 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2004-02-13 19:19
Have to ventilate something that really irritates me enourmously: Just recieved 3 scores, published by Salabert/Durant, and this company´s editors, perhaps thinking to have earned themselves enough merit on this earth by publishing 3 important compositions (Xenakis´ "Charisma", Aperghis´ "Alter Ego" and "280 Mesures pour Clarinette") of New Music, just don´t give any fingerings for those quartertone- and multiphonics- loaded pieces, so once more I have to consult those essential volumes of Farmer and Rehfeldt, and do some wild field-research, as far as the saxophone´s fingerings are concerned. Every irrelevant scetch by a guy several decades dead is published more completely than cornerstones of nowadays. And 9 out of 10 compositions it´s the case with French publishing companies, they even edit a Boulez ("Domaines") as if they didn´t care. And if there´s very rarely some fingering to be found in a composition, I find it not being according to the more or less prevalent way the rest of the world does it but of course sir in a special way, to be decoded by the incensed performer individually. Thank you so very much. Consider those pieces by Lauba, beautiful, extremely demanding, very complex, a wonder each of them, and (like in "Hard") they jsut give the fingering for a peculiar multiphonic once, and it´s up to the biting his/her nails - performer to wedge the fingering in above the staff whenever it occurs again, and this with a composition 14 large double-sheets long. Or editing a piece for solo clarinet with sweet attributes like writing "e#" instead of "f", usually done in compositions whirling with special signs and in extreme registers to make you pant already, or bars like with 64 notes in a 4/4 rhythm - to demand that they give the alteration sign jsut once more in this bar is to much in ink costs...
...sorry to be so polemic, I´m sure quite evryone of us here has encountered something like this, I just had to get it of my chest - and now I´ll begin looking up those quartertones etc, there´s no other way it seems.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: mnorswor
Date: 2004-02-13 20:34
It seems to me that if a performer wants to play this music, then it's the performers job to know how to do this stuff. Many quarter tones and multiphonics differ greatly from player to player and instrument to instrument so it doesn't seem to me to be wise for the composer OR publisher to print fingerings that may or may not work, thus taking up even more space and diminishing the room you have to write.
I play this music all the time, it's how I make my living actually, and after some time, I didnt have to look up quarter tones anymore. I just practiced them. I also practice multiphonics and other extended techniques on a regular basis.
Should the composer or publisher for something like Ferneyhough's Time and Motion Study also print instructions as to how to circular breathe? I think not.
So, use your resources, learn the materials and you won't have to look this stuff up anymore.
IMHO,
Michael
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Liquorice
Date: 2004-02-13 21:38
I agree with Michael. Multiphonic and quarter tone fingerings that work on my clarinet might not work on yours (Rehfeld also says this in his book). And what about the clarinetists who play German system? If all the fingerings were in the score, they wouldn't have any place to write in their own, different fingerings.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2004-02-14 03:26
Markus, I guess to each his own. If I see a repeated accidental sign in a single measure, or perhaps a restoration sign in the next measure, I become concerned that I may have made an error, not noticing something I should have. I much prefer seeing music published according to the "rules" (such as they are), without some wizard with a printing press making things "easier" for me.
For my money: PLEASE, publishers, just print the music, and print it properly. I'll write comments for myself, if I need them.
Although E# may sound just like F, anyone who is following keys, cadences, or the like will sometimes find spelling the note E# makes much more sense within the music. For instance, in the key of F#, F is not the leading tone; E# is. This is also why such things as double sharps and double flats do exist.
OT, has anyone ever put on paper any Clarinet sixth-tone fingerings (from some of Haba's music for strings, for example)?
Regards,
John
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Jim E.
