <patricia@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] bass clarinet in A
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 20:48:12 -0500

Gary Van Cott wrote:
> I am not really an expert here, but I believe the books for these shows
> are typically rentals that often show up at the last possible moment.

I have had just enough experience here to answer this - yes, rather
often. Other times, here are some other possibilities -

1- the parts are so OLD, they are partially decomposed, hence unreadable.

2- the parts are so marked up with pencil marks, pen marks, erasures,
etc., that they are unreadable.

3- the parts have to be hastily transposed for one/two/however many
singers who cannot sing in the key a feature number is written in, hence
the music to a particular number, along with parts of the segue music
before and following the feature number are not available for all of the
paid rehearsal time, and when they are finally available, the copyist's
manuscript is so bad, the part is unreadable. (Today this is avoided by
printing out the parts with computer software - I love technology! Long
may it wave!)

4- There are myriad other possibilities - most of which I've forgotten.
I usually was so happy to be getting paid to play music, and managed to
ignore all the sniping, played whatever was there, and went home, glad I
was out of the restaurant business for a while. So far, no one's come
back to assassinate me yet.

Patricia Smith

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