Klarinet Archive - Posting 000036.txt from 2010/02

From: "rien stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] Lyons C-clarinet
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:57:51 -0500

In my last mail I promised to tell you more about the problems my 7-years
old student would have when switching from C- to B-flat clarinet.
Unfortunately all the time and energy spent on her (I give my lessons free)
were in vain: today her mother came to me, and told me the young girl was so
busy she had to drop some of her activities. She rides horseback, sings in a
musical group, plays tennis, is in a ballet class, plays theatre and has
friends to play with. And, you won't believe it, also has to visit school!
It became to much for her -- sounds like the president of a large company.
When she had to make a choice, she decided to drop clarinet, but to continue
with the lessons, because she liked the lessons better than studying
clarinet. Of course we gave up the lessons, too.

Though, saying "the time and energy spent were idle" is not quite true: it
brought me a wonderful bottle of sixteen years old Nuit de Saint George, a
very expensive Bourgogne wine my kids had to search for when I had one as
the only desire for my 65th birthday. Maybe Dan considers a pizza the best
he can get, I consider a good old Bourgogne wine as the best of what I can
have on earth. Once I told to the parents of one of my students I did not
want any payment for my lessons, but I expected a them to give me a good
bottle of at leat 15 years old Chateauneuf du Pape, and I did get such a
bottle all the time I taught their son. Unfortunetely he didn't want to
study in Utrecht, but went to the town of Groningen to become a surgeon, and
he never had the good idea to send me a bottle of supreme French Bourgogne.

Maybe some consider it a sign of how bad these times are, but I think it is
a good thing, that our youth have the possibility to get acquainted with
many modes of life. In my younger years in the town I was born you could
enter the soccer team, or go to the gymnastics club, three miles from the
parental home -- a long way at that time --, and that was it. You could
join the local fanfare (only brass and saxophones) or learn to play a church
organ from an amataur who also taughed how to play from an amateur, who
also, ... and so on. My mothers youngest sister was married to a teacher of
music (piano, organ, accordeon, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, and a dozen
other instruments), and my father and he were on foot of war. Thus as a
child I never got a chance to learn to play an instrument.

Nowadays you can join any kind of sports, and get musical lessons of
competent people. I will not say I am very competent, but one of my students
now is studying clarinet with the Sweelinck conservatory in Amsterdam -- .
She is in her last year, but my deteriorating hearing still is good enough
to give her advices. She still comes to me for advice, about once every six
weeks. Not on technical questions, she knows alot more about these than I
do, of course, but because she wants to know how I would play some passages.
Of course I can not play all those difficult pieces myself prima vista, what
she has to do in a week will take me sometimes several months, I "only" am
an amateur, but I can read music and tell her what to do. Recently she had
to give a recital with piano and asked me about the Françaix concerto, which
I had started to study a few weeks before, and I could help her. Her teacher
was very satisfied.

But the fact remains, that kids nowadays have many possibilities to fill the
tme they are not in school

Ciao

Rien (say :"Reene")

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