Date: 2004-02-14 04:01
I'm happy when music is printed large enough and sharp enough to read, the page turns are reasonable, and there are few or no errors!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2004-02-14 08:51
What do you think I practice when I do so, and I do it extensively each day?! I certainly don´t do welltempered scales 'to get them as even as possible', and believe me, I know a handful of multiphonic and quartertone fingerings by now, they work just fine. My point is that publishers are not up to the demands of nowadays music; those wonderful (sic) differences between this and the the next player don´t speak against me but for me: All the more the publishers in coherent fashion with the composer´s script and opinion should come up with suggestions, since there more ways to the woods, and not just a 'rule how it´s done'. E.g., I have 3 of Ballif´s compositions, there are many multiphonic and quartertone fingerings written in the script, most work, some don´t, and the impression is that the company did care, even including more or less evident points where 'find what suits you' is written. "Time and Motion Study" and the publication of Ferneyhough´s oevre in particular is one hell of an example where this "no idea how it works, we´ll write explanations as soon as there´s an overall rule" reigns that irritates me so much. And there are just nice and decent examples of New Music where there´s 2 sheets of fingerings for the 2 systems used most, Jarrell is one, for example. Yes indeed, I´m also quite happy when the paper is sturdy enough and I don´t need a looking glass, Jim E.,...
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Alphie
Date: 2004-02-14 17:47
I can't remember one single time when a printed fingering suggestion of a multiphonic ever worked the way I want it to. I think the only way to get into this is by consulting the sources we have, Rehfeld, M. Richards and others as a starting point. And never stop thinking and experimenting yourself. Nobody else can do the work for you. Everything you read is only a reference to put you on track. Then the work starts.
Michal Richards: " The Clarinet of the 21st Century" gives a good understanding about the clarinets "anathomy". Out from this you can draw logical conclusions about what to do.
Alphie
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2004-02-15 20:44
For this Richards book I am looking quite a long time by now, to no avail. But the Rehfeldt and the Farmer are very sturdy resources, and I rely on them heavily. Do´n´t get me wrong, I love nothing else more than this experimenting and ever-shifting instabile deconstructivist times we live in as performers and composers - what gets on my nerves just a jota too often is this bluntness, with which plain and bad copies are sold as "faksimile edition", with fingerings if at all present wedged in between the staff lines, with an attitude like "it´s experimental anyway, so why bother, let them do the work" - no Schumann or Chopin is edited that sloppy way, every crook and inkdot in an Bach autograph is so much more printed with scrupoulous and painstaking effort, but with a Mochizuki score or an Aperghis they don´t come up with much. A multiphonic fingering doesn´t work the way an orthodox does, most New Music composers agree wih that fullheartedly and take it into account, when they give fingering suggestions - it´s like H. Spaarnay said to me once, biting my fingernails whilst trying to memorize his multiphonic charts, "Hey, we did that memory-stuff when I was younger, by now I have a dozen multiphonics that work perfect, I use them, regardless of what is written there, and most composers love them more than their own ideas."; I´d love to be that relaxed one day.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: diz
Date: 2004-02-15 22:33
Markus said:
"Schumann or Chopin is edited that sloppy way"
You are wrong, it's well known that one of Brahms' biggest frustrations was bad imprints from his publisher. He "wasted many hours" proof reading his type-set scores for errors.
Dvorak had similar problems with his publisher and that eventually made him look at giving his work to the English firm Novello.
As to Bach ... unfortunately some of his manuscripts were found around the base of trees to keep them from frost bite ... ironic, really.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: GBK
Date: 2004-02-16 00:37
diz wrote:
> Dvorak had similar problems with his publisher and that
> eventually made him look at giving his work to the English firm
> Novello.
And let's not even begin to try and figure out the mess they made with the numbering of his symphonies ...GBK
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2004-02-16 07:29
I wasn´t so much talking about composer´s problems with the edition of their oevre but about us perfromers who play New Music and have to do work which is supposed to be a proof-reader´s and/or editior´s task; it´d be smoothing the way to a wider-spread acceptance of nowadays compositions if there´d be something akin to at least ry to establish an printing standard for altered and extend notation forms, that´s what I meant.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: D Dow
Date: 2004-02-16 16:22
Just made my way through the Jost Michaels version of the Mendellsohn concertstucke for 2 clarinets and can say the edition has alot of phrasing and articulations that just don't cut it...
this is a new edition that is somehow supposed to better than my old Kirbride version of these pieces and can say they are honest not a value....
David Dow
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
