Klarinet Archive - Posting 000015.txt from 2004/11

From: "Lacy, Edwin" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [kl] Doubling
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 15:34:30 -0500

As I recall, this thread started with someone's contention that there is
a great controversy as to whether the saxophone and clarinet embouchures
are identical. In my experience, there is actually no controversy here.
The saxophone and clarinet embouchures are similar, but different in
significant ways.

Let me try, as some others have, to state my credentials to make a
judgment in this matter. I have been a woodwind doubler for more than
50 years. I started on the clarinet in 1949, and picked up the
saxophone about a year later. My principal instrument through high
school was oboe, and when I entered college I was a bassoon major, and a
beginner on the bassoon. (That's another story.) I have also studied
and performed extensively on the flute. I have a doctorate in woodwinds
from Indiana University, and have played all the principal instruments
of the woodwind family in professional situations. My principal
clarinet teacher was Bernie Portnoy, and my attribute my knowledge of
the saxophone to my teacher, Eugene Rousseau.

Gene Rousseau had been a doubler himself in earlier years. He always
went to considerable lengths to explain to his students who were
majoring in woodwinds what he regarded as the primary differences
between the clarinet and saxophone embouchures.

One of the goals of any doubler is to play each instrument in such a way
that listeners can't tell which one is your major instrument. I would
say that most of us never achieve that goal, but in varying degrees, we
may at times come close to it. If one wants to sound like a clarinet
player, rather than like a woodwind doubler playing the clarinet, it is
necessary, in my humble opinion, to use a clarinet embouchure. The same
can be said of the saxophone.

I have spent a considerable amount of time during my teaching career of
45 years trying to teach the saxophone embouchure to clarinet players
who want to pick up saxophone, either as a double or as a recreational
instrument. One of the challenges is to separate the two techniques of
forming the embouchure in order to attain good pitch and tone on the
saxophone, while at the same time avoiding destroying the student's
concept of clarinet embouchure.

When someone who plays both instruments says that both embouchures are
identical, what must be determined is exactly what they mean by that.
If they mean that as single-reed instruments, one of the functions of
embouchure is to cushion the reed, or to keep air from escaping around
the mouthpiece, then that would be correct. However, the degree of
embouchure firmness and the degree of control (not pressure) that must
be exerted on the reed are quite different.

I have never heard any convincing evidence to the contrary.

Ed Lacy
University of Evansville

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