 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-06-13 04:26
Attachment: Exercise.pdf (14k)
In the chapter 'the technique of playing the clarinet' in 'The Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet', I published a small exercise that I still find invaluable in my own playing.
It comes in two parts. Here is a text version; the pdf attachment to the post provides a more conventional notation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Part one:
||: 4/4 LMHM LMHM LMHM LMHM 6/16 LMH LMH 5/16 LMH LM 4/4 HMLM HMLM HMLM HMLM 6/16 HML HML 5/16 HML HM :||
Part two:
||: 4/4 MHML MHML MHML MHML 6/16 MHL MHL 5/16 MHL MH 4/4 MLMH MLMH MLMH MLMH 6/16 MLH MLH 5/16 MLH ML :||
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
In the above, the ||: and :|| at the beginning and the end are repeat signs;
4/4, 6/16 and 5/16 are time-signatures;
L, M and H are three notes of duration one semiquaver, L being the lowest pitch, M the middle pitch, and H the highest pitch. They are beamed as grouped.
It all lies under one slur, and semiquaver equals semiquaver throughout.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the passage that accompanies the exercise in the Cambridge Companion:
We habitually place a tremendous variety of delicate emphases on the syllables of the words we utter. On the other hand, much of the traditional study of an instrument is devoted to the discipline of producing a consistently even sound in all registers, and between notes. Now, whilst it is true that a variation in something can be meaningful only in the context of it being possible for that something to remain unchanged, we seldom need to play passages completely evenly, just as we very seldom speak completely evenly. There are always stressed and unstressed syllables. One of the characteristics of excellent playing is that the player has control of the microstructure of the variation in timbre or dynamic between notes. This control is what makes evident the organisation of the notes into groups. It may not be perceived directly by the listener, who may simply think of it as 'good rhythm', 'brilliance', or 'eloquence' even in a running passage that seems even.
For example, a part of what is required to play the second movement of Stravinsky's Three Pieces for Clarinet is to make the first semiquaver passage both phrased as marked (by the slurs) and grouped as marked (by the beaming, in threes). To do this naturally is made a little awkward by the leaps involved -- that's why we need to practise them! -- but even in the easy bits it can be elusive to show the threes without seeming to labour the point. It is clear that we must show them, too, because a little later some of the notes recur in a different grouping, and an audible difference between the two structures must therefore be intended.
But almost any semiquaver passage needs to be structured in some way. Notes are not all of equal importance, and although it is a matter for a performer to determine on any particular occasion exactly where what we might call the resonances of the passage need to fall, some such hierarchy is always established. When we have established it, we might say that we *understand* the passage better.
Clearly what we want is the general ability to group the notes in the same natural way that we group syllables into words in speech; which is to say, not insistently but nevertheless intelligibly. A good move may well be to think of some words that we can imagine go with the passage, and check that our playing has the same character. This trick has a long pedigree, and I for one would like to see and hear it more used. When it is successful, it puts us in a much better position to articulate whatever understanding of a passage we may possess.
Now, the clarinet differs from the spoken voice: it may 'fight back' when we want it to do something. A note that we want to be resonant for musical reasons may, on the instrument, be one of the weakest; and the opposite also occurs, perhaps to our even greater discomfiture.
But as I said earlier, we are not dealing just with a clarinet. We ourselves are a part of the system, clarinet plus player, and we can learn to overcome the difficulty even when we play on period instruments, which have more uneven scales. Sometimes, of course, we are fortunate here, and can use the 'deficiency' of the instrument to expressive effect.
The following simple exercise helps us to emulate on the instrument the ability we have, when we speak, unconsciously to control dynamic and timbral variation. The idea is that the exercise is a sort of template that we use to create our own studies from the piece of music we are playing. There is no conventional stave, because the three notes are intended to be any three notes, in ascending order. Neither is there a tempo indication, because we want to be able to use it in an intelligent way, at varying tempi according to our needs. Semiquaver equals semiquaver throughout. To apply the exercise, we choose three consecutive notes of the passage and put them in ascending order. We may choose these three notes because they have different responses, or because one or more of them needs to be stressed, or simply because they feel or sound awkward as we play them. As we perform the exercise, we listen with the intention of having the result be both even and modulated. (If we use words to help us imagine this, we may come up with something rather like millimetre-millimetre-millimetre-millimetre-metronome-metronome- metronome-micro-, repeated over and over again. You are encouraged to write your own libretto!) The important point is to achieve an equilibrium between the long legato and the substructure, a relationship rather like that of waves to a calmish sea. Notice that in the first part of the exercise, the first and third notes each get their turn to be the most resonant or loudest, whilst in the second part, the second note is the only one emphasised.
Usually the complete passage we are studying will require only one of the various organisations of the three notes that these exercises create. But it is almost always a good principle to study, in addition to what we ultimately want to achieve, the alternatives that lie close by -- the actual contrary of what we will want! In this way the exercise has its own life, and the original passage seems fresh when we return to it.
As we experiment, it should become apparent that there are at least two things that can change to show the substructure, these being timbre and dynamic.
