 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Jeff
Date: 2000-02-23 01:00
I often here people use vibrato, but I haven't quite figured out how to do it. Could someone enlighten me?
Thanks,
Jeff
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Author: Wyatt
Date: 2000-02-23 04:35
Don't go there, Jeff!! Vibrato is for the great unwashed and Richard Stoltsman. Real Clarinetists never, ever, allow it to color their presentation.
Wyatt
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Author: col
Date: 2000-02-23 10:32
A complete load of crap Wyatt !!!!!!
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-02-23 11:38
Wyatt wrote:
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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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And, of course, Muhlfield, Brahm's great clarinetist, the one that got Brahms out of his retirement and writing some of the best music for clarinet ever written, was unwashed and not a "Real Clarinetists", right??
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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Author: Graham Elliott
Date: 2000-02-23 12:21
I would advocate diaphragm vibrato, not lip (don't move that sacred embouchure). As to how to do this, I don't think too hard about it. Just think "vibrato" and see what comes out. You might also try something Sid Fell (once a well known British player) showed me. Gently move the instrument in a circular motion while playing the note. This is like vibrato in slow motion.
I sympathise with Wyatt though I think he goes too far. In my view it is best used sparingly. The constant vibrato of modern string playing is not worthwhile. In Brahms' day the string players used vibrato very sparingly as far as we can tell.
Please let us all know how you get on.
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-02-23 15:07
Wyatt wrote:
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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.
Wyatt
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Is Jonathan Cohler a real clarinetist? He defends vibrato in a fine essay that I believe is available somewhere on this site. He uses vibrato to beautiful effect in his recordings of the Brahms sonatas. No, he doesn't weebly-wobble all over the place like an over-the-hill opera singer, but I think he creates the tone in much the same way a singer does it, by letting a very open throat and embouchure vibrate naturally. The tone will vibrate those soft structures of the body all by itself if you let it. It isn't something you have to force. The key, for me, is in relaxing everything that doesn't have to stay firm in order to support the reed.
Too much vibrato? Firm up the embouchure a little and the vibrato fades. I agree that a little vibrato goes a long way. Too much can sound like midnight at the speakeasy, with a drunk chanteuse with a run in her stocking, who's using the microphone stand to hold herself up while she whines Love Gone Wrong songs. That's fine for playin' the blues, but Mozart can do without it....
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Author: Nicole Y.
Date: 2000-02-24 00:48
Here are my two cents. I personally like vibrato but it depends how it is done. And I think it is best used sparingly. Notice I THINK. What I do know is that when you are being judged, the judges generally do not like vibrato unless it is really controlled. You have to really know what you're doing. There are certain situations when I believe vibrato really is pretty, but don't go overboard.
Just my two cents now.
The Freshman,
Nicole Y.
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Author: Joris van den Berg
Date: 2000-02-24 07:55
The oppinion of my teacher on vibrato: it's good when it comes naturally while playing a piece, but it's wrong if you put it in forced.
(perhaps somewhat simplicated, but i think it's a good fist rule.)
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Author: James Marioneaux
Date: 2000-02-24 13:27
I think as a previous post said, vibrato used in the right setting can definitely enhance. I heard that Reginald Kell used to match the opera singer's vibrato when he played along with them. I think many of the English players use vibrato due in large part to the enfluence of Reginald Kell.
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Author: Alphie
Date: 2000-02-25 00:03
Mark! Where did you get the information that Mühlfeld played with vibrato? It was certanly not the tradition in Meiningen or the rest of Germany at the time. Vaugan-Williams said about Mühlfeld once that he played more like a violinist (he was a violinist first) than a clarinettist but it doesn't necessarily mean that he used vibrato since constant vibrato as a part of the sound develloped more and more only in the beginning of the 20th century. Before that v. was only used as an expression among others. Dynamic, articulation a/o. Joseph Joachim, Brahms violinist, did generally not use vibrato. Marcel Moyce, the famous french flute tutor, expressed distress over the new epidemy that is spreading fast. Constant vibrato. He writes about it: "I have had a hard time understanding why this method--a little overly simple to resolve the problem of expression--has so many followers! Inhability, laziness, incomprehension?" He writes further: "As an emotional effect produced by physical means it has obvious dangers", and: "The vibrato tends to appear in moments of emotional intensity". "The artificial simulation of emotion is as offensive as the incapacity to sustain a note at its true pich."
My personnal opinion is that music written before this new "tradition" appeared shuld not be played with constant vibrato on any instrument. It shuld be used for example as an expression to colour a high point in a phrase or add some life at the end of a long note before moving on or simply just to emphasize something in the music that you feel is important. In later music it's a different story since constant vib. was what the composers heard and were used to. I finnish with another Moyce-quotation: "For an artist the most precious of gifts certainly is the gift of observation."
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-02-25 00:36
Alphie wrote:
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Mark! Where did you get the information that Mühlfeld played with vibrato?
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Check the Study section right here for an essay by Jonathan Cohler, which include the following passage:
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This quotation is from the book, "Clarinet," by Jack Brymer, which is one of the Yehudi Menuhin Music Guides:
".........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.'"
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