Klarinet Archive - Posting 000136.txt from 2005/03

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] At Tony's request
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 15:07:03 -0500


Regarding Tony Pay's chapter in _The Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet_,
Vann Joe Turner wrote,
>His chapter is titled "The mechanics of playing the clarinet".
>Such a title makes a promise to the readers that what follows
>is a How-To encapsulated into a single chapter, and he does
>address the major elements: breath, embouchure, tone,
>articulation, intonation.

No, the title promises that the author will discuss the mechanics of
playing the clarinet. It doesn't promise that the essay will deliver the
be-all and end-all on the subject. It's unreasonable for a reader to
expect something so vast from one chapter in a compendium of 17 different
essays on various aspects of the clarinet, by 13 different authors. Nor
can I imagine that the editor, Colin Lawson, who supplied the title (and
probably the word count limit) and who's an exceptional clarinet player
himself, would ask Tony to do the impossible by trying to cover that
entire, enormous subject in one 16-page essay.

Tony Pay wrote,
>>As it happened, I did do some 'how-to', but providing it
>>wasn't my primary concern. Rather, I was concerned to
>>say some technical things about clarinet playing that I
>>personally find important, but that aren't covered to my
>>satisfaction in the literature. It is, after all, a 'Companion',
>>not a tutor.

That's what I understood when I read the essay. After all, as Vann Joe
Turner writes,
>(For excellent instructional material, though in book form,
>I can recommend Keith Stein's *The Art of Clarinet Playing*
>and David Pino's *The Clarinet and Clarinet Playing*, and
>as complementary material, Barry Green's *The Inner Game
>of Music*)

Tony gives his own point of view on selected aspects of the topic that
interest him. Repeating the same instructions already published by Pino,
Green or Stein (or anybody else; there's no shortage of general pedagogy on
the subject) would have been pointless, seems to me.

>Unfortunately, he [Tony Pay] does not give a single
>suggestion as to what the shape of the inside of the
>mouth should be.

That criticism brings up another problem. Whose mouth? Yours? Mine? A
nine-year-old child's? A toothless 90-year-old's? A big mouth with a
small tongue? A small mouth with a big tongue? A punk mouth with a big
metal stud through a surgically forked tongue? Whose mouth, on what kind
of mouthpiece, with what kind of reed, with what kind of ligature, attached
to what kind of clarinet? I find Tony's essay useful precisely because he
doesn't attempt to toss out a glib formula for success. I guess
gobbledygook is in the eye of the beholder, but if anybody claims that the
same physical instructions work for all readers with all equipment, I'll be
seeing gobbledygook--and smelling snake oil.

I'm glad this discussion hasn't fallen apart into a shallow-minded slanging
match, because your initial comment was so rude that I half-expected Tony
to invite you to take your clarinet peg and sit and spin, but I'm glad he
asked you to explain, instead. However, reading your explanation, I'm
trying to figure out how Tony (or anybody) could have described to your
satisfaction (or anybody's), in an essay for an audience he couldn't see or
hear, exactly how Vann Joe Turner or any other individual should shape his
individual mouth around his individual reed and mouthpiece, connected to
Yog knows what kind of clarinet, to get the individual results he wants
for--well, for what kind of music? Gershwin? Mozart? A horror movie
score? It's reasonable to write out the most basic instructions in
tutorial books for beginners and intermediates, as Pino and others have
done, but the specifics of advanced instructions are more efficiently and
appropriately given in person, by a teacher who can see and hear what we're
doing and who can evaluate how the sound changes when we do something else
instead.

Lelia Loban
Are you watching Big Brother?

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