Klarinet Archive - Posting 000483.txt from 2003/07

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: RE: [kl] Rose Etude #8 (from 32) bar 10, last note: chromatic fingering or
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 07:11:19 -0400

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 18:23:57 -0400, karlkrelove@-----.net said:

> > From: Anne Lenoir [mailto:AnneLenoir@-----.net]
> >
> > I have several students who are preparing a large portion of this
> > etude for their chair placement in Symphonic Band as well as for All
> > State Band tryouts.
> > I would never consider using the chromatic fingering. It seems
> > stupid to have your 2 fingers on the side and then have to go slam
> > down your fingers to reach the Clarion E at the beginning of bar 11.
> > That's why it is called an "alternative" fingering. The regular F#
> > is your first finger. I am starting to get very annoyed at my
> > students. They have no respect for me at all when it comes to
> > learning a passage with correct fingerings. Does anybody out there
> > go from throat F# to Clarion E with the chromatic F# fingering? If
> > so, maybe I can learn something new from you.
> > My students are all telling me that the band director said they
> > had to use the chromatic fingering or else he would take points off
> > their final score. ANNIE

> I find myself reacting to this post on a couple of different levels.
> First, I agree that the easiest fingering for that passage for me is
> to use the "regular" (first finger) F-sharp, although I tried the
> chromatic fingering when I read your post and didn't find it as awful
> as you do.

Sometimes shifts to and from such fingerings are quite OK when you've
learnt the right general movement that generates the shift. Playing
basset notes (on my basset clarinet with the RH thumb) became much
easier when I found the right hand rotations as well as hand shifts.
I remember watching a cellist shift positions seamlessly in quite
complicated passages, and deciding that if *that* was possible, I could
surely manage what I had to do.

I don't know the passage Annie describes, so I can't judge if there is
any advantage to be gained by making that sort of shift. Probably the
band director is wrong in this case, and Annie might profitably have a
quiet word with him. But another well-known solo in which such a
'dangerous' shift helps is the 'Freischutz' solo -- the one that starts
on ff clarion A, descends through an F major arpeggio to throat G, and
then rises through a crescendo G minor arpeggio to clarion Bb before
proceeding.

One way of playing this solo benefits from a resonant, powerful throat
Bb. With practice, you can learn to take this on the side, even though
there is then a legato shift to clarion D, involving a precise movement
of RH1 from second-from-the-top trill key to its home hole, rather
similar to the movement you're talking about.

[snip]

> My final reaction is that declaring *any* fingering as necessary or
> useless in most specific contexts is a sticky proposition. Timbre,
> response, intonation, ease, articulation, the location of the notes in
> the phrase, all can have an effect on the choice of fingering when
> there is a choice available.

I think this is the heart of it. The post that mentioned that Marcellus
'could hear' when a student used the side fingering for F# only bites if
what he could hear was musically unsatisfactory in the context that it
was being used.

And if it was musically unsatisfactory, the best response would have
been to tell the student to play the passage containing the F# in such a
way that it *wasn't* musically unsatisfactory -- by using a different
fingering, *or otherwise*.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

... As long as I can remember, I've had amnesia.

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