 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-10-03 12:45
There are many master classes given by top singers on YouTube we clarinetists can learn much from. I've learned a lot from Thomas Quasthoff, for example, about resonance and projection. Any recommendations? It's also a real pleasure seeing these singers at work.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2019-10-04 08:16
I've been studying Karen Carpenter, and the Carpenters in general lately. Their performances are always a masterclass in the importance of tone, intonation, and rhythmic feel, especially in the early days when Karen still played drums live as she sang. There's even some clarinet playing from time to time! Her singing still causes my heart to skip a beat on a regular basis.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-10-04 09:30
Dear Nellsonic: It's funny that you mention Karen Carpenter! About 6 months ago, I heard an interview with I can't remember what famous opera singer, and she mentioned her too. I didn't know who Karen Carpenter was, checked her out and thought she was a perfect model for a clarinetist. I love coincidences! All the best: Ruben
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2019-10-05 01:50
>> It was quite helpful to me in developing a sense of phrasing. >>
So, what sorts of thing did it say, bottom line?
Or, give us an example of how it was helpful to you.
Tony
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Author: Wicked Good ★2017
Date: 2019-10-05 03:14
It merely helped me to visualize, and then internalize, how a vocalist might work on phrasing, and to try to match my approach to lyrical articulation to achieve that.
Examples include exercises #75 through #91 in the book's Second Part.
That approach may float some peoples' boats, and not others.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-10-05 09:58
Dear Wicked: I wonder what they mean exactly by "rhythmical articulation". I'll try to get a copy of the book.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2019-10-05 12:02
My instructor used the Bona book with me but only in conjunction with playing rather complex rhythms. There was no focus on phrasing.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2019-10-07 14:51
Though it has nothing to say about phrasing, I found the Bona book to be interesting in what it DOESN'T do.
One of the difficulties of taking the 'Rose Etudes' in the Bonade incarnation as models is that you are forced to think of music as consisting of notes plus crescendos and diminuendos, along with associated dynamics. Indeed Bonade, reprehensibly in my view, said:Quote:
Experience has proven that there is a real need for an edition of these well-known etudes containing correct phrasing and dynamics. There are many different books of studies in existence, but none of them actually show how to phrase correctly. This book can be used as a vade-mecum either by students, teachers or professional players. In it, I have indicated with repeated dynamic signs what should be done in good phrasing. Occasionally I have deliberately overemphasized, because I have found by experience during my long years of teaching that the usual tendency is to play "coldly" -- that is to say, "underphrasing" rather than "overphrasing".
I recommend that teachers use this book as a textbook of phrasing, along with the regular Rose 32 Etudes, allowing the pupil first to perform from the original and then to correct the playing with the revised edition. Later on, let the pupil play directly from the revised copy until phrasing becomes as much a part of his ability as technique and articulation.
Daniel Bonade
1952 There is none of this in Bona. Therefore it becomes slightly more plausible for a student to see that there are structures alternative to Bonade's so-called 'correct' hairpins and dynamics that may inform his performances, and consider, say, bar-hierarchy to be one of them.
As far as 'learning from singers' goes, it's unfortunately true that many singers are rather bad models. I'm occasionally moved to dismiss the entire class, 'singers' because of this. But then I encounter one who convinces me that I was right all along, that the ones I wanted to dismiss were bad examples, and that the human voice is a truly wonderful and musical instrument.
A similar problem exists with the idea of 'learning from other clarinet players':-)
Tony
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2019-10-12 18:04
Hi Tony,
Would Daniel Bonade’s edition been any more acceptable if we substitute other words for “correct phrasing” such as “suggested or appropriate phrasing”?
Surely musicians’ have to bring the music to life by coming “off the page”. Phrasing or inflexion is part of this. If the phrasing is notated in some way this shouldn’t necessarily mean we have to be literal or artificial with its’ application.
Are you not in agreement with Bonade’s markings or are you just not in favour of any edited phrase markings on the page which might imply a “one way only approach”?
