Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-04-08 22:09
JedClampett wrote:
>> Later, having found a C clarinet for myself, I recorded the Rossini
>> overtures with the Academy of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields, again to the
>> great surprise of my colleagues.
>>
> Did your colleagues at the Academy of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields end up
> getting a C clarinet as well?
As I recall, at the time not.
There was a particular obbligato-type bit -- not actually in one of the standard overtures, but in something else that we recorded to go on the disc -- that prompted me to make the effort to play it on a C clarinet. I'll check it out when I'm at home.
Since the thread has come alive again for a moment, I'd like to comment on what Simon Aldrich wrote:
> Unless one contends that composers of the past are fundamentally different
> than composers of the present, one must face up to the fact that Bb/A
> assignment is not important to composers.
Yes, composers of today are not the same as composers of the past, just as players of today are not the same as players of the past. Our musical environment is different from that of Stadler, which was different from that of Baermann, which was different from that of Oxenvaad. Our approach to the texts written for each of them can therefore profitably differ, because those texts are written partly in the spirit of, and partly against the spirit of their times.
As someone who spent 15 years of his life at the cutting edge of contemporary music, playing new pieces in the 70s and early 80s as principal clarinet with the London Sinfonietta, I agree that the majority of living composers aren't particularly interested in which clarinet their music is played on.
My own experience was in many ways exciting -- working directly with, as well as talking directly with Boulez, Berio, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Henze (who wrote the Miracle of the Rose for me), Copland, Goehr, Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle, Ferneyhough(!), Kurtag, Kagel, Maw and Lutoslawski, as well as the younger generation of Knussen, Benjamin, Holt, Turnage etc., has to have some impact.
However, as an intensive occupation, it was also dispiriting, and I relinquished my position with the London Sinfonietta in 1984.
Part of the reason was that I felt that what particularly interested me as a player wasn't what particularly interested many contemporary composers. I was starting to become fascinated with both HOW and WHY expression is shown on an instrument.
What I thought we mostly did in the Sinfonietta, by default, was to play with what I called 'utility espressivo'. That's a style that has all the trappings of expression (the strings played with the 'usual' vibrato, for example) but which has none of the connection with what the music is trying to SAY that is a feature of the best-played classical and romantic music -- in which canon I include pieces like Pierrot Lunaire, just to be clear.
There was no problem with music that was hard-edged and forceful, or music that was ethereal and atmospheric. But in other music, 'local nuance' seemed to be unattached to ANYTHING. It was just arbitrarily applied -- rather like the 'worst best' playing of current American style.
There were exceptions, of course -- and there still are: I just heard a wonderful chamber opera by George Benjamin called Into the Little Hill, which uses an orchestra of two bassethorns, contrabass clarinet, bass flute, cimbalom, mandolin and strings, together with two female voices, to create a soundworld that is both powerfully expressive of the story (a version of the Pied Piper) and musically interesting in its own terms. And much of the music of Alexander Goehr, and that of Kurtag -- both following the Viennese tradition -- seemed to be concerned with musical gesture.
However, I've subsequently preferred to spend more of my time in a world -- namely, that of earlier composers -- where the details of nuance have more importance.
And in that world, what clarinet you play on DOES have a greater significance.
Tony
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
