Klarinet Archive - Posting 000062.txt from 2011/05

From: "Michael Bryant (TT)" <michaelbryant@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Poor View of the Clarinet
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 00:07:00 -0400

The tail end of this story is that, after KS's step-changing discovery, I
was compelled to burrow into the pile of storage boxes that have witnessed
decades of squirreling and find a copy of the Musical Association lecture
given by Oscar W. Street (1869-1923) on 18 April 1916 entitled 'The Clarinet
and its Music'. He was a solicitor, Lloyds underwriter and talented amateur
player, a student of Henry Lazarus, a composer, co-dedicatee with Charles
Draper of Stanford's Clarinet Sonata (1912), who commissioned the Clarinet
Quintet (1917) by Richard Walthew and paid in part for Thurston's musical
education. He also contributed to the cost of preparing a piano reduction of
Stanford's Clarinet Concerto. The hitherto unrecorded Quintet by Walthew
(heard at the clarinet conference in Seattle in 1986) and Street's song with
clarinet obbligato 'An April Day' are published by Rosewood.

And there is the quotation on page 113; "After the recent performance of Sir
Charles Stanford's sonata for pianoforte and clarinet which I have already
mentioned, we were treated to some extraordinary effusions in the Press, the
tenor of which was that clarinet was an unsatisfactory instrument for
anything in the nature of a solo sonata, owing (as it was said) to its
comparative inflexibility and somewhat monotonous tone colour; and one
gentleman went so far as to deliver himself of the dictum that "Even Brahms
could do nothing with it". I should like emphatically to contradict these
statements here and now, though some may think them unworthy of notice."

Some gentleman.

M

Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 5:37 PM
Subject: Re: [kl] Poor View of the Clarinet

> Once again I am in your debt. Thank you very much. Oscar Street shared the
> dedication of the Stanford Clarinet Sonata, which could not be more
> Brahmsian, so although contemporary is not naturally among the likely
> candidates.
> M
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 5:25 PM
> Subject: Re: [kl] Poor View of the Clarinet
>
>> Michael -
>> The quote is from The Musical Times of June 1, 1916.
>> <http://books.google.com/books?id=5o0PAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296&dq=%22even+Brahms+could+do+nothing%22&source=bl&ots=oOJdjsecJk&sig=jS4bKDy6Woqq1iY45EQuNNDtXGo&hl=en&ei=jwfMTfywDIPB0QG7wvXmBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22even%20Brahms%20could%20do%20nothing%22&f=false>.
>> Thank heaven for Google Books.
>>
>> No author is given, but with the source it should be possible to find
>> out -- perhaps in the Oscar Street papers, if they exist.
>>
>> Ken Shaw

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