Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2007-06-19 21:25
There are almost no clarinet parts where you have to play so long without a breath that your air gets stale. The only ones I can think of are band transcriptions of orchestral string parts. Tannhauser Overture, for example, has three pages of continuous 16th notes. But you have a whole section playing, and you simply breathe when you need to to.
Your problem (which I have myself) is that it's tempting to keep going until you run out of air, or oxygen. The solution is to take smaller breaths and breathe at each phrase break.
That's what music is about. Listen to good singers. They bring each phrase to an end, breathe and start anew.
The first phrase of the Mozart Concerto is two bars. There's no physical need to breathe there, but there's a **musical** need. And you breathe again after two more bars. Then you go for four bars.
The Mozart Concerto is built on this plan: two bars, two similar bars, and four bars in which the pattern is extended. My favorite metaphor comes from an old World War I song:
We'll bury the hatchet,
Bury the hatchet,
Bury the hatchet in the Kaiser's head!
If you sang this without breathing, you'd lose the meaning. Just so, if you play the first 8 bars of the Mozart Concerto without breathing, you lost the meaning.
Exactly the same thing happens at the opening of the Mozart second movement, and the third movement.
The first movement of the Brahms Second Sonata is two bars and a breath, one bar and a breath (really), one more bar and a breath, and finally four bars.
Music is about breathing. You're lucky you play a wind instrument. Many pianists and string players never learn.
Ken Shaw
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The Clarinet BBoard
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