 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: diz
Date: 2006-02-17 00:14
Very excitingly, the Vienna Philharmonic (one of world's most wonderful orchestras) is visiting Australia for the first time in its history. Four concerts at the Opera House Concert Hall in September ... $85 to $295. See the article in today's Sydney Morning Herald for details.
http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/sections/whats_on/vpo/performances.asp?sm=1&ss=1
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
Post Edited (2006-02-17 00:48)
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2006-02-17 00:56
Is this the orchestra which descriminates again women? Because that will determine if I go or not.
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Author: diz
Date: 2006-02-17 02:29
Morrigan ... couldn't give a toss personally, I'll be there.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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Author: donald
Date: 2006-02-17 08:05
oooohhhh that's a hard one, i'm kind of on Morrigans side with this one... but then, the chance to hear that band live is something pretty special. hmmmmm
donald
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2006-02-17 09:15
I know - if I actually lived in Sydney I'd go despite my initial point, but I'm in Melbourne and I don't think I'll pay for flights as well.
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Author: nes
Date: 2006-02-17 12:28
I'll be planning on going, despite living in Adelaide. What a chance!!
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Author: diz
Date: 2006-02-20 01:17
Morrigan ... make the effort if you can, grab a cheap virgin blue flight, sell your soul. In point of fact, the VPO does now employ women ... rather token effort, but they have centuries of inbred tedium that's not easily knocked down over night.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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Author: JessKateDD
Date: 2006-02-20 02:59
Should we also be boycotting the Vienna Boy's Choir? If not, would a name change to the Vienna Men's Philharmonic Orchestra fix everything?
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-02-20 03:13
JessKateDD wrote:
> Should we also be boycotting the Vienna Boy's Choir? If not,
> would a name change to the Vienna Men's Philharmonic Orchestra
> fix everything?
Perhaps you should educate yourself in the backgrounds of these organizations and with the VPO. Try reading
http://www.iawm.org/vpowatch
to start.
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2006-02-20 05:00
It's one thing to tell a joke, but it's quite another to state an opinion and then claim it to be a joke.
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Author: Shorthand
Date: 2006-02-20 06:53
Honestly, it looks like a joke to me. You have to remember how poor this medium is at communicating sarcasm. Most of the fault for the misinterpretation does, I'm afraid, lie with Jess, but notice Mark, who I'm sure is aware of this issue left his response pretty neutral as he knew that it may have just been a badly worded joke.
Give him the benefit of the doubt.
Is art lesser because the artist is prejudiced, esp if the artist is part of a prejudiced culture? (This is not a rhetorical question, and not one which I even think I know the answer to.) We all know what will eventually happen, the ensemble will hire some extraordinary women players and then finally start to wonder what the big deal was.
Be careful not to be ethnocentric in judging the VPO's stance. Frankly, its easier for me to understand how Viennese/Austrian culture led to this situation than to understand why its so hard for women to become respected conductors or directors in the US. Look at the membership of the American Bandmasters Association:
http://americanbandmasters.org/activemember.htm
I only count 5.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-02-20 10:55
Shorthand wrote:
> Be careful not to be ethnocentric in judging the VPO's stance.
It's impossible not to be. I'm not Austrian and don't have the particular prejudices of the VPO (I do , of course, hold my own prejudices and biases, based on the environment I grew up in), so the only thing I can personally do is to withhold my funds and encourage others to consider doing the same thing. I don't go so far as turning the radio off ...
The "glass ceiling" is real, but getting thinner. Recognition of the problem, thogh a small step, is at least a step in the right direction.
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-02-20 11:37
We've visited this thorny topic before.
The Wiener Philharmoniker tradition holds that one reason for the unique sound of the orchestra is that its members are all male and all come from a particular cultural tradition. This is nothing to do with claiming that women can't play as well as men, or that Asians can't play as well as Austrians. It is to do with intangible effects of teamwork.
Given that the Wiener Philharmoniker is widely considered to be one of the finest orchestras in the world, and one of the few to have a distinctive sound, then maybe, just maybe, they are absolutely correct in their belief.
Please do not argue that nobody can tell a woman from a man in a blind audition. This may very well be true. But blind auditions do not measure how someone will perform when they are actually sitting in an orchestra.
And if the Wiener Philharmoniker is justified in its beliefs, it is really worth destroying a century of tradition and excellence for the sake of political correctness and for the sake of creating a few more job openings?
-----------
If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Shorthand
Date: 2006-02-21 03:20
You're right. I should have said. "Be careful when you evaluate another culture as you are an outsider. You can't help but be ethnocentric in these situations, so it is always a good idea to give "they're different" the benefit of the doubt over "We're better."
I agree, after careful consideration I too find the situation in the VPO wrong. I can't think of any western culture that can, justify gender-specific rules outside of religious leadership and pregnancy. However if this were the Dubai, New Dheli, or Taipei philarhomanic, I would be much more hesitant to judge and would wonder what women in that culture have to say first.
(I realize that the East Asian cultures, esp. mainland China have relatively few "glass ceiling" issues compared to the West, but I don't pretend to understand them well enough to judge them even on more "clear" issues, like the Chinese tendency to value order over individual life.)
