Klarinet Archive - Posting 000417.txt from 2003/12

From: Dan Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] C-Clarinet Alert
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:16:29 -0500

Tony Pay wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 12:22:16 EST, EClarinet@-----.com said:
>
>
>>In a message dated 12/2/03 4:16:56 AM EST, Forest Aten writes:
>>
>>
>>>A C clarinet's value doesn't have much to do with "rarity". A person
>>>really has to have a place to use the clarinet. An orchestra would be one
>>>of those places...but often conductors or other players will refuse a
>>>player the right to use a C clarinet. I have observed this on more than
>>>one occasion. A second (and rare indeed) venue is in chamber music. A
>>>third would be in a jazz/popular setting....and a fourth....the practice
>>>room. Not very many people have a place to use such a clarinet.
>>
>>I used to think the above was true, but not any more.
>
>
> [snip of opportunities to use the C clarinet]
>
> I'm just struck by Forest's remark:
>
>
>>>...but often conductors or other players will refuse a player the right
>>>to use a C clarinet. I have observed this on more than one occasion.
>
>
> Excuse me?
>
> Tony

Tony, many years ago when I was living in New Jersey, I got called to
play 2nd clarinet on a strange gig. A woman named Charlotte Bergen,
fabulously wealthy, had hired an orchestra to rehearse the Beethoven
Missa Solemnis. No chorus, no soloists, just an orchestra. And we
rehearsed in her living room, that's how big her house was.

I knew the Missa and showed up with three clarinets, but the other
clarinet player didn't have a C and showed up only with his A and
B-flat. We were well into the rehearsal when Bergen (then close to 80
and somewhat frail) asked me why I had three clarinets when the 1st
player had only two.

So I told her that one of them was a C clarinet, and I was using it
during the passages and sections that called for it. Well she turned
purple with anger and said, "If you can't transpose, then you should not
be playing with a symphony."

I told her that I was capable of transposing so fast her head would
spin, but I was simply following Beethoven's instruction. Well she
grumbled and asked me to stop using the C clarinet and I did to avoid
confrontation with a woman who knew very little about music in general
and less about conducting. Today I would simply have asked her if it was
OK to play the Missa on tenor sax.

It seems that she was planning to do the entire Missa in New York with
the New York Philharmonic hired by her for the occasion, and we were her
practice orchestra. Can you imagine such a thing?

But the story has an interesting ending.

As the next rehearsal, she came up to me and insisted that I not even
unpack my C clarinet (which I had not in any case). She had, she said,
called Stanley Drucker and he told her that if I couldn't transpose the
part, I should be fired. So I smiled and said, I'll do the best I can
and so I transposed the entire part onto an A clarinet just to be
stubborn. In fact, I played every movement on the clarinet NOT called
for. I played all A parts on a B-flat and vice versa. All the C parts
wound up on A.

She never asked why my clarinet was a different length than the one
being used by the 1st player, who was Bill Shadel, at that time the
first with the NJ Symphony. Afterwards we both laughed so hard we wet
ourselves.

I've also had local experiences here in California where the first
clarinet leaned over and told me not to use a C instrument. So the idea
that some people are so very opposed to it that they make a stink is, in
my case at least, quite true.

It certainly does no good to argue the matter, particularly with a
conductor since they don't know anything anyway. I certainly did not
intend to get fired from the gig (which payed double scale) because of
the C clarinet. Do you think that Miss Bergen was prepared to
understand any of the historical, musicological, and theoretical
arguments involved? She was still trying to learn how to beat three
without falling on her ass.

Later she hired the same orchestra for a number of rehearsals, everybody
made money, and she had dreams of being a conductor. For all the good
the dreams did her, should could had dreams about being the
reincarnation of Marie Antoinette.

--
Dan Leeson
leeson0@-----.net

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org