Klarinet Archive - Posting 000564.txt from 2006/03

From: "Kevin Fay" <kevinfay3020@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Let's get real (was Transposed Parts)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 23:21:41 -0500

Roger Hewitt posted:

<<<I would say one further thing: my first email was dashed off quickly as
I had to go out, so I forgot to make my main point! Which is that
often (definitely not always) a composer does the easy or most usual
thing because of time or practicality reasons and that the tone colour
variations between C/Bb/A are much less important than dynamics, tempi,
legato/staccato, etc., so let's not get too stressed about everything,
unless a totally professional result is the aim.

Someone else pointed to the fact that a C clarinet part is usually for
a period instrument anyway and this will have much more influence on
tone colour than a modern Boehm system "standard" C clarinet. And most
18th century composer would much preferred to use Modern violins,
pianos, valve horns, if only they could have!>>>

I thought similarly to this - before I performed a couple of *very* late
Richard Strauss works, the "Happy Workshop" and the "Invalid's Workshop."
Both fantastic works.

The "Happy Workshop" is scored for clarinet in C, two in Bb, basset horn (in
F) and bass. If you've performed it, it's very, very, very clear that he
knew *exactly* what he was doing in scoring for the clarinets in the various
keys.

I plead guilty to playing some Bb passages on A and vice versa because they
sound better when I play them that way. Note that this is an entirely
different thing than saying that they sound better on the "wrong" horn -
that's hubris. It's with humility that I admit that I'm "cheating" due to
shortcomings in my own technique.

. . . but Bb and A, while having different timbres, aren't all that
different. Not so a C - it's an entirely different sound.

Composers up through Beethoven may have put clarinets in a specific key to
follow a convention. After the instrument because fully chromatic, though,
I have to think that they knew what they were doing. Certainly Strauss,
Mahler and Dvorak.

kjf

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