Klarinet Archive - Posting 000406.txt from 2009/02
From: "Forest Aten" <forestaten@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Old school clarinet sound?
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:49:32 -0500
Don
I want to take some time and respond to this...but don't have the time
tonight...
I will say that I think that certain "cultural" aspects of performing
clarinet have been lost. A lot lost due to the worlds musician having the
ability to hear, see and experience from afar. Players can hear other
players easily now-a-days and determining who/what/where is influencing
who/what/where has become more complex. The who does what and why has become
global.
I do believe that when I was a young clarinetist...that "schools" of playing
could easily be identified. I don't think it's so easy today. (Dan's going
to chime in here, I know....no clarinet tests Dan!)
As in other areas of culture/societies....we are losing a lot of information
daily. Linguists say we are currently losing up to twenty languages a year
worldwide. The losses are a sad commentary...as we lose cultural elements
along with the languages.
"Schools" of playing probably have many influencing factors. Language,
individual (leading) players (regionally), equipment and music available to
local players....to just note a few....
Just to ramble...
I'm not sure what a "big, clean, in your face" sound is...or was...but I'll
share a story about a master class I was involved in....Dallas 1980. I was
selected as one of six grad students to play/perform for Harold Wright at an
AT&T Master class. This Master class was associated with the Boston Symphony
US tour that same year. The master class was held at SMU. Not only was I
doing grad work at SMU at the time...but was also on the faculty. I was also
doing a lot of playing at the time. I played in the Dallas Ballet orchestra
and with the Dallas Opera...also a lot of extra work with the Dallas
Symphony. The DSO was short a clarinet player and I worked a lot with Dallas
at that time.
There was a large audience for the master class....over 90 people attended.
College/University professors, local professionals, students and John
Ardoin, music critic for the New York Times...and the Dallas Morning News
was in attendance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ardoin I had known Bud
Wright since the early '70s and I was very comfortable playing for Wright in
this setting. He called and ask me to play the exposition movement of the
Mozart Concerto at the Master class. I did.
I remember Wright sitting on his chair backwards...arms crossed on the back
for the entire performance. When I finished, he said, "Forest, you have a
very nice way of playing Mozart....but I need more sound". It took me
back...as well as everyone else in the room. I have always put out a lot of
sound and I did play aggressively that day. I was conditioned to put out a
lot of sound, as the hall we perform in for the Dallas Opera is 3600+
seats...with a very covered pit...and a concrete wall blocking sound. We
have to really work to get sound out of that pit. After Wright's comment, it
was clear that the amount of sound necessary from one situation to the next
is very different. Ardoin wrote in the critical review, "Wright told Aten he
needed more sound, and that is the end to which they worked during the rest
of the session". Wright...said he had to put out a lot of sound, in order to
make a Concerto work in his orchestral situation. He said to play
Mozart...with Boston at that time...with the musicians he was familiar
with....it required a lot more sound. Should it have? Who knows. Should his
peers backed off? I don't know. I do know that Boston was doing a lot of
things right in those days. Maybe with another orchestra, playing the
Concerto a different way, it would be quite different. Note that after
Robert Marcellus recorded the Mozart Concerto with Cleveland....it took
Wright over 30 years before recording his "version" of the concerto with
Boston/Ozawa. I listened to Wright perform live many times...and it wasn't
all "big, clean, in your face" playing. Some of his many live performances
at the Marlboro Festival, were pure demonstrations of finesse and control.
(I'm not sure I've ever heard the clarinet played softer.)
Forest
-----Original Message-----
From: Don [mailto:dhatfield310@-----.net]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 8:11 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] Old school clarinet sound?
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?
------------------------------------------------------------------
The 2009 Woodwind.Org Donation Drive is going on right now - see
https://secure.donax-us.com/donation/ for more information.
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
The 2009 Woodwind.Org Donation Drive is going on right now - see
https://secure.donax-us.com/donation/ for more information.
------------------------------------------------------------------
