 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: GBK
Date: 2004-01-26 20:05
Many may not be familiar with the name of clarinetist Louis DeSantis.
DeSantis was born in 1893 in Naples, Italy and emigrated to the United States in 1912. He was an important clarinet artist who held principal positions in the Chicago Civic Opera, St. Louis Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra (where he succeeded Bonade in 1930) and the CBS Symphony Orchestra. He died tragically in 1940 at the age of 47 from an auto-trolley accident.
In the 1920's DeSantis published a clarinet study method called "New Studies for Clarinet". After his death the book went out of print and was long forgotten. It contained paraphrasic and melodic studies based on the difficult clarinet excerpt passages in Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Thomas, as well as scale and duet studies.
Russell Harlow (Utah Symphony) has now, through the help of the DeSantis family and others, republished this important clarinet method.
I would encourage all to investigate this unique method book which very few are aware of. It is a book which I happened to have an original copy of and was happy to lend to Russell in his quest to republish it (now with Louis DeSantis' final revisions from his personal notes).
The book can be found at Russell Harlow's site:
http://www.clarinetcentral.com/
I am promoting this method (of which I get no special remuneration or consideration) strictly as I feel it is a worthwhile text for all to have.
Thanks to Russell Harlow for all his hard work in bringing this book back to life...GBK
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2004-01-27 18:57
GBK: Was De Santis one of the last great "reed-up" players early on? Or am I thinking of someone else?
Regards,
John
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Author: GBK
Date: 2004-01-27 19:34
JMcAulay wrote:
> GBK: Was De Santis one of the last great "reed-up" players
> early on? Or am I thinking of someone else?
DeSantis played double lip in the traditional way.
You might be thinking of Gino Cioffi who came to this country playing "reed up" and then changed to "reed down" after seeing everyone around him in the late 1940's playing in that manner...GBK
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2004-01-28 04:38
Cioffi? Yes, I believe so. I do not recall any serious reed-up players since, and truly I had not remembered that Cioffi was so recent.
Regards,
John
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2004-01-28 11:43
Wasn't Mr. DeSantis' picture on the cover of "Clarinet" magazine recently? I'll have to go re-read the article.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2004-01-28 12:46
Yes... Russell Harlow wrote the article ...GBK
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Author: BobD
Date: 2004-02-09 18:40
Just a comment about ordering and shipment delays: I went into the website GBK mentions above and was transferred to another website for ordering ...which I did. Not having received the item in a reasonable time I connected the place I ordered it from (CCNow.com) who referred me back to Harlow's Clarinet Central website. CCNow appears to be a sort of "clearing house" for small websites to use for order handling. I do find this procedure rather strange plus I note that each time I reenter CCNow's website my order pops up but the quantity is increased by one each time.
Harlow's website is still under construction.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2004-02-09 20:34
Thanks GBK and sorry I didn't mention that CCNow also gave it to me and I contacted him. ...no reply yet.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2004-02-09 20:42
BobD... He may not be back home yet.
The last time I spoke to Russell he was about to leave to do some master classes, recitals and research for his CDRom outside the USA. I think he was going to be gone for at least the first week of February...GBK
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Author: wyatt
Date: 2004-02-10 16:03
GBK: what level of player are these studies aimed at?
thanks*å
bob gardner}ÃœJ
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Author: GBK
Date: 2004-02-10 17:32
Let me attempt to describe the book in a bit more detail.
The "New Studies for Clarinet" is 39 pages and is divided into two parts.
Part 1 are "Daily Exercises". These are scale patterns through all major and minor key signatures (up to 6 flats and 6 sharps). These are concise and similar to what you might find in Baermann III.
Part 2 are "Paraphrasic - Melodic Studies". These are exercises built upon 4 difficult and popular clarinet orchestral excerpts. The purpose of these exercises is to isolate the different fingering and rhythmic problems of each excerpt by leading you through a series of interesting (but related) exercise patterns. These are designed to train you in smaller increments, thus making the excerpt more understandable and approachable.
The 4 excerpts (in order) are the clarinet cadenza from Mignon (Thomas) and the 1st cadenza of Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody. This is then followed by a very helpful trill and mordent study which is meant to prepare you for the third paraphrasic exercise - the nasty Scherzo excerpt from Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony. The final and most difficult exercise is based on the chromatic clarinet cadenza from Le Coq d'Or (Rimsky-Korsakov). It is a finger twister which will eventually make the actual excerpt seem easy, by comparison.
The final 2 pages of the book finds 2 clever short duets. In each, Player #1 starts at the beginning of the page (upper left) and Player #2 starts at the end of the page (bottom right) reading backwards. Thus the 2 players "cross" each other mid way through.
As I first posted, the "New Studies for Clarinet" has long been out of print, but is now back. It is certainly challenging as well as being a useful study and teaching method...GBK
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Author: Ed
Date: 2004-02-10 18:59
I got a copy of this book when it became available. It is a very good work and should be in every serious players library.
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