Klarinet Archive - Posting 000191.txt from 2005/10

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Clarinets in the afterlife?
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 13:12:59 -0400

It is interesting that you should mention this subject. While my
experience is limited, I have had several situations in which I
was either involved with a deceased clarinetist's equpiment, or
heard about it first hand. But the bottom line of my experience
(for whatever that is worth), is that the equipment eventually
becomes defunt, either because its location is not discerned or
followed up on for some years at which point the instrument may
have become useless, or else because it just sits around and
winds up in unknown hands.

John Denman told me that he found Kell's clarinets under his bed
and was given the pair by Kell's wife some years after he died.
John played them, but after John's death I don't know what
happened to them or if the secondary user knows what he got.

About a year ago, I received a call from a woman who lives
nearby. She said that her uncle was a clarinet player with a
major symphony orchestra and that she had inherited his
collection of something like 50 instruments. I was not the only
one she called, because she believed that she had a genuine
treasure. And had the instruments been maintained for the
approximately 40 year gap between her uncle's death and her
reciept of the collection, it really would have been valuable.
But the costs for putting the better instruments back in shape
(where possible) approached a selling price for the instrument.
The man had an A-flat piccolino clarinet, two basset horns,
several bass clarinets, and about six pairs of B-flat and A
instruments. When I examined the collection, I took what I
thought were the best half dozen to a local repairperson who I
use and his prognosis was that the posts had all become so loose
that major surgery would be needed and the instruments might
never be restored to their original glory.

I believe Bellison's clarinets were sent to Israel after he died
and I suggest that they are no longer of any value. For one
thing, they were Oeler systems and hardly anybody in Israel plays
that.

There was an extensive collection that was taken to Israel ca.
1937 by a German collector and, following his death, they sort of
wound up on display. In that climate, such a display is a death
sentence.

There are undoubtedly exceptions. I know that Herb Blayman's
instruments went to a friend. And there are undoubtedly many
other fine instruments that remain in use for another generation
or two. But eventually, the history of the instrument is
forgotten and it ultimately goes to the land of the lost. I wish
it were not so, and I hope that I am exaggerating the situation.

In my own case, I sold or gave away every instrument in my
possession when I stopped playing professionally. Now I have
only one more instrument, the Fox Basset Horn, and this is going
to be sold in about a year. I did not want any of my instruments
to die an unnatural death after I stopped playing them.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Bart Rogers [mailto:drkevin2b@-----.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2005 9:15 AM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] Clarinets in the afterlife?

Dear List members,

One thing I always wondered about was what happened to
the equipment (horn, mouthpiece, etc.) of those
clarinetists who have passed away.

What happened to Marcellus's, Gennusa's, Bonade's,
Gigliotti's, both Kaspars', Matson's, and others
equipment?

Hopefully the clarinets weren't cremated.

Bart

http://farechase.yahoo.com

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