Klarinet Archive - Posting 000358.txt from 2005/03

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] The Test
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 08:59:22 -0500


Dan Leeson wrote,
>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.
[Snip Galen and the pig.]
>
>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.

No, Dan, that's exactly what I was very careful *not* to say when I put in
that parenthetical clause:
>may (or may not) have developed in isolation....>

I don't know whether schools of clarinet playing developed or not, back in
the day when musicians travelled less and had no recordings of each other's
playing. I wasn't there. However, I'm willing to allow the *possibility*
that schools may have developed, because such a thing *did* happen among
violin players. Unlike the situation we have on the klarinet list right
now, among violinists there's no dispute that there really are two schools
of playing.

The difference between the Franco-Belgian school of violin playing and the
Russian school is disappearing, because the Russian school now dominates.
However, in early 20th century recordings, it's easy to hear a large
difference, not in the instruments themselves but in the way people played
them. My husband had first-hand experience with the difference between the
two schools, because as a child, he studied violin with Avram Nasco
(Franco-Belgian school, concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony), and then
later, after Nasco died, he studied with Mischa Mischakoff (Russian school,
Toscanini's concertmaster for 17 years). Mischakoff complained about Kevin
(an American of Russian parentage) being taught "Frenchified" techniques
(Mischakoff sent home a postcard to Kevin's parents from the Chatauqua camp
that said, "Thank you for the salami. Someday I may teach your stupid son
to play the violin."--the postcard now a treasured family relic, of
course!) and made Kevin re-learn all his music, toss all of the
interpretations and unlearn just about every technique Nasco had taught
him, starting with the high fingers and low elbow. This was more than just
a difference of opinion between two teachers.

Without getting into an off-topic excursion into technicalities of how to
play the violin, the easiest way to compare the audible difference in the
way the two violin schools interpret music is to compare any recordings of
Zino Francescatti (Franco-Belgian school, born in Marseille, France in
1905) playing the same piece as Jascha Heifetz (Russian school, born in
Vilna, Russia in 1901). That's not a stacked-deck comparison, by the way,
especially if you compare the two of them playing the Vieuxtemps concertos.
Heifetz obviously is by far the better known violinist today, but
Francescatti was a virtuoso and a great musician, who deserved more fame
than he got. At any rate, I think that musicians aware that there really
are two schools of violin playing may be more willing to accept the idea
that there could be schools for other instruments, too.

Okay, Dan, I'll take your damn test. I don't have the time, and I hate
tests, and I'll flunk it, but I'll take it, just to give you another corpse
in the garden.

Lelia Loban
Are you watching Big Brother?

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