 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Alphie
Date: 2000-02-26 12:59
Sorry Mark! I didn't mean that you are confused. But since you didn't include Cohler's comment to the quotation made in Brymer's book by that viola-player it sounded like Mühlfeld played with a big vibrato. Period. That's why I wanted to point out that there is a difference between using vibrato as an expression and to use it all the time as a part of the sound like most flute-players do today. And you were not very careful when you made your very first statement to Jeff without giving any historical background on the topic. You should have known the seriousity of this issue after that long discussion on sneezy a few years ago. Vibrato is nothing that you do just for fun if you feel like it. This is art!!!
I have looked through the Jonathan Cohler section and he comes up with some interesting aspects. Like;
"I prefer to take a more objective look at this issue. What did the composer want, or specify, or not specify (thereby leaving it up to the performer), and what were the practices of the day, and particularly of the performers for whom the composer wrote the work?"
This is the kind of questions that every musician should ask.
I mean that we have a responsibility, as being reproducing artists, to inform ourselves about the basics about under which circumstances a piece was written. Like, what was the situation in the composers life? who did he write the piece for? what kind of personality did he have? what was the style at the time? what was the political situation in the country where the composer came from at the time? are there any cl.-tutors from the time where I can get information about what was taught?
The question about vibrato is much bigger than only if to use it or not because the wrong use of vibrato can be so damaging for a piece so you loose the connection with what it is about. There is nothing worse in music than to put on a vibrato because you don't know what else to do. Can you agree to that? The main reason why I think that v. was used less on the cl. in the classical/romantic period than on other instruments is that I have never seen any information about it in any of the tutors I have seen. Correct me if I'm wrong. I can have missed it. They do talk about v. in tutors for flute and violin. Another reason is that it's true what Dan Leeson wrote that it's very difficult to actually produce a nice vibrato on at least classical mouthpieces. My main experience is with Grensers and Wiesners and since they were the best German builders up to at least 1820 I find it very unlikely that anybody made the effort to learn.
Back to Brymer:
".........A reminiscence of no less a player than Muhlfeld himself seems to suggest that the use of vibrato may have fallen out of fashion temporarily after his day, to return after about thirty years. Just before World War II a question was put to a very old viola player, sometime conductor of the Duke of Devonshire's Orchestra, about the playing of Muhlfeld. The old man had occasionally been called by Joachim to play in his quartet, and on several occasions had played the Brahms Quintet with the great Muhlfeld. Of the clarinetist's playing he was most enthusiastic, saying that three things mainly stuck in his memory. 'He used two clarinets, A and Bb, for the slow movement, to simplify the gypsy section; he had a fiery technique with a warm tone -- and a big vibrato.' Asked again by a startled questioner if he didn't mean to say 'rubato' the old man looked puzzled. 'No' he said, 'vibrato -- much more than Joachim, and as much as the cellist.'"
Cohlert's comment:
"How about them apples? Brymer concedes that, without a second-party confirmation, the report is without official authority. But he points out that the achievements of exceptional players like Muhlfeld do not always take root in the years that follow their finest period."
True, This quotation doesn't prove anything since it doesn't tell us anything about in which extent he actually was using vibrato or how. It's just curiousity information. We need more information to get the full picture. I also believe that Mühlfeld was one of a kind and that he played differently from his contemporaries but since even the stringplayers around him like Joachim hardly used any vibrato, ( I have a recording with him playing Brahms: Hungarian dance No.1 with absolutely no vibrato) I think it's very unlikely that he used any at all. Or maybe only for the gypsy-section in the quintet.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-02-26 13:40
Alphie, just to remember back, I was answering Wyatt, who proclaimed:
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Don't go there, Jeff!! Vibrato is for the great unwashed and Richard Stoltsman. Real Clarinetists never, ever, allow it to color their presentation.
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where I then mentioned Muhlfield and the quote.
I then went on to say:
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Times & tastes change - the dry sound, unornamented sound of today's clarinetists would most probably have been laughed at in the middle of the 18th through most of the 19th century. Today's music is played differently, but not necessarily better.
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Which I think still stands. Notice I used "dry" & "unornamented". The "dry" is, well, badly used here because it can mean anything or nothing, but the unornamented still stands. Besides vibrato (which most scholars concede was used last and previous century, to greater or lesser effect), how about the "unornamented"? Today's musicians aren't schooled in ornamentation, but ornaments were supposed to have been played even if not written. Ornamentation wasn't written into the tutors of that day, either, but all musicians were supposed to know how to do them.
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