Klarinet Archive - Posting 000404.txt from 2009/02

From: "Don" <dhatfield310@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Old school clarinet sound?
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:11:25 -0500

After watching the YouTube videos of Mate Bekavac I took a few minutes to
look at other videos in the sidebar and came across several by Matic
Titovsek , particularly this one -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_ilhuw3LW0. Reading comments by previous
viewers and was struck by one particular comment. I know there have been
countless posts, remarks, veritable wars on this board over descriptions of
clarinet sound and tone. Words like dark, light, bright, etc., etc. have
been debated and such. But this one got the mental fluids going, and I
thought I'd toss it out to see where I've missed a change in clarinet tonal
color in the past several years if there has been one.

The comment was "I like this guy, he has kind of an old school, in your
face, big clean sound like those guys from the 50s and 60s."

I've played since 1966 so I can't really claim to be a part of the tail end
of that era even as a serious student. But I was and have been exposed to
hundreds of clarinet recordings, and attended dozens of live performances by
clarinetists who played and taught in that era, and before. Over time I
studied with two different Stubbins students, and a professor who studied
with Daniel Bonade, so I assume I was exposed to the "old school" sound and
the techniques/methods/equipment that made it what it was. I have at least
three questions to toss out to see what anyone else may think about this,
and maybe a couple more if I think too hard about it - it has made me do
more thinking on the subject than I really wanted today while building a
website for a customer...

1. If the clarinetists in the 50s and 60s had a big clean sound in-your-face
sound, what are today's "new" clarinetists producing in terms of sound?
Small, dirty inhibited sound?

2. If this is a real phenomena, when did old school give way to new school,
and who is responsible for it?

3. Has the concept of clarinet sound really changed, and does change in
technology and equipment account for it in any way if it has?

My thoughts and questions aren't meant to include the differences in sounds
of "schools" of clarinet...American, French, German, etc. For a theoretical
example, if I took my Buffet or Selmer with Kaspar mouthpiece into a studio
decades ago for a lesson with Bonade or Weber or Robert McGinnis, what might
any of them have taught me differently about sound and how/what to produce
as opposed to what I would hear today from, say, Tony Pay or Ricardo Morales
or any other current clarinetist?

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