 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: S. Friedland
Date: 2008-09-14 15:00
http://clarinetcorner.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/
The above is an article just published on my site including the following names and performances: Cahuzac, Pay,Wright, Cioffi and Combs. There are examples of each player and also a bit about the subtle competition that has evolved between players and their recordings over the years, a newer development.
Sherman Friedland
Post Edited (2008-09-14 18:41)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-14 23:10
I really liked it, too. I actually listened to the Cahuzac video a few weeks ago and I remember thinking just how "modern" his sound was, as compared to, say, Georges Grisez. (I'm thinking back to that radio interview of Harold Wright where they played a clip of Grisez playing Weber II).
Actually, come to think of it, when I was about 10 or 11 my clarinet teacher made me a list of players to find recordings of to listen to (and specifically of the Mozart concerto). The three names I remember from that list were Marcellus, Prinz, and Cahuzac (although I can't remember which order--it was sort of a "if you can't find this one, buy this one" kind of list).
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2008-09-15 15:59
Thank you for the article Sherman, I know you could not cover the whole spectrum of clarinet playing, but any particular reason the austrian/german school is not represented in your list?
While Cahuzac's sound is a big influence on modern american players' tone, leister, prinz to only name them have had a deep impact on current sound "ideals".
In any case thank you very much for the links, I love the opening of Tchaik 5 with Wright, simply beautiful...
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
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Author: S. Friedland
Date: 2008-09-15 17:49
I had answered in a long response, but it got lost, so here is a nice recording with Mr. Leister of the Barber "Summer Music", a great piece and beautifully played, however my own preference would by for a slighter lighter more immediate sound; perhaps not as covered, his is still quite beautiful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBOjvIhm2Cs&feature=related
I will add it to the article. Thank you.
Sherman
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-15 20:24
I realize this is off-topic, but did Barber actually write this piece for a C clarinet and horn in B-natural? That's what the score on the video suggests. Is there even such a thing as a horn in B-natural?
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2008-09-15 21:10
mrn- Summer music is written for clarinet in B-flat and horn in F. These parts have been written at concert pitch in the score. For some reason the horn part is presented without a key signature, so all accidentals are written in front of the actual notes.
Mr Friedland- I'm not sure if I understand what your article is getting at. Are you saying that clarinet sound has not changed much since Louis Cahuzac, and that your selected players from the USA and England still fall within some kind of Cahuzac-sound tradition? Does Karl Leister also fit into this tradition, in your opinion? Are you saying that Antony Pay, playing on a boxwood basset clarinet with 9 keys tuned at A=430Hz, represents the English school of clarinet playing? Can Mr Pay's sound on that instrument also be traced back to Cahuzac's sound?
Forgive me, but I am really struggling to follow the thrust of your argument.
I do agree with your point about recorded music, and how that can be an inaccurate representation of what somebody sounds like in concert hall.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-09-15 23:11
Liquorice wrote:
<<mrn- Summer music is written for clarinet in B-flat and horn in F. These parts have been written at concert pitch in the score. For some reason the horn part is presented without a key signature, so all accidentals are written in front of the actual notes.>>
OK. That makes more sense (although it's still strange). With scoring the piece for Bb clarinet, it almost seems as if Barber was striving for some kind of strange fairness in key signatures/accidentals--the concert pitch instruments get 5 sharps, the clarinet gets 5 flats, and the poor horn (who's stuck in key of F#, if I'm calculating this correctly) gets a whole slew of accidentals--so nobody is unfairly privileged with an easy key signature.
Obviously, I can't speak for Sherman, but my impression as a listener is that Cahuzac had a richer and warmer tone than some of the other French-school clarinetists of his day, and that his tone is still an archetype for many players today (especially in America). We (especially in the US) like to give Marcellus and his contemporaries credit for Germanicizing the French sound to create an "American sound" in the mid 20th century (and this is not without justification), but what this recording reveals (to my ears, anyway--folks with more training and experience may very well disagree with me) is that Cahuzac was producing similarly rich sounds in the 1930s.
And even though we may have very different "clarinet genealogies" (Marcellus, Pay, and Leister being representative of very different "playing heritages"), many of us can still relate in some way to the Cahuzac sound. I mentioned that my teacher recommended that I listen to recordings of Cahuzac. Her teacher (my "grand-teacher") studied with Rudolf Jettel in Vienna (and with Kalman Bloch before that--Bloch studied with Bellison and Bellison was Russian). Bottom line: wherever we came from (and whether we realize it or not), there's a little bit of the Cahuzac ideal ingrained in all of us.
I don't know if that was the point Sherman was trying to make, but that's what I came away with.
Post Edited (2008-09-15 23:27)
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Author: S. Friedland
Date: 2008-09-16 01:47
It is always the players and their performance, understanding of the style of the music and composer. But these all live in the same general time frame. Cahuzac is upwards of a century before the others , yet they all benefit from his playing and it is similar,including thatof Mr Leister. Boxwood doesn't seem to make a difference to Mr. Pay and there is no evidence as to what the sound, the style or any of the tonal qualities of the time of Stadler. I hope this offers some clarification.
Post Edited (2008-09-16 01:52)
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