Klarinet Archive - Posting 000583.txt from 2003/07

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Reverently
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 04:31:31 -0400

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 07:49:46 -0500, forestaten@-----.net said:

> I have had many a Marcellus student tell me that the standard
> fingerings were encouraged in the Marcellus studio. I'm not sure these
> former students, when making that observation, fall into the
> "reverent" category......as most have adopted the use of auxiliary
> keys to facilitate technique or improve intonation or maybe even tone.

OK. I can see that.

> Perhaps I should have said that the "regular" fingerings were centric
> to the Marcellus way of playing and teaching. He demonstrated just how
> important he thought this was...by using these same standard
> fingerings in his own playing. All of his students (including me in a
> few master classes) were encouraged to use the standard fingerings as
> often as possible.

I think we, meaning clarinet players at large, do 'almost always' use
standard fingerings.

> As for as any underlying motives???? Perhaps...but in the few times I
> had opportunity to work with him, he was always simple and straight
> forward about what he wanted and why. I would assume (uh oh) that
> knowing and using the standard fingerings for clarinet, would be a
> primary concern of all teachers.....not an "underlying" motive.

Yes. All I wanted to point out was that it was *when he was working
with students* that he insisted on standard fingerings rather than the
alternative ones. And it was when he was working with students that he
said, for example, that standard F# is always a better sound than side
F#.

Now, that's objectively not true, in the outside world, because 'better'
is context dependent; and more powerfully, the sounds of 'standard F#'
and 'side F#' themselves depend on how the instrument is set up.

Still, teachers have their own ways of going about teaching, and their
best students will in the end, in their turn, go their own ways about
playing. (So in the dojo, you do what Sensei tells you, whatever you do
outside, now or later.)

I think, as a fan of Marcellus's, though not a worshipper of him, that I
would rather think of his practice of using standard fingerings,
including his justification of that practice, as a personal method, a
part of his approach to playing and teaching, belonging inside his
studio. So his saying that "standard F# is always a better sound than
side F#" has the status of a 'useful lie' in the context of his work.

A 'worshipper' might well want 'reverently' to assert its validity
outside Marcellus's studio. As in:

> For what it is worth, Marcellus taught me that the side f# is ONLY a
> trill fingering. He used [sic -- probably, 'avoided'] this fingering
> throughout. If I used it, he could tell by the timbre. Consequently I
> have learned to avoid it.

But in fact, it has no validity as an isolated statement in the outside
world.

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

... Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

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