Klarinet Archive - Posting 000211.txt from 2005/01

From: Curtis Bennett <curtis.bennett@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: Rhapsody in Blue Gliss
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 09:14:42 -0500

I'm with you, John. I'm no professional, but I always assumed a
glissando wasn't necessarily a smear at all. At least, not written.
I thought the gershwin was a wavy line, not a curved line - the latter
which (to me) would indicate a smear, and the former being a
glissando.

Oh, what do I care.. I'm 5th chair in a community band subbing on an eefer! :)

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 08:52:43 -0500, John D. Stackpole
<jstackpo@-----.org> wrote:
> A physics (sorta) question...
>
> If one (not me, that's for sure) is playing the glissando are you not
> playing EVERY tone from start to finish? A continuous run thru the
> frequencies (at least in principle)? Even those in between C and C#,
> for example. And every other "normal" discrete pair of notes?
>
> That would be, in sense, "more" that chromatic, and certainly more
> than diatonic.
>
> Or am I just demonstrating that I don't really know what a proper
> glissando is.
>
> JDS
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
> To: <klarinet@-----.org>
> Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 8:18 AM
> Subject: RE: [kl] RE: Rhapsody in Blue Gliss
>
> Of course the notation is by now meaningless, and I didn't mean to get
> into
> the history either - only to point out that there's no reason why any
> part
> of the run that's fingered must be chromatic.
>
> Karl
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Bryan Crumpler [mailto:crumpletox@-----.com]
> > Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 7:36 AM
> > To: klarinet@-----.org
> > Subject: [kl] RE: Rhapsody in Blue Gliss
> >
> >
> > >From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
> > >The notation in the part, after all, is for a diatonic scale all
> the way
> > >up, not chromatic.
> >
> > The notation in the part can be ignored. According to what I've
> > researched,
> > the smear was used in the first performance after the clarinetist
> (whose
> > name I forget) smeared it in a rehearsal... just as a joke. And
> Gershwin,
> > who was conducting at the time, loved it and instructed that it be
> played
> > that way in the premiere performance. The smear has been adopted by
> > clarintists ever since. This history is exactly what I did NOT
> > want to get
> > into.
> >
> > My concern is that I can comfortably and effectively gliss the
> > entire range
> > of the horn (well, standard range from low E to 4th octave G) as was
> > mentioned about Schifrin. It was something I figured out how to do a
> few
> > years ago after working on the Copland.... But my current teacher
> claims
> > glissing the entire opening passage of the Rhapsody is wrong -
> european
> > classical thinking perhaps. So my main question is... is glissing
> > the entire
> > passage flat out unacceptable... or is there really a standard,
> > "acceptable"
> > way to do that opening passage. From the responses, I gather that
> what my
> > teacher thinks is more a result from the fact that most clarinetists
> > fingerfudge it up to a point where he/she *can* gliss comfortably
> > up to the
> > C. And I can understand how that has become somewhat of a standard
> due to
> > the difficulty involved in smearing over the break, but either
> > I'm blind or
> > just stubborn in trying to understand why smearing the entire
> > passage would
> > be "unacceptable" per se.
> >
> > Bryan
> >
> > P.S.
> > For those who might inquire, what I end up doing to achieve a
> > smear across
> > the break is loosening the embouchure, dropping the tongue, and
> fingering
> > chromatically across the break. If your embouchure is loose enough,
> the
> > notes won't sound articulated, but will rather run together. I do
> that up
> > until the 4th line D and then fingersmear the rest of the way to
> > the high C.
> > And what you end up getting is a rather chromatic smear across the
> entire
> > range.......... easier said than done ---- also better demonstrated
> than
> > expained by email. But you get the idea.
> >
> > http://www.whosthatguy.com
> >
> >
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> -
> > Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org
> >
> >
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org
>
>

--
Curtis Bennett

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