Klarinet Archive - Posting 000003.txt from 2009/04

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausmann1@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Glissando vs. portamento (was: Rhapsody in Blue)
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:17:57 -0400

At 06:03 AM 3/31/2009, you wrote:
>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.

Exactly the sort of recordings to which I refer. I have 78 rpm
albums of Stokowski conducting Dvorak's New World Symphony (know as
#5 back then!) and also Sheherezade. The portamento is very
pronounced. I am quite certain nothing was marked in the music; it
was simply a technique that was in common use at the time, but not so
much any more. Clean articulation, a la the early instrument
movement, is the style now. A glissando, on the other hand, must be
marked in the music.

Bill Hausmann

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!

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