Klarinet Archive - Posting 000384.txt from 2004/10

From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Daniel Bonade and Rose
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 22:40:37 -0400

I first studied the Rose 40 and 32 Studies in high school. I had a series of
teachers, culminating with Anthony Gigliotti when I entered college, who all
had studied with either Bonade or Gigliotti (who studied with Bonade) at the
Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. The first thing Gigliotti did when I
arrived at Temple University was start me all over again at the beginning of
the 40 Studies. I vaguely understood, although I bristled a little at having
to do again what I had already "done," that he was being more demanding
regarding musical detail and more or less expected that I had already
learned the notes in my previous encounters under other teachers.

The funny thing is, although I "learned" and "completed" them through my
years of formal lessons, I often to this day (35 or 40 years later) go back
and find them hard to play. Not harder to play the way I played them then.
For one thing, I never played them even for Gigliotti at the tempos
indicated (by metronome markings) in my old Carl Fischer edition. Some of
those markings are really quite fast. For another, I am far more conscious
now than I was then of timbre, consistency of focus, clean technique and
phrasing. Those were all things I could only begin to consider during my
second sojourn through the etudes (plus another book of 20 Studies based on
Rode that Bonade and many of his students used). I can't tell from your post
if these "collegiate clarinetists" are students or their teachers, but I
think they miss the potential of these studies if they dismiss them as
junior high or high school music. Much other material has certainly been
created and published since the 1940s, but these are certainly not beneath
players of considerable accomplishment even now.

The shame of it is that the junior high and even the high school players who
practice (as I did) the Rose 40 and 32 Studies necessarily play them badly
if any standard other than mostly accurate notes and rhythms is applied.
They don't know enough. Whatever they accomplish when they play them for the
first time at a young age, they will always be able to get more from the
material with another time (or two or ten) through.

That isn't to say, I don't think, that you can still teach as though
"everything you needed to know about being an orchestral clarinetist was in
Rose." The training received by orchestra players of the time - not in 1964
but earlier when Bonade was developing his approach - was to a great extent
centered on the Romantic literature that formed the core of orchestral
repertory. Not that atonal, dodecaphonic, polymetric and even aleatoric
elements hadn't entered the repertory, but they were still relatively new
and represented departures from the "standard" repertory that constituted
most of the programs. The Rose studies are eminently tonal, largely diatonic
(and their chromaticisms are predictable and comfortable), generally stay in
a single meter and do not venture very far rhythmically. It wouldn't be
surprising to discover that 21st century music students and their teachers
find the vocabulary limited and maybe in their eyes (or ears) a little
simplistic.

No doubt more needs to be studied than *just* Rose (and Stark and Cavallini
and Jean-Jean and Baermann, the stallwarts of Gigliotti's teaching regimen,
which I think was largely based on Bonade's). But for the musical vocabulary
and stylistic features they include, Cyrille Rose can be as easy or as
challenging as the student (or the teacher) wants to make him.

Karl Krelove

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Michlin [mailto:amichlin@-----.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 10:15 AM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: [kl] Daniel Bonade and Rose
>
>
> Dear List,
>
> I recently came across this Daniel Bonade quote (in, of all places, "The
> Band Director's Guide", by Kenneth L. Neidig, Pub. Prentice Hall,
> Copyright
> 1964):
>
> "My idea in teaching is to wait until a student is able to master his
> instrument sufficiently before giving him any solos to play because
> beginners contract bad habits with solos and sometimes cannot get rid of
> them. This is just a private opinion, of course".
>
> My understanding is Mr. Bonade felt everything you needed to know about
> being an orchestral clarinetist was in Rose (and, perhaps, a few other
> etude books). At Juilliard, you would play through the Rose Etudes to his
> satisfaction and after having done so you would repeat them, to
> his higher
> satisfaction. He didn't seem to teach many orchestral excerpts (which is
> ironic, considering he literally wrote the book) and asked for only a
> select few of the most standard clarinet solos in the repertoire.
>
> It is hard to argue with his track record in placing orchestral clarinet
> players, but it is interesting to note that the Rose studies seem to have
> become "too easy" for the modern clarinet player. I have spoken with
> collegiate players who dismiss them as etudes studied in junior high or
> high school and, therefore, not worthy of their attention at the
> collegiate
> level. It am certainly willing to admit the possibility that clarinet
> playing has changed drastically in the last 50 odd years since Mr. Bonade
> was on the faculty of Juilliard. So I offer a question:
>
> Are the Rose studies too easy for the modern collegiate clarinet player?
>
> -Adam

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