Klarinet Archive - Posting 000390.txt from 2004/06

From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Re: Fingering Book-clear diagrams
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 17:58:49 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ormondtoby Montoya [mailto:ormondtoby@-----.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 2:33 PM
>
> <snip>
>
> First of all, if a person is going to write clarinet music, then they
> **do** owe it to their readers to understand the instrument.
>
>
Oh, I don't know - I expect good music. I don't really know (or see that it
makes much difference) what anyone whose music I've played or used with
students "understands" about playing the clarinet. If it "works" musically,
I find that enough.
>
> Second, while "303 Fingerings" does include a lot of information, the
> information is not presented in the manner of a "scholarly tome" that
> forces you to wade through 100's of pages word-by-word before you begin
> to extract whatever details are critical to you.
>
Gary's complaint wasn't that it was too scholarly or wordy - I think he
meant that it has too many fingerings for special situations that wouldn't
be meaningful to an inexperienced player or non-player. Many fingerings are
only useful in specific contexts - they are not among the "basic" set that
an inexperienced player would find useful, making them irrelevant to a
non-player trying to compose easy-to-play music for inexperienced players.

> I'm not saying that "303 Fingerings" is the only suitable book, but I
> would choose it without question over a beginner's method book.
>
But a beginner wouldn't, necessarily, until it becomes important for him/her
to explore beyond the basic fingering set shown in the method books.
>
>
> Third, I still remember my very deep frustration when my beginning
> teacher would tell me (more than once): "This beginner's book doesn't
> tell you, but since you're going to play [a certain note] immediately
> before this one, you need to know an alternate fingering for it."
>
Even if "the beginner's book" *had* included the fingering, if it is used in
this specific a context, you'd have been a rare beginner indeed who ferreted
it out for yourself. For the isolated situations in which this kind of need
arises, a teacher is probably a better source of special fingerings than a
chart until the player's experience level is enough to be able to
discriminate appropriateness for him/herself.
>
> Again, Robert, if you're going to sell me some music, I demand that you
> know a bit more about clarinet than what's in a beginner's method book.
>
Do you demand this of all composers whose music you play, or is this just an
oratorical flourish to precede your descent from the soapbox? :-)

Karl

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