 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Rick Williams
Date: 2006-02-06 16:33
I've been simmering on this for a while and was reluctant to post but this is really starting to bug me.
One group I play with is a community band where I share 1st clarinet duties. Being a community band we play mostly marches, patriotic songs and more than a fair share of show medleys and it is this last group that is annoying me.
It seems that with the last 3-4 new arrangments we have gotten the arrangers have cut and pasted the violin parts into the clarinet with absolutely no regard for the instrument and as a result we end up with needlessly difficult passages that just a bit of care could have fixed.
Just for a reality check, I showed a piece to a very good symphony orchestra player who commented; "Oh my God, who wrote this!" The piece was written for a 180 tempo and had 16th notes running back and forth over the altissimo break for 30 measures up to G. No breaks for a breath, very difficult fingering combinations, the works.
I think what annoys me about this most is that I don't mind having my fanny kicked by a well written piece of music that was written for the instrument but I'm tired of getting my fanny busted trying to play first violin parts on a clarinet.
So am I off base or does anyone else feel this way? You know, misery loves company.
Best
Rick
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2006-02-06 17:01
Somewhat off-topic, but if you need a break from the 16th and high notes, take a sabbatical from the Bb clarinet section and play bass clarinet for a while -- then you can complain (as I often do) of all the boring whole notes and "oom-pah" parts which are doubled by the bassoons, euphoniums, trombones, bari saxes, tubas, etc. It will make you wish you were back in the soprano clarinet section playing 'violin' parts.
The grass is always greener............
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2006-02-06 17:02
No, Rick; you are right on! My teacher (Principle Clarinet with the Spokane Symphony) had the same reaction to a couple of horrid (cheap) arrangements for our fall concert. He suggest that I buy an A clarinet and transpose the parts.
In our case, we, the members of the orchestra, have taken to buying the charts to avoid getting stuck with such poorly constructed music.
Worse, think of all the public (budget concious) jr hi and hi school kids stuck with this crap!
Bob Phillips
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2006-02-06 17:04
The first thing to do is to get over the playing string parts mental block. In a concert band, when you play reductions of anything in which the strings play a major part in the original, you are going to find the clarinets distributed in this fashion.
Put another way, with transcriptions, the First Clarinet plays the orchestra clarinet parts, and the rest of the clarinets (including the altos (ugh!), the basses and the other harmony horns) are going to be picking up the rest of the string corps. 1812 Overture is a good one, with several pages of 'cello and contrabass notes towards the bells and cannon section at the end.
The best way to avoid this is to avoid concert band music (a practice that has worked very well for me). However, if you are going to be playing in a concert band, you just need to buckle down and endure it. Well, that or rearrange the music to suit you...
As for the placement of the parts and its difficulty, it could be worse. For example, there's the tendency in a Broadway show where a vocalist has forced key alterations. The example that springs to my mind is Everything's Coming Up Roses in Gypsy, where The Mer's voice forced a horrid key (seven flats) with page spanning arpegi through the whole.
Or, you could be union steward and have to deal with The Bally Corporation...
leader of Houston's Sounds Of The South Dance Orchestra
info@sotsdo.com
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Author: larryb
Date: 2006-02-06 18:02
This is an old story - goes back at least to Wenzl Sedlak's arrangement of Beethoven's Fidelio for winds.
Get over it and meet your inner violinist.
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Author: Brenda Siewert
Date: 2006-02-06 18:58
I hear you. We have several like that in our community band files. Not to name names, but Leroy Anderson's stuff is famous for that type of set-up for clarinet. I finally decided his first wife was a clarinetist and she got the kids and the house and he got the bills. This is, by the way, a joke and in no way meant to be disrespectful to Mr. Anderson. I'm sure he was a great guy and probably had a loving wife and kids. But, his stuff leaves very little breathing room and seems to be more like violin parts. However, I agree with the above post to let the inner violin player out.
Post Edited (2006-02-06 19:02)
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2006-02-06 20:03
Don't pay any attention to that "inner violinist" stuff. Reggy Kell started life as a fiddler. Described how distorted the fiddler's playing position is ==and unleashed his "inner clarinetist" to great effect.
Bob Phillips
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Author: Dan1937
Date: 2006-02-06 23:28
Rick,
You don't mention whether these "arrangements" are manuscript or published. Lately it seems that anyone who wants to be called an "arranger" can buy a computer and notation software and turn out a chart, but in MANY cases, their lack of knowledge of musicality, theory, voicing, instrument ranges, and even the beginning of a concept of planning an arrangement are the most prominent features of the arrangement.
