Klarinet Archive - Posting 000218.txt from 2010/08

From: "Williams, Kathy" <Kathy.Williams@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Cantabile playing
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:03:49 -0400

Hello there

If I may digress slightly from the topic, given cantabile is 'in a singing style', I imagine how a singer would sing the phrase. I am a huge fan of opera and lieder, especially Brahms, Schumann and Schubert, and Finzi's settings of Thomas Hardy's poetry. My favourite singer being Fischer Dieskau. What I get from the lieder is the ability of the singer to change intensity and tone even on the same note, and use of vibrato. We can learn so much from singers. When I was at the Royal College of Music, I went to more singing masterclasses than woodwind ones. I feel I have learned so much that cantabile playing for me is now innate and instinctive, with not a lot of thinking required, and seperated from emotion. Listening to recordings of mine from a decade ago, because I didn't have the musical knowledge of vocal repertoire that I have now, my cantabile did indeed sound a little forced.

That's my two cents on cantabile. I've been playing the Busoni Concertino and note some unusual markings, my favourite being velutato, a velvety sound, very apt for the phrase, given it is pitched in the lower register of the clarinet. I feel espressivo is different from cantabile because I feel cantabile calls for a light more fluid tone, whereas expressivo can accommodate a far more intense and darker sound, depending on the phrase you are playing expressively.

That's my philosophy on cantabile, I am not coming from a technical standpoint. I believe cantabile is as much a state of mind as phrasing. Feel free to disagree.

Kind regards

Kathy Williams
Netcracker Order Entry Consultant
Customer Service Delivery
Customer Care, Telstra Enterprise and Government
Telstra Corporation Limited 1800 025 222

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