Author: mrn
Date: 2009-06-16 18:24
David Blumberg wrote a really interesting comment in another thread.
<<Close to the body is not particularly American - Michele Zukovsky plays close and her style is not American.>>
I thought this was interesting because although I don't know Michele Zukovsky personally, as I know David does, what I do know about her is that although she studied for a time in Germany with Leister and now plays Wurlitzer instruments, she HERSELF is an American and so was her first teacher (in fact, she's my clarinet "great aunt" through her father and first teacher, Kalman Bloch, who is one of my "great grand-teachers").
I have also read (in another thread) that he (Kalman Bloch) once stated that Michele sounds more like Simeon Bellison than anyone. Of course, Bellison is considered a founder of the "American school" of clarinet playing, whatever that means (on the other hand, he played on German system instruments). Anyway, that's why David's comment seemed a little puzzling to me.
If her style (including the way she holds the instrument close--as I apparently do, too, looking at my YouTube videos) is *not American*, then that means that either she once *was* American in style and changed dramatically (in which case we should be able to tell what changed), or she never did play in an American style to begin with (in which case, what does that say about the "American-ness" of her father's playing or of Bellison's?)
My "grand-teacher" (Richard Pickar) had Kalman Bloch as his first teacher, too, but like Michele Zukovsky later studied in Germany, he later studied in Vienna with Rudolf Jettel on a Fulbright scholarship. Is he not an "American style" player?
For another example of a prominent American player having studied overseas, how about Charles Neidich? He studied with Russianoff (a Bellison student) and then went to study in the Soviet Union on a Fulbright scholarship. Does that make him "Russian(off)" school rather than American school?
So thinking about all this made me wonder, just what does "American style" really mean? Who's an "American-style player" and who's not? Where do you draw the line? How about Bloch and Bellison? Were they not "American style?" And, if not, what style were they?
Surely there is something more to defining the "American style" that just what instrument you play--otherwise how can one distinguish the "American style" from the French (or, for that matter, the English--they don't all play on wide bore instruments, after all)? What I want to know is, what, if anything, makes someone's playing style "American" or not?
And come to think of it, if he's reading this, I'm really curious what Greg Smith thinks about all this, because as someone who was trained in the Bonade/Marcellus tradition of (Franco-)American clarinet playing but who regularly plays on Wurlitzers in German orchestral works, he seems like he'd be in a somewhat uniquely qualified position to comment on this topic. For example, when the CSO switches to German system instruments, do they play "American style" on German instruments or do they play "German style" on German instruments? And if the latter, what makes the German style of playing different from the American style, apart from the equipment?
Post Edited (2009-06-16 19:02)
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