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-02-21 08:11
Shorthand wrote: "I realize that the East Asian cultures, esp. mainland China have relatively few "glass ceiling" issues compared to the West"
Shorthand, I guess you are not very familiar with Japan?
-----------
If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Shorthand
Date: 2006-02-21 21:03
Not as. I don't think of Japan as an East asian culture. As I understand it, its linguistically and culturally more related to the Gypsies than China and Korea. Its a very very different culture, in many ways more western than eastern.
Its also a culture that is in a strange, unstable place at the moment. The current status quo is clearly untenable, and something will have to give. It will be very very interesting to see what it becomes. (I guess the same is true of the US as well.)
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-02-21 21:18
"As I understand it, its linguistically and culturally more related to the Gypsies than China and Korea"
Where did you get that idea? I was under the impression that Gypsies - or Roma as we are supposed to call them these days - were ultimately of Indian stock. The Romany language is Indo-European (like English, German, Russian, Sanskrit etc etc etc). Japanese is wholly unrelated.
Mark C will probably intervene (a) for being grossly off-topic (b) because he knows a lot more about Japan than either of us.
-----------
If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-02-21 22:11
David Peacham wrote:
> "As I understand it, its linguistically and culturally more
> related to the Gypsies than China and Korea"
...
> Mark C will probably intervene (a) for being grossly off-topic
> (b) because he knows a lot more about Japan than either of us.
Linguistics & the spread of musical styles are probably intimately related.
But as to the Gypsies & Japanese ... that's something I've not heard. The character-based written (kanji) language and essentially half of the pronounciations (on-yomi) are strictly Chinese. The indiginous population (Ainu) are probably descended from early Mongol people (possibly about 13,000 years back).
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2006-02-21 23:10
Hear them at all costs, I heard them in Birmingham (UK) with Simon Rattle conducting. I have to say that it was one of the defining moments of my student life! I have never heard a Beethoven 5 like it, and to think that when my friend said he had a spare ticket i wasn't that interested. Those tickets were like gold dust, just because it was Vienna and also Simom Rattle.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: crnichols
Date: 2006-02-22 20:20
It's a great opportunity, you can't even subscribe to their concert series in Vienna, the subscriptions are sold out in perpetuity. Not even the Berlin Philharmonic has business that good, except maybe when Rattle conducts(which I'll be hearing next month, 4 world premieres and Holst: The Planets with an additional movement by Colin Matthews for Pluto). If the Berlin Philharmonic ever had sexist practices, they are a thing of the past. When I was up there the first weekend of February, I was very surprised to see how many women play in that orchestra, the principal bassoonist was a woman (and fantastic to boot). Also, I think the boycott that some of you had against the Munich Philharmonic can end, although the story of Ms. Conant must not be forgotten. They now employ a female principal clarinetist (actually they have since 1998). I suspect after Celibidache left, things changed with that a great deal. You still can't apply for a clarinet post if you play the Boehm system though. :(
Christopher Nichols
1st Infantry Division Band
Christopher Nichols, D.M.A.
Assistant Professor of Clarinet
University of Delaware
Post Edited (2006-02-22 20:31)
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Author: diz
Date: 2006-02-24 00:16
Mark ... educate yourself based on a link ... can you please validate the information?
By the way, having re-read this post (above) it comes across as rather sharp ... that's not my intention.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
Post Edited (2006-02-24 00:22)
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-02-24 01:18
diz wrote:
> Mark ... educate yourself based on a link ... can you please
> validate the information?
I have validated the information - much of it was published in the Austrian newspapers as interviews - the site gives explicit references.
The Abbie Conant story is widely known and corroborated.
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Author: diz
Date: 2006-02-27 21:37
Thanks Mark ...
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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Author: Robyn0915
Date: 2006-02-28 04:35
While on the topic of Vienna Phil, does anyone know Peter Schmidle as a teacher and how I may find his contact information???
Thank you.
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Author: Robyn0915
Date: 2006-03-02 08:13
Does anyone know Peter Schmidle as a teacher and how I may find his contact information???
Thank you.
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Author: Roger Aldridge
Date: 2006-03-02 16:50
I have a question.... I've heard that the clarinetists in the VPO use Ralph Morgan mouthpieces. Does anyone on the forum know if that's actually the case?
Thanks, Roger
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Author: JessKateDD
Date: 2006-03-02 19:06
Yes, I heard that from Ralph himself. He also claims use of his mouthpieces in the NY Phil. I call him every few months in hopes that he will finally ship my order for mouthpieces that I placed over two years ago. Each time I call he talks my ear off about how great his mouthpieces are and makes excuses for why he cannot fill my order - factory shut down, the ship carrying the mouthpiece blanks went to wrong place, new factory that he hired used wrong materials. The excuses never cease, the only constant being my unfilled order and his excuses blaming everyone in the world but himself. Oh well, I'm a bit off topic. I have no personal knowledge of any professionals using Morgans, but I can attest that they are quite good from my experience, and I play Morgans on my Bb and Eb clarinets.
Post Edited (2006-03-02 21:19)
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