Klarinet Archive - Posting 000038.txt from 2007/03

From: "danyel" <rab@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] Hearing is believing, or is it?
Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2007 23:09:48 -0500


well, first of all, thanks for the straight forward replies and thanks, Dan,
for keeping your temper.

As far as racism is concerned let me throw in that I, the alleged racist or
chauvinist, am in fact the embodiment of Hitler's worst nightmares, a
mixture of all kinds of "races" and cultures, who grew up mostly with Jazz,
the very epitome of "Rassenschande" and "Kulturbolschewismus".
Yet as a Jazz musician (classical education notwithstanding), recognising
people by their sound, articulation and phrasing is quite essential and
entirely normal for me. Play two bars of Jimmy Noone or Sidney Bechet or
Lester Young, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, in spite of all their imitators
their voice remains unique. Now whether you deem that an important feature
in music is something else, but the sound of the VPO is very different from,
say the Berlin PO; the strings are not as shrill to begin with. Our own
instrument is very different in particular. I play chamber music (Brahms,
Schoenberg) with mouthpieces and reeds made for the VPO players
(Hammerschmidt Wattens, 0; Leuthner, Wiener Schnitt) and I have an O.
Hammerschmidt clarinet and several older southern German specimen that were
made along a similar line (most notably a Berthold, Speyer) and this
equipment makes a hell of a difference. I made many blind fold tests with
non clarinettist friends and I was always struck by how clear their
preferences were. Everybody loved the woody, mellow and very soft yet big
sound of the "Viennese" equipment and hated the comparably sterile, shrill
and dead qualities of newer German instruments (+ one relatively good Boosey
Boehm I have, I don't have any more recent Boehm instruments but several
French mouthpieces from the large bore era that I like); as far as
nationalism is concerned: two historic Belgian (Mahillon and J. Albert) and
one French (Leblanc Mueller system) are amongst my ultimate favourites. They
are not unlike the more recent Austrian instruments, hence my theory that
Vienna in a way turned out the last resort of traditional, inter alia,
clarinets. Oboes is another thing. Anyway; I don't care whether the person
who plays the Viennese clarinet is Austrian or not, but he (or she) would
certainly have to be soaked well in the culture. Have you heard Viennese
speak German? On all people who lived in Vienna for a while it has rubbed
off, it is not a dialect, it is an argot. You can learn it, if you want. But
you'll have to live in Vienna and live with the people. I believe it's the
same with music. Many Viennese musicians are of Bohemian and Hungarian (and
used to be, prior to the Nazi terror, of Jewish) extraction.
Now as far as women and music, I don't have a ready theory. I may be wrong;
that would be nice. In fact I noticed that my female pupils, in average,
pick up a nice sound more easily than male ones. Yet unfortunately I have
not as yet heard a women play clarinet with the kind of subtle, internal
force characteristic of Wlach, Boskovski, Schmidl, Ottensamer etc. I
suspect, honestly, that playing the clarinet like that is some kind of
surrogate, a neurotic symptom. Maybe women have more important things to do;
I don't know. Although I have a friend who is a wonderful (female) flute
virtuoso and I wrote quite a few pieces for her over the years (she's
American, just for the record). I wouldn't want these pieces played by
anyone else, let alone a man. Her playing Ph. E. Bach wasn't quite as
successful. There is something very special in the relationship of a person
with the instrument and it has an erotic quality. Would that sound like an
option for you?
I certainly don't claim that women cannot play the clarinet. I just insist
that all people are different with different qualities and I trust the
tradition that brought about the Vienna Philharmonics (no, it was NOT
founded by Hitler) more than mainstream gender preconceptions. I know it is
difficult terrain, esp. in the US were people with African ancestors were
not allowed to sit next to "whites" in a bus until very recently. Sure, if
the VPO or any other orchestra would by definition exclude Africans, I would
raise hell (whether I would require them to take a certain percentage of
"Africans" and "Asians" and what have you, is a different matter). But women
are not a "race", which is an entirely fictitious category, but a sex. And I
have solid proof it exists and is always different in certain, crucial
respects.
From a quasi feminist point of view I might even say: men must be good for
something! Maybe that something's the VPO.

So far,
best wishes,
danyel
www.echoton.de/clar.html

----- Original Message -----
From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
To: "klarinet@-----.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 7:17 PM
Subject: [kl] Hearing is believing, or is it?

> Keith Bowen's response to the matter of the note from Danyel
> about the impact of gender specificity gives the impression
> (impression hell; it says so outright) that Keith believes his
> ears (and mind, of course) to be capable of identifying certain
> specific performers; i.e., he knows when Brendel is playing
> because he can identify his touch (?), his technique (?), his
> interpretation (?), his ethnicity (?) whatever. Keith does not
> state the source of his knowledge, so I ascribe it to a mystery.
> Maybe he can do it. I can't, which does not mean much.
>
> Every musician is, or should be, proud of their ability to hear
> things, such as accuracy of pitch, precision of rhythm,
> correctness of tempi, etc. By broadening that sensitivity so as
> to be able to recognize the identity of the performer (or
> characteristics of a specific performer's musical interpretation)
> appears to me to be more ego than science.
>
> I didn't believe it when Danyel said it, and I don't believe it
> when Keith says it.
>
> The legislation of technical truth based on a person's assertion
> that they recognize that truth in some unknown but mystical
> manner causes me to take out my blue blanket, like Leopold Bloom
> in The Producers, and hide from reality.
>
> Dan Leeson
> DNLeeson@-----.net
>
>

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