This happens more frequently in the jazz ensemble area, I have found. Many of these charts are boring, have wrong chords, are not voiced so they sound good, and show no structure or form.
The director SHOULD have the ears to hear how bad these abominations are, and should not perform them, because they make the group sound bad (but some director don't have the ears!). Maybe you and other members who feel as you do should have an "intervention" with the director and persuade him or her not to perform these pieces.
Dan
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2006-02-07 11:39
Sometimes you have to play parts written for different instruments. I've got some cornet parts at the moment - they're loud, fast, tongued, right across the break and written somewhere between 4 and 7 flats. In this situation, you just have to learn some tricks. Or arrange them yourself (an octave here and there can be handy).
*Having said all this*, anything that has the gall to call itself an 'arrangement' (or even a 'composition') should take the properties of the instrument into account. Arranging is a skill, not a sausage-machine. My own skill just about extends to clarinet quartets, though I'd like to extend it. There's a lot to think about, to shoehorn an original composition into a box of a different shape. How do you keep the correct colours and harmonies? How do you make sure each individual instrument has a 'sensible' part? Mistakes are easy to make, and I've played too many 'bad' arrangements.
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Author: Rick Williams
Date: 2006-02-07 16:20
Just to clarify, these are published arrangements and I'm aware of certain facts of life when it comes to playing, including lots of sacred music that has more sharps than a hospital dumpster. My gripe resides solely with with lazy arrangements.
I've listened to original orchestral recordings as I follow along with my score and litterally the parts are dumped onto the clarinets and ocassionally other WW's. If that is what passes for arranging, then I guess I'm an arranger because I can certainly cut and paste with a simple transposition with the best of them....g When I see 20-30 or more measures with no where to breath, let alone some of the note combinations it just tells me the arranger didn't bother to even consider what they were doing.
I appreciate the suggestion about getting in touch with my inner violinest but I think I'll take a pass since I'm still looking for that clarinetist in me...BG!
Best
Rick
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Author: Ralph G
Date: 2006-02-07 18:11
Am playing the 2nd part of the concert band version of "La Forza del Destino" overture tonight with the local wind symphony. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea for us to play harp cues during the big clarinet solo? Triplet arpeggios going all over the place, and pretty much no way to play them with the effortlessness the harp can imbue. Every orchestral recording I've heard has the harp providing a very subtle floor for the clarinet solo. Meanwhile in concert band a whole row of clarinets is honking away to keep up... actually, just me and another guy, as everyone else just plays the eights on downbeats. Sayonara to the beauty of that passage.
It ain't just the violins that get shoehorned into a band transcription..
________________
Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.
- Pope John Paul II
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2006-02-08 06:55
Yes, Rick, published arrangers should know better. But when the pressure is on to churn out any old windband arrangement of the latest hummable A. L.-W., horrible things seem to happen. And people buy them! - mail order, with no idea of what they're getting before they arrive. I subdivide the results into two kinds: 'easy', with acres of blank space on the pages for rather a lot of money, or 'cut-and-paste', as you've described.
(as an example of the A. L.-W. effect, I've yet to play a decent arrangement of anything out of 'Cats'. There's an awful lot of interesting stuff going on in that musical, but it always seems to end up beaten with a big stick until all that's left is 'Memory' at three 'f's.)
I have played a number of excellent arrangements, but I still think there's a market niche for someone with the time and inclination to set up something like a 'Real Arragements Company', selling play-tested scores.
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2006-02-09 07:07
A 'good workout', yes, I have to agree. The question is: does it make for a good performance?
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Author: Veldeb
Date: 2006-02-10 20:21
Why do we get the violin parts? because we use 9 fingers to play.. brass cant play them without the use of all of theirs :-)
Blake
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2006-02-10 23:10
My favorite clarinet book of all time is Voxman's Classical Studies (Rubank) where he takes mostly the Bach violin and cello suites and transcribes them to solo clarinet. This has been my warm-up book for years, and also a solace in troubled times. There are a few breath marks, but not many. The important point is to phrase with the music and take breathes at musical spots, not just the most obvious.
The same could apply to those orchestra transcriptions for band where the transcriber may have ignored the need to breathe, or just had no other workable alternatives. So, you just have to learn to play really high, and to grab breaths when you can. Like David, I enjoy the hard stuff, even if it presents impossible playing situations. I have suffered through lots of those, but the challenge makes you better, right?
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