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2019-10-15 01:06
I feel that I've explained all this here so many times that I don't want to go into it again.
But in a nutshell, Bonade thinks that the expressivity of the music that he's dealing with in Rose can be captured mainly by crescendo hairpins, plus a few other things.
It can't. That's why Mozart didn't try to do it in his own music.
Worse, Bonade's attempt to do so, plus his insistence that it's what is required, obscures the understanding needed to play classical music expressively.
But – I'm not going to get involved with you in any discussion of this, particularly after the car-crash of trying to take you seriously in the Keepers thread Blowing terminology.
Tony
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2019-10-15 01:23
I was once teaching in Venezuela, and a young girl turned up with quite a simple piece to play in front of the class. There were pencil marks, the first bar crescendoed to the second, the third to the fourth.
So I said, well, the first thing to do is to get rid of those.
But she said, "Howard Klug wrote those in in my last lesson!" (He was also teaching on the course.)
I still rubbed them out, and tried to explain why. But of course, it was difficult.
I challenged Howard about this, and he said, "But if you don't do that, then you get no expression at all from the student!"
So, imagine: 'Twinkle twinkle little star, How I wonder what you are' with added crescendi, and try to see why it was reprehensible.
Howard also wrote an article called, "How to sell slow movements".
Tony
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2019-10-15 07:00
It’s not who says it but rather what is being said that is important. That applies to Bonade, Klug, Pay and Arnoldstang.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-10-15 14:32
Maître Tony Pay: The celebrated New York clarinet teacher, Leon Russianoff, had a method diametrically opposed to Bonade's to makes his students play more expressively. He would cover up with typex all the composer's markings on a photocopy and leave the student to his own devices for a while in terms of phrasing, dydnamics, etc. What he was after was developing the student's organic and logical sense of line, form, tension and release instead of just slavishly obeying the composer's indications. Needless to say, ultimately he would go on to the composer's original text. At any rate, this is what I have been told by somebody having studied with him. If I was misinformed or got the wrong end of the stick, there are people on this forum actually having studied with Russianoff that can rectify what I've said. "Si non e vero, e ben trovato" they say in Italian.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Tom Piercy
Date: 2019-10-15 15:03
Ruben - It is true what you say about Russianoff.
I have many clarinet parts filled with Leon's white-out.
It was an interesting and productive way to get a student to think about more than where one "should" start a crescendo and other manufactured expressive elements. It created a lot of discussion and thought about the "why".
Tom Piercy
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2019-10-15 17:29
That's interesting, I hadn't heard about that. It may be mentioned in his books somewhere – I'll have a look in case I missed it.
Of course, I was only talking about editorial (not composer) markings. Also, I was considering the classical style: Rose's music lies in the classical tradition, as does Mozart's (and Twinkle twinkle:-)
I'd say you'd be hard put to derive value from following Russianoff's method with the Berg 4 pieces, or even the Debussy Rhapsodie.
Mozart's own markings are very sparse – almost all dynamics and hairpins that you might encounter in various editions are therefore editorial. And they're there at least partly because the editor doesn't understand the mosaic-like nature of the score.
Tony
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Author: kdk
Date: 2019-10-15 21:04
Tony Pay wrote:
> Also, I was considering the classical style: Rose's
> music lies in the classical tradition, as does Mozart's (and
> Twinkle twinkle:-)
>
This got my attention. Do you base this on the material Rose adapted (e.g. Ferling and Rode) or do you consider Rose himself still to be a product of the "classical" tradition, even though he made his playing and teaching career late enough in the 19th century than I would think of his contemporary influences as "Romantic."
I studied the Rose books originally in editions that didn't indicate they had been made by anyone other that Rose, and they are full of expressive markings that I've come to assume he added himself to the material he was adapting - one of the reasons I have gone back to the original string and oboe materials in my dotage just to see what he changed.
