 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Alphie
Date: 2000-02-27 13:38
Yes Mark. You were answering Wyatt but the topic was Jeff's.
But the whole page looked like this:
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.
My interpretation as a reader, it might not have been yours, is that Mühlfeld played with vibrato. Period. And since the topic is "Vibrato", I think that "dry" in this case implies "vibrato-less". (Obs!!! My interpretation).
This topic required a more serious discussion than it was turning in to, together with more background information since it's a very serious issue.
It's the same thing about ornaments. This doesn't apply so much to clarinet since it more or less came out of use after 1800. As far as I know for the romantic era it was mainly used in Italian opera (Rossini, Bellini a/o) and for music written in a very expressive opera-like style. As far as I'm concerned you can still use it carefully in classical music including Mozart. This requires a great sense for style and is not for amateurs. (I still remember the home-made ornaments at a "recorder-examination" of first-year students after one year of compulsory Alto-recorder studies. It wasn't pretty).
For studies about ornaments in late baroque- early classical repertoire, read Quanz: "Versuch einer Anveisung die Flöte traversière zu spielen". The book is not so much about flute as a guide for how to play ornaments and general practice for music of the time. It might be translated to English.
To use vibrato or ornaments you have to be as convinced as of the existence of God or it will fall flat. You also have to convince the people in the audience who are against the use of this or it has not fulfilled it's purpose. There are always people who know better and for those you will only make a fool of yourself if your backpack is too light.
For young readers I want to conclude this discussion with another quote about vibrato from Moyse: "The flute and its problems". Moyse lived through the huge discussions and war-like situation about vibrato on wind-instruments in the beginning of the last century. He writes on page 11:
"But before involving myself in a course on which my future was going to depend, I estimated that it was absolutely necessary first to establish my tonal technique on solid foundation and to develop my musical knowledge to the maximum".
In other words: DON'T USE VIBRATO (OR ORNAMENTS) IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. PERIOD.
I welcome other peoples opinions on this topic. Alphie
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-02-27 16:11
Alphie wrote:
In other words: DON'T USE VIBRATO (OR ORNAMENTS) IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. PERIOD.
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Amen. The problem is -- who can teach that anymore? My son may go to Siena, Italy this summer to study some of this with Antony Pay, but other than Pay and a few select others who have spent a great deal of their careers studying these techniques, there aren't any teachers who will tackle the problem (or, like in beejay's case, forbid even talking about it).
For more insight into Mozartean ornamentation/improvisation, check <A href=http://www.ocr.sneezy.org/articles/leeson6.html><b>http://www.ocr.sneezy.org/articles/leeson6.html</b></a>.
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Author: pepin
Date: 2000-03-09 17:25
Nothing wrong with a soft and subtle vibrato especially in jazz or ballads. Reginald Kell used a vibrato.Fred Ormand is also sympathetic to a vibrato if in good taste. Some players use vibrato to cover a bad intonation and get instead a warbling sound.I use a vibrato with my diaphragm. I gave up on a lip vibrato which sounded like a nanny goat. Listen to early recordings of Sidney Bechet. He had the most intense vibrato of all but it gave his music a fantastic vitality.
Pepin
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