The control of the first is best thought of as done by a change of resonance. You can imagine that prominent notes have the quality of being played on a marimbaphone, and the others on a xylophone. Doubtless we obtain such effects by making almost imperceptible movements of the mouth and tongue. The details of this are best left to be trained by our ear as in speech, especially since we want the process ultimately to be unconscious; though it is worth experimenting with the effect of making mouth shapes corresponding to different vowels to begin with. Sometimes strange vowels have strange effects (like multiphonics) but trying new things out always tends to expand our range of possibilities.
The control of dynamic occurs via the technique of support we mentioned earlier. As before, this works best when *allowed* to occur.
What we are learning is to play unevenly, but in the way we want. The slightly tricky rhythm of the exercise is intentional; while what Timothy Gallwey calls 'Self One' is coping with this, we can learn the really complicated stuff despite ourselves. (See The Inner Game of Tennis (Random House, 1974), which one top flight violin soloist calls "the best book about violin playing I know". It's pretty good for clarinet players too!) There is also an important effect when we return to the passage itself. We experience a release into a less demanding environment. Exercises we create for ourselves should always have this quality of being both simpler and more complex than the passage they are designed to improve.
It's worth adding that as we play the exercise (or the passage) faster, we will do better if we are modulating a brighter basic timbre. This is because faster music needs a sound with more higher frequencies in it to sound as clear as slower music, for a given acoustic. Lower frequencies persist longer, and muddy the change from one note to the next unless the higher partials, which die faster, form a non-overlapping sequence. That's also why we find we need softer reeds in a very resonant acoustic.
Tony
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: pmgoff78
Date: 2006-06-13 14:04
Tony, great work! I can still hear my college prof. saying "I'm going to CHIcago.", "I'M going to chicago.", "I'm GOing to chicago." and "I'm going TO cahicago." He would always follow that with "Play how you speak."
I remember thinking this was so natural and never having a problem. Am I a freak?
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: beejay
Date: 2006-06-13 14:43
Quite by coincidence, I was rereading precisely that chapter in the Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet last night in order to elucidate some of the questions that came up in a recent thread about Mozart's music.
I suspect that our 18th century predecessors had a much greater range of articulation techniques than we do. Perhaps they didn't do flutter tonguing or circular breathing, but they had chest and throat as well as tongue articulation.
In the earlier thread, we noted the ambiguities in Mozart scores between dots and strokes. It is almost as is this ambiguity expresses a misty area between legato and staccato.
The machine-gun delivery of long passages of detached notes may impress at first but it quickly wears out its welcome. But how does one achieve the light articulation that was said to be typical of 18th-century Viennese playing?
I suspect the answer can be found in Tony's suggestion that notes should be grouped in the same way that syllables are grouped in speech. But this demands a very deep understanding, and not just technical, of the music, and unfortunately, we cannot all be musicologists.
bj
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-06-13 16:18
beejay wrote:
>> I suspect that our 18th century predecessors had a much greater range of articulation techniques than we do. Perhaps they didn't do flutter tonguing or circular breathing, but they had chest and throat as well as tongue articulation.>>
I suppose this belongs in the other thread, and I'd say 'diaphragm' instead of 'chest'; but in fact WE have those too -- they're just not commonly thought of as being applied to faster articulations.
Consider: you can, without compromising your abdominal blowing effort, modulate a sequence of quarter-notes so that each has a diminuendo shape, using the diaphragm opposition described in the 'support' thread. (Remember, you seem to be 'doing nothing' as this occurs -- the diminuendos are 'magic', in the terminology of that thread.)
Then, you can 'feather off' the end of each of those notes with a very light tongue action, producing a sequence of shaped, detached quarters. Your abdominal flexion remains the same -- you're still blowing, constantly.
Increasing speed gradually yields a light staccato.
It's not something that you often do at speed (though it's easier than you might think) -- but then, at speed, a gentle tongue stroke mimics a diminuendo in any case.
>> In the earlier thread, we noted the ambiguities in Mozart scores between dots and strokes. It is almost as if this ambiguity expresses a misty area between legato and staccato.>>
I had my own response to the dot/dash distinction, as you probably noticed -- but actually, it fits in with what you write here. Classical phrases are modulated -- 'shaped' -- by diaphragm and mouth variations, and a note under a dash, as 'a degenerate phrase' is similarly shaped rather than being simply cut off.
>> The machine-gun delivery of long passages of detached notes may impress at first but it quickly wears out its welcome. But how does one achieve the light articulation that was said to be typical of 18th-century Viennese playing?>>
I'd say as above.
Of course, the lighter reed responds faster, so it's a bit easier to do.
>> I suspect the answer can be found in Tony's suggestion that notes should be grouped in the same way that syllables are grouped in speech. But this demands a very deep understanding, and not just technical, of the music, and unfortunately, we cannot all be musicologists.>>
I think this is a bit pessimistic:-) Notes ARE grouped together in larger structures, sometimes notated, sometimes not. And part of the reason why we all respond to music is that we have a good sense that some notes are more important than others, and that this distinction helps create those groupings.
What we respond to is how the music 'speaks'. There's no reason that we can't learn to speak it ourselves.
Tony
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