Was Bonade simply carrying on a Romantic French tradition that may have dated from Rose's own time? I was taught in the same tradition by its next generation (after Bonade) and have only fairly recently begun to evolve away from those editorial hairpins and the constant anacrustic "direction" across the barlines that were taken for granted as important by American players of my teachers' generation for every style. Was Rose himself misinterpreted (over-edited) by players like Bonade (and Drucker and other later editors of his etudes)? Or is it that Rose was the one responsible for Romanticizing the earlier music he used?
Karl
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-10-15 21:34
Karl: there exists an edition of the 32 Rose études which I seem to recall is urtext: Philippe Cuper Arpéges Editions.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-10-15 21:36
Tom: thank you for confirming the information. I was beginning to wonder whether I had dreamed it was a legend.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: kdk
Date: 2019-10-15 22:10
ruben wrote:
> Karl: there exists an edition of the 32 Rose études which I
> seem to recall is urtext: Philippe Cuper Arpéges Editions.
>
Is that a modern retrospective edition or an old one? The Rose Studies we used were Carl Fischer editions from 1910 and show no other editor than Rose.
Now that I've gone back to look at them (to get the publication date), I realize that most of the expressive markings in those editions were in the slow etudes. The faster ones were far less marked up, some not at all - the markings I remember were mostly penciled in by my teachers, following the same traditions Bonade was (some of them were Bonade's students or their students).
Karl
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-10-15 23:24
Karl: I shouldn't think the Philippe Cuper edition is different from the Carl Fischer one, but I'll check. The necessity in France for the Cuper edition is that the Carl Fischer isn't used here. What is used is various editions by conservatory teachers.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2019-10-16 21:22
>> Was Rose himself misinterpreted (over-edited) by players like Bonade (and Drucker and other later editors of his etudes)? Or is it that Rose was the one responsible for Romanticizing the earlier music he used? >>
I seem to remember that we went into all of this earlier. But I now can't remember what we concluded about who was responsible for the varying degrees of romanticisation of the texts.
But in any case, it does seem to me that the music IS classical in nature, and that the editions, especially Bonade's, misrepresent that.
I had an interesting interaction with Bryan Magee, he of 'Wagner and Philosophy' and 'Popper', as well as many other books and interviews with philosophers. Read him.
We were playing 'The Magic Flute' at Glyndebourne on period instruments (OAE), and at one point Lisa Beznosiuk was asked to improvise a bit of music for solo flute to cover some stage business. She did something different every night, playing bits of Bach, Telemann and so on. But on the final night, because we were playing for the excellent Vladimir Jurowski, she chose to play the opening of the slow movement of Tchaikowski's Fourth Symphony, as a sort of nod in Jurowski's direction.
Magee, in the audience, was thunderstruck, not least by the fact that nobody else seemed to have noticed. So he buttonholed Marshall, the then manager of the orchestra, to ask what on earth was going on. And Marshall, at a loss (I don't think he'd even heard it), made up something about 'old folk tune', and flanneled. Of course, it took Magee very little time the next day to discover what codswallop that was, and he became very angry at having been misled.
Because I knew Magee a bit (he was the Labour Party MP for Waltham Forest, where I grew up) I undertook to smooth the matter over, and did so.
But it made me think: why did this very simple melody stick out like a sore thumb to a sensitive and musical member of the audience? And the answer is that Mozart couldn't possibly have written it. It belongs to a very different style.
I found it instructive to consider that; it gives, I think, a bit of an insight into why, for me, the Rose Etudes don't respond well to Bonade.
Tony
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-10-16 22:39
I took out my old Bonade-Rose études, which I had completely forgotten ever existed but which I practised when I was a youngster (around the time of the Ice Age). If one were to scrupulously follow all of Bonade's marking, it would sound bloody awful! In defense of Bonade, he only meant this as an exercise in more expressive playing. It certainly doesnt make for more expressive playing.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2019-10-17 00:09
What marking specifically? Is it hairpins or crescendos for example?
Freelance woodwind performer
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The Clarinet Pages
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