Klarinet Archive - Posting 000329.txt from 2005/03

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] The Test
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 09:31:01 -0500

Lelia Loban indicated that she was not planning to take the test,
for which I am sorry. But it was her reason for not taking it
that is worth a moment of consideration.

She wrote:

"I'm not planning to take the test, because I don't believe I can
identify
players by nationality. I think musicians travel so much these
days,
listen to each other so much and change teachers so frequently
that by now,
regional styles that may (or may not) have developed in isolation
decades
ago are pretty thoroughly shaken and stirred."

In effect, Lelia suggests, perhaps correctly, that we have all
become homogonized. When she wrote this, I recognized some
historical precedent of which her remarks reminded me. Then,
suddenly, I remembered it.

Prior to the introduction of autopsies to the European
civilization, no one really knew what was inside a human body.
But Galen, before the Christian era, had written a book on human
anotomy by dissecting pigs. He declared that the human hipbone
was flared like that of a pig, and that was an accepted belief
until the 16th century.

Finally, an anatomist pointed out that in his many autopsies, he
could find no humans with hipbones shaped like those of pigs, so
he declard Galen wrong on the subject. To which the Church
responded with the following: it is true that today the human
hipbone is not shaped like that of a pig, but Galen WAS right
when he wrote what he wrote. The situation today is that the
hipbone has changed shape because of the wearing of tight
trousers.

Now Lelia suggests that the German sound really did exist, but
due to travel and recording and other things, that formerly
identifiable sound got homogonized along with all others.

I don't think so. I suggest there NEVER was a German (or French
or American or English) sound. People just thought there were
such things and that notion got ingrained into clarinet wisdom.
In effect, at that time, we were not wearing such tight trousers.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

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