Klarinet Archive - Posting 000220.txt from 2009/03

From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Glissando vs. portamento (was: Rhapsody in Blue)
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:03:53 -0400

Portamento is also a vocal term. It may have been applied to singing before
string players began to use it. Singers connect pitches with no break all
the time. Whether or not it sounds exaggerated or even noticeable depends on
how fast or drawn out the portamento is and how large the interval is
between notes. String players do portamento during shifts between positions
(sometimes adding otherwise unneeded shifts for the purpose). Again, whether
or not it calls attention to itself (as in those early recordings - listen
to some of the old Stoki recordings with Philadelphia that are being
released) is a matter of how fast the shift is made. Exaggerated portamento
seems to have been more stylistically _de rigueur_ early in the twentieth
century, especially (but alas not exclusively) in Romantic period music.

The kind of "glissando" effect that's used in Rhapsody seems different in
its intent, meant to be an integral and conspicuous part of the melodic
context (and to recall a device, almost a gimmick, used by jazz players of
the period) and not an incidental stylistic exaggeration of a natural
process of pitch change (as it is in vocal and string technique).

Karl

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Hausmann [mailto:bhausmann1@-----.net]
>
> I believe portamento is exclusively a string term, and refers to
> smoothly gliding from one note to another in a melodic passage, the
> two notes being relatively close to each other. Listening to
> classical works recorded in the 1930's you hear quite a bit of it,
> although it fell out of vogue later. Glissandi are generally longer,
> going between more widely separated notes that are not necessarily
> connected melodically (as in the Rhapsody).
>
>
> Bill Hausmann

------------------------------------------------------------------