Klarinet Archive - Posting 000129.txt from 2003/10

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: RE: [kl] Tongue movements -- another go
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 16:44:14 -0400

On Mon, 6 Oct 2003 15:58:56 -0400, karlkrelove@-----.net said:

> I find myself singing pieces I've learned in some other connection -
> pieces I conduct with my school orchestra, even songs to which I've
> forgotten the words - with the same variety of vowels. My unconscious
> choice of vowel seems, at least on very superficial consideration, to
> have more to do with the rhythmic (agogic?) function of a note than
> anything else.

Yes. And I do that too. Perhaps the truth is, as you suggest, that
when a clarinet player sings something that they commonly play on the
clarinet, there are competing systems of vowel allocation.

Before anyone responded here, I suggested to my oboist friend that he
investigate what was true for him; and also that he might ask his wife,
who is the leader of the orchestra we're playing in at the moment, how
she herself sang the opening of the Mozart clarinet concerto. (I
wondered whether 'Deee-yah, dee-yah, daaaaa-aaah' might become,
'Deee-yah, dee-yah, deeeee-aaah' for a string player, because the
necessity to voice the 'C' with an 'aaaa' would be absent.)

But in fact she reported that she anyway preferred to sing 'Deee-yah,
dee-yah, daaaaa-aaah' because the 'daaaaa-aaah' was more legato (smaller
interval) and maintaining the same vowel represented that better.

So the situation isn't simple.

Incidentally, I notice that I'd also represented the 'more legato'
quality of that interval throughout, by leaving out the 'y'!

Another thing that interests me is the difference I reported I'd found
between the period instruments and the modern instruments.

Not many people here will be able to make that comparison; but I also
find a difference between bass clarinet and standard clarinet.

How do people who also play saxophone react to this experiment?

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

... Misspelled? Impossible. Error correcting modem!

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