Klarinet Archive - Posting 000532.txt from 2006/03
From: "colin.touchin@-----.com> Subj: [kl] which clarinet? Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 05:49:03 -0500
Good to read all the revealing, thought-provoking issues about which
clarinet to use. As a student I was playing in a wind sectional for
Stravinsky's Petrouchka directed by the great wind-instrument-
history-book author and Bate Collection curator Antony Baines - he
explained that when he played in the pit in London (on bassoon) he
recalled the clarinettists using A for some Bb passages (or vice
versa) as it was just more sensible (for the fingering) and that
apparently Stravinsky himself had condoned this practice (I can't
recall how AB heard this, directly from IS or otherwise). On the other
hand, it did make changing more frequent and sometimes very fast,
so the composer possibly chose which instrument with an eye to the
practical speed of change more than an ear to the sound. We know
Stravinsky cared greatly for tone-colours but it was comforting to be
given a player's option.
Hindemith apparently started a series of composition classes with the
instruction that each student should come back the next week with an
instrument they'd never played before and perform for the class a
piece they'd written for that new tool, and each week the same
exercise for several new instruments, so they'd better understand
what they were going to be demanding of those who would present
their ideas to the audiences. He himself wrote superbly for every
instrument partly because, I believe, he could perform on every one.
There is no substitute for the knowledgeable composer who begins
all our journeys and explorations, but there is more than one practical
solution to route-finding and arriving at the same destination in
perhaps a different vehicle. For some, there's always a wagon train
about to leave from the staging post ... Cheers, Colin T
(player/composer/conductor)
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