 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: contragirl
Date: 2003-12-16 05:14
I've always wondered... If I am auditioning for something, and I am playing a piece that has a few rests, do I count through the rest? I can understand counting through like a measure or two. But if there is like 3 or 4 measures, do you just skip over to where the solo picks back up?
Cuz I know whenever we play the Mozart Concerto, there are a few rest spots and of course we don't have a pianist, so I just skip over the rests and continue.
--Contragirl
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Author: GBK
Date: 2003-12-16 05:31
Unless instructed otherwise, absolutely count the rests in time.
An important skill in orchestral playing is knowing how and when to come in after a rest, whether one bar or several. Audition panels know this and they may even ask for an excerpt beginning with a few beats rest just to see if you count them before entering.
Careless or inaccurate counting is as severe as playing wrong notes...GBK
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Author: Mark Pinner
Date: 2003-12-16 05:32
Just leave a short pause where the rests are if you are playing unaccompanied. Longh enough to catch your breath and start counting yourself in, mentally, a bar or two before you are due to enter to help rhythmically. It is an artificial mode of performance so there really are no hard and fast rules.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2003-12-16 12:01
Mark Pinner wrote:
> Just leave a short pause where the rests are if you are playing
> unaccompanied.
For an audition? You better clear that with the auditioning committee or person - most times (as noted above) rest counting is a skill that's being tested, too.
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Author: Brenda
Date: 2003-12-16 13:31
Definitely. In any exams I've been in the rests have been checked for accuracy as well as the playing. If there are long rests, you have to ask the examiner before playing to determine what they prefer to have you do. But always assume that the rests are to be counted unless the examiner tells you otherwise.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2003-12-16 15:48
contragirl -
Unless the person in charge tells you to skip forward, you must play the rests strictly in time.
Clarinet auditions always include the arpeggiated solo from the 1st movement of the Beethoven 6th. At a master class, Anthony Gigliotti said that many audition committees tell the player to start at the beginning of the line, which has a cadence and a rest before the solo. A player who begins at the solo, or who shortens the rest, is rejected, for not following directions and not counting accurately.
Ed Palanker, the great bass clarinetist of the Baltimore symphony, has written a series of articles for The Clarinet giving advice on auditions. He says that the most frequent reason auditioners are rejected is that they don't count accurately, and that this happens most often during rests.
So, the rule is that you count TWICE as hard during rests as while you're playing. You have nothing else to do, so you're penalized double if you mess up. To paraphrase Richard Taruskin, anybody can be a virtuoso on the fast notes. There are very few virtuosos on the rests, who get them abolutely right.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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