 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kdk
Date: 2017-07-31 19:05
The current thread about Alta reeds and the many discussions we've been through about reed quality and comparisons of playing quality between cane and synthetics has made me wonder about what players expected of reeds historically. Back when players almost certainly made their own reeds - or maybe had them made by another player but not a mass-producer with a factory - I've begun wondering what they expected in terms of both day-to-day consistency and response characteristics.
Are there written descriptions of 18th or 19th century reed making techniques and/or written descriptions of what to do with the hand made products to control playing characteristics?
Where did Stadler's cane or Muhlfeld's come from?
Has anyone preserved any reeds from the pre-manufacturing era?
Did they use other woods than Arundo donax?
Are we as modern reed players asking too much of the manufactured product, and when different materials (synthetics in today's market) produce slightly different results from those we've been used to, are we over-reacting to those differences?
Just some musings...
Karl
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2017-07-31 22:07
Karl:
As to play quality, my gut tells me that "ignorance was bliss." (read: happiness, not Julian)
I suspect the reeds of yesterday, compared to today, at least "as purchased" were junk.
Expectations were different. I think clarinetists needed to be half player half craftsman as oboe players still are.
I also think, because expectations were that the reeds had to be hand crafted, or at least finished by the player, that they learned to make them more consistent to their liking, or had other craftsman do it for them. In more modern times, people spoke of Kal Opperman's ability to do this.
Cogent arguments can be made that to NOT craft a reed as you play it, accounting for the perceived differences in strength (if not in thickness as well) is like driving a car blindfolded.
It may be much more recent, but you may enjoy Karl Leister's take on the subject matter. I've made the link go to the exact point in the video were he talks about telling a student of today that complaining about reeds is, essentially, something they are too young to truly appreciate.
https://youtu.be/uJrZfe3sTjM?t=4m18s
I also wonder what the clarinet players of the future will say about our gear of today.
"You played clarinet with a dense dimensionally changing piece of "tree," and not carbon fiber (or whatever replaces carbon fiber."
We will look at the weight of clarinets with the derision we do of 1950's luggage, that weighed twice as much and was half as strong as today's ballistic nylons.
"And your reed was from another..............tree?"
"And you used the register key to also voice the throat Bb?"
"And the register key was in....wait for it...one place that didn't account for the nuances of 12ths?"
"And what about ligatures....you guys threw poop at the wall with 10,000 variations without realizing through acoustical optimization software (yet to be created) that there was only one best way to hold a reed to a mouthpiece?"
"And you.....TRIED....mouthpieces for fit. You didn't have the body scanner examine your bite/embouchure/muscle skeletal nature to produce the optimal mouthpiece for you?"
Someday we might tune clarinets as we do today guitar strings.
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"Are we as modern reed players asking too much of the manufactured product, and when different materials (synthetics in today's market) produce slightly different results from those we've been used to, are we over-reacting to those differences?"
In my opinion, yes. To my expectations, which I set low, so I won't be disappointed, boxed cane reeds at least are about as ready to play is raw chicken is to eat.
These are precisely cut pieces of inherently unprecise material (cane at least). By definition, precision of play can only be expected to be achieve from them by unprecisely cutting them specific to each reed's lack of uniformity.
And while bad cane is likely to produce bad reeds, great cane is not guaranteed to produce great reeds. Is it any wonder. Mother nature's definition of great cane is measured in variability, so "she" can pick that most suited to today's climate to make its way into the next generation. We on the other hand enjoy consistency.
I'll go so far as to say that every time I take out a humidity controlled well played reed I suspect it won't play the way I put it away, and will need adjustment, pleasantly surprised when this isn't the case.
Karl, look how far Legere has come in just the last decade. They are to be praised for the Euro product, if not possessive of limitations, then noted for the leaps synthetics have made since the Fibracells of 30 years ago you and I remember, that were the only synthetic option of the day.
It's interesting that you reference Stadler. Lets assume, as sure as he didn't, that he had by today's standards, great reeds. The fact still remains that by today's standards that his clarinet was a hunk of junk.
I sit in awe of how he played the Mozart Concerto, written for him, with such gear obstacles.
Clarinet gear can and will get a whole lot better, as sure as we should be about accepting its limitation, relative cry babies (myself included) compared to what these early masters had.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2017-08-01 02:33
Dave, I can't really argue against anything you write. I can reach the same conjectural conclusions. But I have no way to validate those conjectures - they've formed in the context of modern mass-produced reeds and all the benefits and problems they bring - even for someone skilled at improving them.
I still would like to know if there is known primary source testimony about those questions I asked in my original post. For the purpose of this line of thought, I want deliberately to avoid "I imagine," "I'm sure," "I suspect," etc....
If the historic testimony isn't available, so be it. We'll just have to go on with our guesses - more or less educated by our own experiences and those of our contemporaries. It was a whimsical thought, though, that reed players 200 years ago may have had their own approaches to reeds - what those players depended on and didn't. We have the old instruments and mouthpieces. But without reeds those are silent. What were the sound generators attached to them actually like?
Karl
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