Klarinet Archive - Posting 000097.txt from 2007/06

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Who whacked the 2nd clarinet?
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:44:41 -0400

Keith Bowen wrote,
>Gawd, you're as shameless as Dan.

Thank you!

>So tell us, which piece have you selected?
>Curious minds want to know!

By early yesterday, I'd decided on "Symphonie Fantastique," per Curtis
Bennett's suggestion, since I love that piece and happen to own the
Eulenburg miniature score. "Symphonie Fantastique" would make a good
title, too--except that Marvin Kaye already used "Fantastique" as the title
for a superb dark fantasy novel (St. Martin's Press, 1992), combining
elements of modern horror with the life and music of Hector Berlioz.
(Highly recommended, btw.) I don't know him personally, but because we
have mutual friends who write and edit, I'm especially leery of pimping,
oops, I mean marketing, anything that could look derivative. I also
decided I want more flexibility in timing the action than I can get with a
genuine music score.

I can't resist bringing on the "Symphonie Fantastique" later in the story,
when the orchestra brings in a temporary substitute, the always-available
Fred "Feeble" Foebil, for the dead second clarinetist. For the scene of
the crime, I combined Curtis Bennett's suggestion with Walter Grabner's
wonderful anecdote and my need for a frustratingly unobservant witness:

>>Lelia, this kind of situation happened to me
>>in real life, back when I was playing in the Toledo
>> Symphony Orchestra.
>>
>>In the first half we played a piece that required
>>four clarinets (Strauss probably). The second
>>clarinet player looked ill, but was able to continue.
>>At intermission, he went offstage and began puking
>>his guts out from food poisoning.

Martin Morgenstern, late-blooming composer, pathologically shy, peeks out
the window of the green room during intermission and watches more than half
the audience escape to the parking lot to avoid sitting through forty
minutes of new music. The second half of the program is the premiere of
his first large-scale work for symphony orchestra. Instead of taking the
seat reserved for him in the audience, he flees to the backstage men's
room, where . . . .

Okay, that's all I'm telling you. And something I wrote yesterday that
could easily be mistaken for a chapter outline is really a paragraph
outline. No, really. Honest.

Don Hatfield wrote,
>>>If we're gonna compare Lelia to Dan
>>>we first need to know what she considers
>>>equivalent to pizza.

Chocolate.

>>>And I want to know if Shadow Cat will
>>>be making a cameo.

If she does, everybody already knows what she'll say: "The screech-stick
did it." She's already beyond furious over my amateur project of
dissecting the Reginald Kell recordings, which involves listening to them
over and over and over, so I don't know if I'd dare to write her into a
story about . . . . BWAAAAhahahah! Thank you for another nefarious, oops,
I mean worthy idea, Don! That'll teach her to barf a hairball on my pillow.

Lelia Loban

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