Klarinet Archive - Posting 000064.txt from 2004/06

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] glissando help
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 06:46:40 -0400

On 4 Jun, ormondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya) wrote:

> Malapropisms and verbal flubs aside, this detour of the original thread
> revolves around the original statement that a piano can't play a
> glissando --- which is a statement that I accepted at first; but now
> that I've read a few dictionaries, it appears that the reverse is true!

I don't think anyone said that a piano can't play a glissando. It's just
that what's *called* a glissando on the piano isn't the same as what's called
a glissando on the clarinet. In fact, Lelia wrote:

> We play something called a glissando on the piano, with the technique as
> described in that message, but no matter how well or how fast it's done,
> it's still possible to distinguish one note from the next.

...which, as she said, isn't true of glissando on the clarinet.

But then, what's called 'out' in baseball isn't the same as what's called
'out' in tennis. Surely we don't need to discuss which game came first in
order to establish what the 'true' meaning of 'out' is?

(You can imagine the discussion: first, there was a clear physical meaning,
namely that the ball landed 'outside' the defined area of the court. But
then, with different ball rules, by extension the term came to mean that the
*player* was excluded from further participation in the game...so baseball
players have hijacked the word for their own purposes...[continued p94])

> Apparently the word began with piano and harp, and later it was adapted
> to violin on the basis of the physical sliding motion, not on the basis
> of its sound.

See, I think it's not worthwhile trying to define what is 'meant' by a word
like 'glissando'. It has different meanings in different contexts. In fact
the word 'glissando' on the violin and other string instruments is usually
reserved for a deliberate and continuous change of pitch, an effect that has
only come to be required, or even thought acceptable as music, in quite
modern times. The faster, 'expressive' slide, or slide plus shift
(explicitly notated by Mahler, for example) is usually called 'portamento',
as you point out.

But both of these, glissando and portamento, are produced by a finger slide
-- so already there's a (useful) distinction of terminology that goes beyond
a coarse description of the actions required to produce the sound.

> Apparently clarinetists also have adapted the word to their own
> instruments. Now we routinely substitute our perception of sliding pitch
> for the original meaning --- which was "sliding a finger".

> ...we clarinetists ought to be using some other word because we are truly
> doing something different than "glissando".

I don't even know that it was a clarinet player who first used the word to
describe the continuous slide possible on the clarinet. But however it
arose, it's an appropriate and useful description, in my view.

And actually, if you want to concern yourself with definitions, which are
mostly useless in the investigation of music, since they try to establish
meanings independent of context -- and even if you want to stick with 'how
you do it' as the primary determinant of the meaning -- I *do* slide my
fingers to some extent during glissando:-)

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

... If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

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